Episode 6 - Ancient Faith Chat: How Can I Forgive?

STSA Church Podcast · Dec 27, 2023

Transcript

All right, good evening, everyone. My name is Father Anthony Mesa and I am thankful, thankful that you're joining us here on this evening for our sixth Ancient Faith Chat. And for those who are new to Ancient Faith Chats, it is brought to you as you saw in the little video opener by STSA Ministries, where our mission is to help you bring an Ancient Faith to your modern world and to share the resources, the tools, the support, whatever it is that you need to help you to accomplish this in your local community. So as I say, every time we start this, we're happy that you're here. Please make sure after you finish watching this chat that you go onto our website, stsaministries.org, stsaministries.org, and you check out all the different free resources. Everything is on there for free. And if there's something on there that a resource or a question or something that you have, please don't hesitate at any point in time to reach out. We love, love, love to hear from you any point in time. One of the things that we do during our four Ancient, four STSA Ministries is these Ancient Faith Chats. So what we're going to be doing here tonight is answering a question, as we try to do once a month, that you, the viewers have said, you know, we want to know how you would answer this question. And what I try to do is not just answer the question with the answer as much as the reasoning behind it, because usually that's sometimes where we fall short. So our question for tonight is, how do I forgive? How do I forgive? Not just why should I forgive, which we kind of know, but the how, we'll answer that question. But before we do, as always, I always like to know who it is I'm speaking to. So open up your chat window and type in if you don't mind your name and where it is that you are tuning in from. It always helps me to be able to know who it is that I'm speaking to. So go to the chat window.

You should be able to make sure. There we go. So welcome to Greg from New Jersey. It's good to have you, Greg. I was actually born in New Jersey, so I don't know which part you're from, but that's great. Danny from Fairfax. Good to see you, Danny. Mark from Charleston, South Carolina. Good to see you, Mark. Nancy from Roanoke Virginia. Mary Lou from Arlington. Nas from Vancouver, Canada. Fast here. Tirhas from Chantilly. Marina Shenuti from Ashburn. Mary from Fairfax. Mark from Alexandria. Lydia from New Jersey. Father Barsoom from New Zealand. Welcome, Father Barsoom from New Zealand.

Wow. It's good to have you. Sharif from Burke. Sandra from Burke. George from Lorton. Angelique from Tyson's. I'm Al from Arlington. Mina from Baltimore. Arson from Sweden. Vera from Porto Alegre, Brazil. Sounds like a great place to go be. Sharif from Pennsylvania. And John Paul from North Miami, Florida.

And Hanan from Philadelphia. Suzy from Roanoke. Wow. Welcome, everyone. Welcome, welcome, welcome. It's great to have you. Like I said earlier, our topic for tonight right here is going to be about forgiveness and not just why should I forgive but how can I forgive. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to put inside the chat a link, I'll put it right here, a link to my notes for tonight. Okay, so that way if you didn't catch a Bible verse or you want to kind of follow along with what I'm talking about right here, you can follow along right there. You don't have to take notes but you can have that handout with you. You can pull it up in front of you to follow along. Okay. Also at the bottom of the screen you see a box that says Q&A. Welcome to submit questions right there. I'll go through my little spiel right here for about 20 minutes. Then I'll open it up for questions about this topic or any topic that you'd like.

That's our agenda for tonight. Let's get into our topic. How can I forgive? How do I forgive? One of the hardest questions to answer which people ask me all the time. So many times people come to me and they tell me about their story and it's incredible hurts and incredible pains. And people who have abused, people who have gone through abuse, neglect, betrayal, like even people who have gone through the worst of the worst like you know molested as a child or as an adult or whatever it may be. And I hear all these awful, awful, awful things. And my answer to them, always no matter what the story, no matter how difficult it may be, my answer is always to them you have to forgive. And as soon as they're ready to jump down my throat say how could you ask me to forgive after what I've gone through? My response to them, I always followed up by saying this, you have to forgive because you deserve it. You deserve it. You deserve better than living the rest of your life with bitterness and resentment. You deserve better than living harboring all this pain and keeping it inside you. Because the problem is when someone has hurt me until I learn to forgive them, then I allow them to keep on hurting me over and over. There's a book called Healing the Angry Brain which talks about this forgiveness and bitterness and it says this quote, even though the offense is long over, people keep thinking obsessively about it, about what happened. And the problem with this is that every time the memory comes, listen to this, every time the memory comes they feel re-injured as if they were being betrayed in that exact moment.

