The Cuban priest Alberto Reyes offered a reflection on forgiveness this Sunday, in light of the Gospel for the twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, where Jesus answers Peter that one must forgive not just seven times, but seventy times seven, which means always.
Starting from that passage of the Gospel of Matthew 18, 21-35, Reyes dismantles three ideas that, in his opinion, distort the true meaning of forgiveness.
The first misconception is believing that forgiving means forgetting. "To forgive does not mean to forget the offense, because there are situations we will never be able to forget," warns the priest from Esmeralda (Camagüey).
The second confusion is thinking that forgiveness requires suppressing emotions. For Father Alberto Reyes, feeling anger, disappointment, annoyance, or even desires for revenge does not contradict forgiveness: those feelings are beyond a person's voluntary control.
The third is the attitude he calls simplistic: "Let bygones be bygones; nothing has happened here." He argues that this stance is not forgiveness either.
In response to those conceptions, the priest offers a definition focused on behavior rather than feelings. "Christ does not ask anything of us that we cannot handle; therefore, what the Lord asks of us falls within the realm of behavior, of what we can do, and not of what we may feel or think," he explains.
From this perspective, forgiveness means something concrete and attainable: "To be able to leave the door open is to not stop extending a hand to the one who offended us. Forgiveness is the ability to be there to assist the one who hurt us; it is learning to see the needy instead of the aggressor."
To navigate that path, Reyes proposes three practical attitudes.
The first is to pray for those who have hurt us. Acknowledge that at first this practice may seem "even violent," but it assures that "praying for the aggressor ultimately becomes a path to peace."
The second is to drain the pain: to talk to someone who can listen without judgment, without offering evaluations or advice. Someone who, quoting Saint Teresa, is the "necessary outlet."
The third attitude is to try to understand the aggressor. "No one is evil for no reason, no one hurts for sport, no one attacks without a wound in the soul," asserts Reyes, and turns to the metaphor of the iceberg to illustrate that what is visible in another's behavior is only the tip of something deeper.
The priest is careful to clarify that understanding does not equate to justifying. "The aggressor's wound may be so deep that he may not even be aware that he is acting from it. This, of course, does not justify it, because nothing justifies doing harm to another," he points out.
Reyes, also known for his weekly column on Facebook, where he combines spiritual reflection with a denunciation of the situation in Cuba, has addressed forgiveness from a political perspective on other occasions. In March of this year, he stated that the Cuban people would prioritize forgiving the regime in exchange for freedom, and in another statement that same month, he warned that peoples do not always forgive those who have harmed them.
This Sunday reflection, however, operates on a spiritual and interpersonal level. Its conclusion suggests that a compassionate view of the aggressor is not a concession, but rather the most direct path to one's own peace. "From that perspective, it will be much easier for us to embark on the journey of forgiveness, to extend a hand despite the wound, and to experience the gift of finding our own peace."
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