Quotes about Forgiveness

Just as we care for our bodies with good food and rest, so we must also care for our spiritual selves, that part of us that is connected to God. If we are spiritually ill, our bodies and minds also become sick. This is why regular prayer and times of silent contemplation are necessary parts of our daily lives. Periodically, we must also take extra measures of self-examination and learning, that we might be ever-perfected in the grace of the infinite and perfect God.

Search your hearts and minds for the spiritual wounds of unforgiveness and fear, which are atheistic and unchristian, and repent of them so that you might be healed by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Your Father in Christ,
Bishop JOSEPHhttp://www.antiochianladiocese.org/

"When a man begins to perceive the love of God in all its richness, he begins also to love his neighbor with spiritual perception.  This is the love of which all the scriptures speak.  Friendship after the flesh is very easily destroyed on some slight pretext, since it is not held firm by spiritual perception.  But when a person is spiritually awakened, even if something irritates him, the bond of love is not dissolved; rekindling himself with warmth of the love of God, he quickly recovers himself and with great joy seeks his neighbor's love, even though he has been gravely wronged or insulted by him.  For sweetness of God completely consumes the bitterness of the quarrel."

Saint Diadochos of Photiki

Through forgiveness, which essentially means recognizing the insubstantiality of the past and allowing the present moment to be as it is, the miracle of transformation happens not only within but also without.

Perhaps the greatest charity comes when we are kind to each other, when we don't judge or categorize someone else, when we simply give each other the benefit of the doubt or remain quiet. Charity is accepting someone's differences, weaknesses, and shortcomings; having patience with someone who has let us down; or resisting the impulse to become offended when someone doesn't handle something the way we might have hoped. Charity is refusing to take advantage of another's weakness and being willing to forgive someone who has hurt us. Charity is expecting the best of each other.

The healing of our present woundedness may lie in recognizing and reclaiming the capacity we have to heal each other, the enormous power in the simplest of human relationships: the strength of a touch, the blessing of forgiveness, the grace of someone else taking you just as you are and finding in you an unsuspected goodness. Everyone alive has suffered. It is the wisdom gained from our wounds and from our own experiences of suffering that makes us able to heal. Becoming expert has turned out to be less important than remembering and trusting the wholeness in myself and everyone else. Expertise cures, but wounded people can best be healed by other wounded people. Only other wounded people can understand what is needed, for the healing of suffering is compassion, not expertise.

We will only begin to forgive when we can look upon the wrongdoers as ourselves, neither better nor worse. We need to remember that we coexist as mortals in the world, together, the wronged and the wrongdoer, and that, in our common humanity, the situation could readily be reversed.

Divine love does not merely forgive wrong;  but it absorbs and actually destroys it

families are built upon tolerance, patience and forgiveness

Where there is no accusation of “fault," there can be no anger.

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.

I am responsible for what I see.
I can elect to change all thoughts that hurt.
I could see peace instead of THIS.
The past is over - it can touch me not.
This instant is the only time there is.
Today I will judge nothing that occurs.
I am not the victim of the world I see.
I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts.
I am determined to see things differently.
I am never upset for the reason I think.
Forgiveness is the key to happiness.

All that I give I give to myself.

Life is perfect as it was or is.  Our option to use free will exists only in the moment and never in what has passed.  True healing gives us a more gentle viewpoint of where we have been.

If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, "I repent," forgive him.

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

"Forgiveness is greater than vengeance.  Compassion more powerful than anger."

With this guage, let all be measured: "Is this an act of love?"

Ask someone to give a description of the personality type which he finds most despicable, most unbearable and hateful, and most impossible to get along with, and he will produce a description of his own repressed characteristics-a self-description which is utterly unconscious and which therefore always and everywhere tortures him as he receives its effect from the other person. These very qualities are so unacceptable to him precisely because they represent his own repressed side; only that which we cannot accept within ourselves do we find impossible to live with in others. Negative qualities which do not bother us so excessively, which we find relatively easy to forgive-if we have to forgive them at all-are not likely to pertain to our shadow.

Only through Absolution will we reach the Absolute.

"Forgiveness is the sweet scent the violet sheds on the heel that crushed it."

when you don't forgive someone you give them the strength, when you forgive them you keep the strength

To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover the prisoner was you.

Write the bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble.

Butter up your boss, not your roll.

All is forgiven, move on.

Forgiveness means giving up all hope of a better past.

-Landrum Bolling

The following is a verse from Haven Trevino's "Tao of Healing"

Quiet the mind

Be still

And watch the breath of God

Rise and fall

In all things.

Allow God's breath

To be your breath;

Allow God's nature

To be your nature.

The nature of God

Is to love and be loved;

Your desire to love creates intention,

Intention focuses attention,

Attention illuminates understanding,

Understanding manifests forgiveness,

Forgiveness is the fountainhead of Love.

Intend to be Love

And know death for what it is:

The inbreath of God.

Or you think you are always gentle, yet look at how viciously the world strikes at you nonetheless! This idea of your victimization is merely cynicism turned inside out and made more impenetrable to insight. You are clever enough to disguise your addiction to gloom in protests of innocence. The good news is that you may never be effectively challenged by others about this routine; few friends have enough wisdom and chutzpah at the same time. The bad news is that you will probably never walk your way to forgiveness in sensible steps. You will have to leap your own well-built defenses, disowning your morbid vanity in mid-flight.

Forgiveness feels most dramatic when some ancient pattern of self-punishment collapses in a torrent of tears. But it is just as effective when practiced daily in tiny doses - relinquishing a pointless worry, getting wise to a self-destructive habit, serving notice on a cruel notion about yourself that has previously seemed justified. The beginning of forgiveness is alertness to false ideas.

A rage of frustration boiled over and you struck, changing your life and someone else's forever. There is an insult or injury you dealt that cannot be taken back or dismissed. This seems to be proof of your sinfulness, the personal stain that won't ever wash out. In fact it is the dye of your initiation into a more serious life. If you continue to live on automatic you will do more damage. You must now learn to pay profound attention to your inner workings, which mirror the workings of the world at large. You must become an eminently practical, everyday philosopher of pain and redemption, changing your habits and exemplifying change for others as you go along. This is the work you chose for yourself when you attacked. It only begins with apologies and recompense.

How to forgive a murderer? First, by differentiating his sufferings from his exploitation of death to ease them. For his sufferings - greed, jealousy, frustration - he will need reeducation, support and, compassion. For our outrage about murder, we need to examine deeply our faith in death. As long as we collectively believe that death has power over life, we will spawn deluded, self-appointed little gods who want that power.