Did you catch what he's saying right there? He's saying that when someone has hurt us, they hurt me yesterday, they hurt me a year ago, they hurt me 10 years ago, every time I relive it, it's as if I'm being hurt again in that moment. So that's why what I say to you is you deserve better than this. You deserve better, not them. Okay, we'll talk about them in a minute. But the starting point of forgiveness, why we are taught to forgive and we are taught that it is a mission critical, it's an essential learning to forgive, is because you deserve better. Because the bottom line is if you're going to go through life dealing with people, there's no skill that's more needed than to learn to forgive. Mistakes are inevitable, okay? People will hurt you. If you have children, they will rebel against you, they'll disobey you, they'll disrespect you. Parents make mistakes, all of our parents make mistakes. We as parents, we're making mistakes with our kids, okay? If there's no forgiveness, there can be no relationship. Your friends sometimes are busy on your birthday.

Sometimes you're chosen as the bride's maid, never the bride, or someone else gets chosen as the best man or whatever it may be. Like the only way not to get hurt in life is to avoid people, like true social distancing. Okay, true social distancing is the only way to never get hurt in life. But if you plan to have relationships with people, whatever context, you have to learn how to forgive. It's an essential skill for life. And I think that most of us, at least if you were raised the way I was, we are taught that we need to forgive, but we're never really taught how to forgive, kind of the mechanics of it. That's why we don't know what to do. What we know how to do is we know how revenge, we know how to do passive aggressive, we know how to do cold shoulder, okay? But like I said, is you deserve better, I deserve better. When I hold on to someone else's hurt against me, it's like hitting myself. Like, remember when we were kids, okay, if you had an older brother and they would like pin you on the ground, take your hand, and they would hit you with your own hand. Why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself? Okay, if you've ever had an older brother, okay, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Well, that's kind of what we're doing to ourselves. When we choose to hold on and not forgive, we're hurting ourselves, okay? We are, heard the expression, we're hitting ourselves in the head with a hammer in order that we can get some blood on the other person's carpet, okay?

That's what we think. We're beating ourselves senseless so that we will spill some blood on their carpet somehow makes us feel good, but like I said, you deserve better. Hebrews chapter 12 verse 14 on your handout says, pursue peace with all people and holiness without which no one will see the Lord. Pursue peace with all people without which no one will see the Lord. Looking carefully, lest anyone fall short of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled. Forgiveness is not something we do for the other person. Forgiveness is something we do for ourselves, and I wrote this in your handout. The quality and quantity of my relationships will directly depend on my ability to let go, move on, and to forgive. I hope you believe that. The quality of your relationships and the quantity of your relationships is directly dependent on your ability to learn to move on, let go, and forgive, okay? So what I want to talk about now is I want to talk about how that works, kind of like why, not just why we should forgive, but what forgiveness is. Because what I discovered is sometimes when I tell someone you need to forgive and they're like, no, I can't, we don't always have a proper understanding of what forgiveness means. And if you don't know what it is, then you'll be tempted to say, I can't do it. But maybe that's because you don't really know what it is. So four quick things that forgiveness is not, and then we'll talk about what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is not number one, it is not conditional. Forgiveness is not conditional. Forgiveness has actually nothing to do with the other person. The goal here is you. The goal is me and my healing. The goal is not, well, I need to teach them a lesson, or I need them to know, that has nothing to do with anything. We can talk about that later. Okay, if it's someone you have a relationship that you want to, like whatever, that's fine. But forgiveness only has to do with me, has nothing to do with it. You never ask yourself, do they deserve it? What you ask yourself is do I deserve it? Do I deserve to remove this weight? Do I deserve to live free?

Do I deserve to be able to not have to carry this any longer? Forgiveness is not conditional. Number two, forgiveness is not excusing. Sometimes we think, well, I can't forgive them because then I'm letting them off the hook. All right. No one said that forgiveness is letting them off the hook, or forgiveness is excusing the other person. Forgiveness is not saying, well, that didn't really bother me. Like imagine someone, I said earlier, someone who's been abused, because someone has been a victim of a crime. And I say, no, no, no, pretend like it never happened.

It's not even possible. Okay. Forgiveness is not about minimizing the other person's sin. And if you think about it, Jesus forgave us, but did he minimize sin? Did he say sin is no big deal? Did he say that, you know what, like, oh yeah, oh yeah, I think you said, I can't, he didn't do that. But Jesus didn't minimize sin, but what he did is he maximized the person, which is us. Okay. And he said sin is bad, but a person is good. And therefore his focus was on the person and forgiving the person, okay, not excusing the sin. Jesus never forgave, never excused sin, even though he forgave it.

Number three, this one is a little bit, you know, kind of sensitive. Forgiveness is not reconciling, but what I want to put on this one is not necessarily reconciling. Sometimes forgiveness, reconciling is part of it, but not necessarily. Okay. There are two kinds of separate things. Forgiveness can happen in an instant. Okay. Like right now I choose to forgive, but reconciling a relationship, depending on the offense that took place, that may take time. That may take a lot of time, like rebuilding the trust. That may take a lot of time, but forgiveness is not reconciling. It's not the same as reconciling. Like I need to forgive you now, even though I may not trust you now, even though I'm not ready to have dinner at your house now, forgiveness is not the same as reconciling. Now, the only reason I kind of caveat that and say not necessarily, because I can't really put that like, sometimes reconciliation is part of forgiveness. So let's say like, you know, with me and my wife, if my wife does something, I can't say, okay, I forgive you, but I don't want to talk to you ever again.

No, it doesn't work. Then you didn't like, no, but sometimes it's not safe to reconcile or it's not wise to reconcile, but sometimes it is. So that one takes a little bit of judgment, a little bit of discernment, but the bottom line is the two are not the same. Forgiveness is between me and myself. Okay. It's something that I'm doing for myself. Reconciling, that may take some work on the other person's end, some restitution, some change, whatever it may be. So forgiveness is not conditional. It's not excusing. It's not reconciling. Lastly, it's not forgetting. All right. I one time gave a, I did a series called Things Jesus Never Said, and one of the messages in that series was, you know, quote, Jesus saying, when I forgive, I forget. If you were like me, you grew up, you saw you had that picture in your house.

I've seen it in many people's house. Jesus with a nice, you know, look on his face saying, when I forgive, I forget. But if you notice about that quote in that picture, there's no Bible reference next to it. And the reason is because Jesus never said it. It's not anywhere in the Bible. Like even just theologically, like, is it possible that Jesus would forget, be like, wait, was it you that lied? Or was that like, like, it's not possible for Jesus to forget anything. So it's not even possible for us. Like, like, I can't command you. Like, if I tell you right now, forget your name, forget your birthday, like, forget it. You can't force me to forget something. Like, it's not humanly possible. Even more so if I'm telling you, forget that you were abused, forget that you were betrayed, forget that someone ruined your career, forget that someone stabbed you in the back, like you can't. And in fact, the more I'm saying it, the more you're probably remembering it and reliving it over and over and over. So forgetting is not the same as forgiving. And sometimes there's things that we forgive that we may never forget. And that's just a part of life. That doesn't mean we can't work through it. That doesn't mean that we can't, you know, get past it. But I guess what I'm trying to say is if you say, I can never forget, it doesn't mean that you can never forgive. Okay, because forgiveness is not the same as forgetting. So what is forgiveness on the positive side? Forgiveness is not conditional. Forgiveness is not excusing. Forgiveness is not reconciling. Forgiveness is not forgetting. Forgiveness is, if you had to have a definition, canceling the debt. Canceling the debt. Think about it from a banking perspective. If I have a loan, okay, or I have some kind of a debt that I owe a mortgage, a bank may come in and say, your debt is forgiven. Your loan is forgiven. Nowadays with the college loans, loan forgiveness. What it means is somebody owed me something, and now they don't owe me anymore, or I owed someone something, and I don't owe them anymore. That's a perfect way to describe forgiveness. Because if you show me a bitter person, show me a person who has resent and unforgiveness, and I will show you a person who feels like someone owes them. Like there's a debt to debtor relationship that has been established. So-and-so took something from me. They owe me.

That's why we say things like they need to pay. Okay, someone, for example, someone gossiped about me. What they owe me is my reputation. They took my reputation. They stole my reputation. They owe me. Someone stole a promotion from me. They owe me my career. They stole my career. A spouse who cheats on me. They stole my security, my trust.

A dad who abuses me. They stole my innocence. They owe me. They took something from me. I got to get even. I got to get back at them. Anytime we talk about unforgiveness, we think about somebody owes me something, and I need to get justice from them. I need to get restitution. They owe me. They need to pay.

Well, here's the problem. Most debts can't be repaid. Most debts can't be repaid. Someone stole your childhood. Can your childhood be repaid? Can you go back and get those years that your parents took from you? Your reputation that was ruined. Can you get it back? Can you go back in time and erase? Okay, you can't. Most of life, your innocence can't get back. Your trust, it can't be repaid. So the problem is the more I try to get repayment, the more I say, you owe me and I need this and I'll never move on until I get this, the more resentful you're going to become because you're never going to get it. And what you've done is essentially, effectively, you've made yourself a slave to the other person. You've said until you give me this, I am going to be this. So I'm basically, my life is in your hands. So here I am. You hurt me back in 2004. You hurt me. You betrayed me. You did whatever. And I'm bitter and angry and I'm holding on and it's ruining my life and it's ruining my marriage and it's affecting my children. You moved to the moon. You live far away. You've repented. You've gotten it all out with God. And here I am and I'm holding on to something. Well, I've become a slave. I've lost control of my life. That's why the only solution, not the spiritual, not saying like you should, I'm saying the only solution is to forgive, cancel the debt and say that person owes me no more. There is a passage from scripture from Matthew chapter 18. It's a famous passage. You probably read it before. Okay.

It's where St. Peter comes to Christ and asks him about forgiveness. And he basically says to him, Jesus, how often do I have to forgive my brother if he sins against me? And that's where he famously says, do I have to forgive him seven times? And Jesus says to him, okay, in verse 22, Matthew 18 22, I do not say to you seven times, but up to 70 times seven. So basically Peter's like, you know, Jesus, I'm a great guy. I'm very holy surrounded by these idiots and they keep hurting me, but I'm going to be a better man and I'm going to forgive them seven times. And Jesus is like, okay, get to seven, do that 10 more times and then come talk to me. All of a sudden, Peter's like, and then Jesus tells the parable. It's a parable that you've heard before. Okay. I'll just read it real quick. It's starting in verse 23. It says the kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. And when he had begun to settle accounts, one was brought to him who owed him 10,000 talents. But as he was not able to pay his master commanded that he be sold with his wife and children, all that he had that payment be made. So one servant, okay, one servant owes his master $10,000. Okay. We'll say that guy cannot pay it. So the guy says, okay, the servant falls before him and begs him saying, please, please, please, please, please cancel my debt.

Please, please, please, please. I beg you for mercy, please, please, please don't make me pay back the debt. I can't pay it. The master says, okay, master of the servant was moved to compassion released him and forgave the debt, forgave the debt. What do you know? Okay. Same day that servant meets another servant who owes him money. The servant went out and found one of his fellow servants who owed him 100 denarii. So let's say $100. So this guy was forgiven $10,000. Now a guy who owes him a hundred bucks. And he laid hands on him and took him by the throat saying, pay me what you owe. So his fellow servant fell down at his feet and begged him saying, have patience with me and I will pay you all.

Like what are the odds? Okay. The same day I walk out of the bank and they said, your loan is forgiven. Someone who owes me a loan comes and asks me file forgive his loan. I was forgiven 10,000. This guy owes me a hundred bucks should be a no brainer. But of course, you know how the story goes. The servant says he would not. He went and threw him into prison until he should pay all his debt. He said, no, you owe me, you owe me, you owe me, you owe me. And I'm not going to leave here until you pay me what you owe me. And he threw him in prison. Now the thing is when he threw him in prison, did he get his money?

No. Cause again, the guy can't repay the debt. The debt is never going to be repaid. It's just a matter of whether you forgive it or don't forgive it. But either way you ain't getting the money because he doesn't have it. The story goes on. So when his fellow servants saw what had been done, they were very grieved and came and told their master all that had been done. And his master, after he had called him, said to him, you wicked servant, I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you. And his master was angry and rightly so to be honest, he was angry and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him. He was angry and he said, how dare you, how dare you? I forgave you a $10,000.

You wouldn't forgive this guy $100. And then he comes to the final sentence in the parable, which is like, Jesus always had a way of like the zingers. Okay. He gives him a zinger. He says, so my heavenly father also will do to each of you. If from his heart does not forgive his brother, his trespasses. It says it very simple. He says, if you don't forgive, then that's what my heavenly father is going to do to you. Now in this story, okay, let's just, okay, and humor me. I know it's very, it's very obvious, but just humor me here. There's three characters, the master, the first servant, the second servant. The master obviously is God. The first servant is who? The first servant is anyone who has been forgiven a debt by God.

Okay. The first was the master. That's God. The second was someone who owed a debt to the master. Someone who owed a debt to God and was forgiven. So like, you know, raise your hand if you were forgiven a debt by God, like all of us raise our hands. The second servant, the last character is someone who owes a debt to someone who was forgiven a debt by God. Do you know that works? The first servant is someone who was forgiven a debt by God. The second servant is someone who owes a debt to someone who was forgiven a debt by God. In other words, it's the people that owe debts to us. The people that offend us, people that disrespect us, people that reject us, people that hurt us, people that abandoned us, people that forgot our birthdays, the people that owe us, the people that we look at them and say, you owe me. Jesus says very clear, I know they owe you. I'm telling you, cancel the debt from your heart. Cancel the debt. Let go. Move on. Not for their sake, for your sake, because you deserve better. You deserve to live free. And I'm telling you, I've said this to people who have gone through serious pains and serious hurts and some things that you would say to me, Father Anthony, you are being so insensitive. How dare you ask that person to forgive? Listen, listen very carefully. What I am saying and what Jesus is saying, I'm not saying you have to forgive or God is going to punish you. I'm not saying that. I'm saying you have to forgive or you are going to continue punishing yourself. God's laws, okay, like gravity. Gravity is not if you jump off the building, then I'm going to kill you.

Gravity is saying if you jump off the building, you're going to kill yourself. Okay. God's laws are the same way. That's why Jesus said in Matthew chapter six, verse 12 and verse 14 and 15, after he gave the Lord's prayer, he gave the entire Lord's prayer and he only went back and give commentary on one part of it, which is about forgiveness. Okay. Where he says, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, for if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men your trespasses, neither will your heavenly father forgive your trespasses. That's why I say it this way. Okay. Your cruelest enemy can't harm you as much as you can harm yourself. Your cruelest enemy can't harm you as much as you can harm yourself, both in this life and in the one to come. I always tell people your sin and the sins of the people who have sinned against you, your debt versus God and other people's debt versus you, like what you owe God and what others owe you. Those two, it's up to you what we do with them, but we're going to tie them together. So it's up to you. We can take both of those debts and we can throw them away. We can send them as far as the East is from the West. We can bury them in the deepest part of the ocean, then no one can ever get to them. We can do that or we can bring them out in the open and we can require payment. It's up to you, but the two have to be together. You can't say forgive me and not forgive them.

The two have to be together. Forgive us our trespasses is what you pray. As we forgive those who trespass against us, forgive me for the way I lie. Same way I forgave others when they lied to me. Forgive me when I may have gossiped the way I forgave others when they gossiped against me. And if you ain't forgiven others when they do those things against you, then I'm telling you it's probably better when you get to that part of the prayer. Keep your mouth shut because in the end you are asking God to forgive you as you have forgiven others. Now our time is up here so I'm going to open up for questions, but in case you wanted more on this in the handout, okay, I wrote the path to forgiveness and I gave four steps on actually what you would do to walk through the process. And those steps come from another message that I preached a long time ago called canceling the debt. And I put a link there in the handout. So if you want to go deeper into this topic, click that link and you will be able to listen to a message which I preached on that subject and give you step by step how you can actually go through this. But the bottom line as I wrote there on your handout, when you forgive, you in no way change the past, but you sure do change your future. When you forgive, you in no way change your past, but I promise you that you will change your future and that's why forgiveness is so important, okay? So with that said, I want to open it up for questions. I see a ton of questions up on this one here so I'm going to try to go through these quick, okay, and I see some in the chat and I also see some in the Q&A.

I'll start with the Q&A. Arson says with the marriage series, okay, I'll tell you what, I'll come back to the marriage one, okay, but we'll try to get to the forgiveness ones and I'll come back to the marriage ones. It says, before I had a hard time forgiving others and myself. After a lot of work today, I have an easier forgiving others, but I still have very hard times forgiving myself for things I've done in the past. Any suggestions, practices for self-forgiveness and finding grace? Yeah, I mean, my heart goes out to you, okay, learning to forgive yourself is a different topic. It wasn't necessarily the same, but it is essential and in fact, if you can't forgive yourself, you're probably not going to be able to forgive others because back to that parable, what should have allowed the servant to forgive his fellow servant was knowing that he had been forgiven. So my advice to you is to dwell on the grace of God and every time you open up your scriptures, okay, read the Bible every day and no matter what passage you read, I promise you from cover to cover of the Bible, you will see God saying, I forgive you, I forgive you. Whether it's the prodigal son, I forgive you, the Samaritan woman, I forgive you. Whether it's the Old Testament where God seems so harsh, but every single passage is God saying, you guys are the worst, you guys betrayed me, you guys adultery, but I forgive you, I'll give you another chance, I'll bring you back into my land. Every single page of the scripture is forgiveness.

Read it and insert yourself in the story. The other thing I'd tell you, Arson, is I'd go to confession, okay, because the easiest way to experience the forgiveness of God is to go and taste it, okay, that's what confession is all about and in fact, that's actually, you know, someone suggested that as a topic and I think we're going to make that our topic for next month's Ancient Faith Chat in November about the topic of confession and why it is we confess, but Arson, you just answered the question of why I need to go to confession, okay. All right, next question is from anonymous. How to fight doubt when it comes to the existence of God? I'll tell you what, I'm going to just do the forgiveness ones and I'll come back to the non-forgiveness ones. Amal asks, if I forgive but not forget, so how will my forgiveness be accepted before God? Because again, God knows that you're a human being. It's not possible, it's not possible to forget certain things. They're not the same thing, okay. If you betray me, I can't remove it from my mind that this happened, but what I can say is I'm not trying to collect the debt from you anymore. I let it go, I've moved on, okay, that's between you and God at that point. Now, back to the reconciliation, I may not trust you again with my secrets, okay, or I may not be able to, you know, have dinner with you again, but that doesn't mean that I can't forgive. Forgive means I let go, it's between me and God, not between me and the other person. Forgiveness you can do to the other person even if they're not, even if they're dead, okay, you can, you need to forgive even after they've died and moved on. Okay, Father Barsoom says, how can I force someone to forgive me?

That's a great question. You can't, you can't, you can't force someone to forgive you. All you can do is do your part and that's why St. Paul in Romans chapter 12 says, if it is at all possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men, but what he's saying there is sometimes it's not possible and sometimes like you did your part, but not everything depends on you, so you can't force someone to forgive you. What you can do is you can be sincere in your repentance in front of God, in front of them, and you can make restitution. I think of Zacchaeus here, Zacchaeus who was a tax collector in Luke chapter 19, was a very bad man and did all kinds of bad stuff. He didn't just go to the people and say, forgive me. He went and restored fourfold of what he had stolen, okay, so he went out of his way to say, I stole a dollar from you, I'll pay you back four dollars, okay, so, but in the end, as you said, Father, is that we can't convince anyone, we can't force anyone. Yusef says, I have a question, is there a way I can have the recording after the sermon talk to upload on my channel?

Absolutely, if you go to stsaministries.org, okay, you should be able to see the link to the past recordings there, and if not, if you can't find it, just go to stsaministries.org and hit like the contact button, shoot us an email and we'll send you the link, okay, all of these are recorded online on YouTube, help yourself. Nancy says, does forgiveness mean that you will treat this person as if nothing happened? No, but again, this goes back to the point of reconciling, maybe, maybe not, I can't say, some relationships, yes, you must reconcile with the person, and you must let go and you must move past it, other relationships, it's not wise to do so, okay, someone who is, again, abusive, that doesn't mean you're going to treat them as if nothing happened, okay, it means you're going to be guarded, you're going to be, you may never see this person again, okay, you may never, but that doesn't mean you can't, again, forgiveness is separate, forgiveness is you live on the moon, I live on an island, deserted island by myself, I need to forgive, even if I never see you ever, ever, ever again, okay, anonymous says, but can I still forgive but legally restore, for example, if I buy a house and there's damage or missing items, can I still sue to restore the lost as well, so forgive them, of course, okay, forgiveness doesn't mean not, not doing the right thing, okay, so if, if, yeah, I mean, if you buy a house and, you know, there's damage, then you go to the person you bought it from, but not forgiveness would mean doing it angrily, okay, and, and, and wanting to punish them or hurt them and get even with them, no, I just want what's right and what's right, so that's totally fine, of course, I'm going to go to the chat because I see there's a bunch there, I'll come back to these question answers, let me get these chat ones, so people, Nancy says, but I can't, so I already got that one, um, someone saying, I came in late, may have missed the packet handout link, I may, may get it, please, I'll put it in the chat again, there you go, um, so someone said, uh, the ancient faith chats playlist can be found on our online tab of stsamministries.org, we'll also email all of you the recording and the handout, okay, thank you so much, Susan, okay, good, back to these Q&A, uh, fey-ven or fee-ven, I'm sorry if I'm mispronouncing that, how do I forgive someone who's continually hurting me, they're basically kicking me when I'm already down, they don't want to have a conversation, so again, you deserve better, you deserve better than someone continually hurting you, so what I would say to you is two things, it sounds like this person who's hurting you is not going to be a good friend for you for going forward long term, so you probably need to accept that and move forward, secondly, the best way to accept that and move forward is to forgive them, so that I'm not saying move forward and, and, and, you know, anger and hostility and resentment and bitterness, because that's not moving forward, that's actually moving backwards, okay, because as I said there, if you remember, I put it in the handout, is that when you forgive, you're not changing your past, but you are changing your future, so I would think you've got to move on from this relationship, okay, and the best way to do so is to forgive, now with that said, okay, caveat, if this is like your spouse, I'm not saying move on from your spouse, okay, I'm not saying it like that, some relationships, you got to find a way to reconcile, you got to find a way to talk it out, but I'm, I'm, I guess I should have prefaced it by saying, assuming this is not like a brother, a sister, a father, a mother, someone that you live with, or something like that, so I always give general advice, more specific, go talk to your father of confession, spiritual father, do we have the ability to forget but not forgive? I never thought, I never heard that question, I mean, yeah, in the sense of things may have happened, yeah, okay, things may have happened to me that I don't even remember, but I didn't forgive, but that's because I probably was never like offended by it, because I don't remember it, so something happened to me, and it happens to me all the time, by the way, where someone's like, you know, this and this happened, and I'm sorry if I offended you, and I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about, so I forgot it, I never forgave it, I even I'll tell them, I'm like, I don't forgive you, because I don't remember what you're talking about, so if that's your question, then yeah, having a bad memory is a gift from God. Mira, after experiencing the love of God, how do I forgive myself? So that was what I said to the gentleman who asked earlier, is that two thoughts, one, read the scripture with the eye of God's forgiveness in every page, because I promise you it's there in every page, and then two, go to confession, because confession was given to us, confession was given, God knew, said these people are going to struggle to feel forgiveness, and they're going to mess up, and so you know what, I feel bad for them, so let me give them a way that they can experience my forgiveness the same way, okay, that Jesus on the cross, okay, was there, and he told the people, he prayed, said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do, we get to hear that voice every time we go to confession, okay, I just went to my own confession two weeks ago, so we get to hear that voice, so why do we not confess, I don't know, it's one of the great mysteries to me in this world, is why we confess so little, why we don't confess more often, it is a gift from God given entirely for our benefit, not for anyone else's benefit except our own, okay, you get to come in with all your sins, you do whatever it is that you want, well don't do whatever you want, but you know what I'm saying, you come in with whatever sin, you spend five minutes with a priest who has the worst memory, who's not going to even remember your name at the end of it, okay, he's not going to even remember your name, you sit with him for five minutes, and he says all your sins are forgiven, and we're like, but I'm busy, but it's hard, and it's, and I'm like, I don't get it, mystery to me, I don't get it, I don't get it, I don't get it, okay, next question that we got, oh someone's raising their hand, let's see how that works, okay, someone is raising their hand, and I am going to, I don't know how to do this, okay, here we go, who is raising their hand, okay, Naz is raising their hand, and I'm going to push this button, and then you're going to be able to talk, Naz, can you, are you there? Can you hear me? Yes, I can, wow, this worked out great, go ahead and ask your question. I wanted to just add something that I learned from some of my mental health training that will complement what you've been sharing, because a lot of this is cognitive, and one way in which we can move past, especially if there's been trauma, trauma gets stored on the right side of our brains, so that's the same place where meditation, prayer, creativity, and things like that are expressed, so aside from reading passages from scripture, a lot of the chanting that we do in church, any of the, you know, meditation offerings that we have can also be a way in which to dissolve or at least move through some of that trauma, so that they can get to some of the more cognitive methods that you're proposing. Wow, well that was extremely intelligent and knowledgeable, and thank you so much for sharing that, Naz, I really, really appreciate that. Thanks. Where are you from, Naz?

Like located right now in Vancouver. Vancouver, well thank you so much for tuning in, and thank you so much for sharing that knowledge, I appreciate it. Thank you. All right, God bless. Okay, now I'm going to, all right, as we had another hand, and that is from Amal. Amal, are you there, Amal? You are not there, Amal, that's okay. Oh, I did not see my hand. Oh, okay, well I'm sorry, the hand went up, but I guess it wasn't you, but thank you anyway, so I'm gonna remove wrap from you there. Okay, back to the questions that, time is flying here, okay, let me go quick through the rest of these. Someone says, I forgive so much to the degree that in hindsight I feel I have been passive and never set things right. I would say to you that again, you may, you never say I forgave too much, no such thing, because Jesus forgave too much, but maybe what you have, you've done the forgiving, but maybe what you haven't done is figuring out how to move forward in that relationship, okay, and maybe, you know, you're, you're allowing people to take advantage of you, but again, that's not the same as forgiveness, we got to separate those two. Next question, how can we forgive someone who hurt you so much, but you wouldn't see them again, I feel like I've answered that one, so I'll move on. The next question, we got lots of questions, forgiveness sometimes feels like the person will understand that it is as acceptance, can I really let the person know that it is wrong while showing them forgiveness? So again, forgiveness between me and God, I got to forgive. I may need to have a conversation with that person, I may need to be direct with them, I may need to have a hard conversation, that's all great, but I'm telling you, you do the forgiveness first, which is I'm not coming at you to get back at you, I'm not coming to get anything from you, I am coming to have the conversation in order to restore the relationship, okay, the conversation is to restore the relationship with one another, not to get back at you and to show you, you see the difference? Okay, like if I'm coming with my child who has done something wrong, I want to teach them, that's good, that's not bad, but I'm not coming to get to punish them and to get pain, I'm coming to teach them, it's like future focused versus past focused is how I would look at it, okay, it's corrective more than it is punitive, all right, all right, I'm gonna get one more question right here, how do I speak to you, someone says this might sound strange, I'm gonna finish with this one because this is a hard one, how can I forgive God? Example, taking away the life of a loved one, that's a great question, how can I forgive God? Let me tell you the first thing, is that whatever pain that you're feeling, you're saying I'm angry at God, the first thing, expressing that anger to God is a good thing, it's better than running away from God and what I guarantee you, I promise you, that when you express that anger to God and you come to God with your hurt, with your pain, with your why God, with your I can't God, like when you bring it to God, then God will help you find a solution to it and what God, think of it this way, if my kid right next door is angry, do I want them to talk to me or talk about me? I want them to talk to me, I want them to come to me and say, dad I'm angry at you and I'll say son or daughter, I understand and I feel your pain but this is why this happened and this is how this, this is why that what happened is going to end up leading to, like I don't know, I'm not trying to play God's role and explain why the life loss of a loved one, okay, but what I am saying is that we come to God and what we realize when we come to God is that he is good and he only does good things and that sometimes there's things that we just simply don't understand but with that said, that's why we do things like ancient faith chats, not that we will ever understand all of God but we're asking questions and trying to understand answers and hopefully those bring us closer to knowing God more deeply and intimately so thank you so much for tuning in tonight, it was a great discussion about forgiveness, if you missed any of it you can go on to our website stsaministries.org, stsaministries.org, you can check out past videos as well as this video as well as check out all the free resources, it's all free and available to anyone online for download and be sure to mark your calendar or sign up, I should say register for our next ancient faith chat which will be on November 16th if I'm not mistaken on the topic of why do I have to confess to a priest and as you could tell from earlier tonight I'm excited to share, all right, thanks so much for joining us guys have a good night and see you next month.