At the age of five, Julian’s parents divorced. His father was the legendary John Lennon, the Beatles star who left his first wife Cynthia Powell for Yoko Ono. As Julian grew up he strongly felt abandoned by his dad and it took years to overcome his resentment towards him.

But God has his ways and the moment of grace came when he least expected it. As Julian, now a renowned musician was writing a song about his childhood friend Lucy Vodden – who inspired Lennon’s Beatles classic ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ his heart was transformed with a mystical outpouring of compassion. In his own words “It wasn’t until the writing of this song that I really forgave my dad. I realised if I continued to feel that anger and bitterness towards him, I would have a hanging cloud over my head. Writing this song allowed me to embrace dad and the Beatles.”

All of us, at some point in our lives, have been hurt and wounded by the actions or words of another driving us to the point where we declare ‘There is no way I can forgive this!’ Sometimes the grievances have been so great that resentment and hostility, if not revenge, settle within our inner being making it more difficult to forgive. We feel we have a right to our indignation and perceive forgiveness as a surrender or defeat. Yet, forgiveness is the key to healing bringing peace to our soul and harmony to our life.

Catherine Ponder, one of America’s foremost inspirational authors asserts that when we hold resentment toward another, we are bound to that person by an emotional link that is stronger than steel and forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and break free. Dr Roberto Assagioli, a psychologist and founder of psycho-synthesis, an advanced psychotherapeutic approach that helps us to realise our creative potential and improve the quality of all our relationships, simply put it this way ‘Without forgiveness life is governed by an endless cycle of resentment and retaliation.’ Even within the medical field, studies have shown the serious mental, emotional and physical consequences of an unforgiving heart.

But what does it mean to forgive and forget? Is it humanly possible and if it weren’t, has God demanded of us an impossible task? Can we selectively delete hurtful events from our memory? Does forgiveness imply lack of justice to the offender or culprit?

Let’s clear the way for misconceptions. To forgive does not imply pardoning the offender of any deserved punishment. In the words of John Paul II ‘It is obvious that such a generous requirement of forgiveness does not cancel out the objective requirement to justice.’ (Dives in misericordia,) On the other hand, to forget does not mean to make ourselves unable to remember that a person has ever offended us. That would certainly sound naïve. To forget means to intentionally disregard the offense as to choose not to mention or hold it against the person instead of harbouring the memory to use as ammunition when conflicts arise, particularly in close relationships.

Forgiveness is an act of the will, something which cannot be rushed through, but a process, often a painful one. Forgiveness is the will to open up our wounds to Divine healing, to surrender our own incapability to forgive to God’s grace who desires to cleanse our hearts and souls from the poison of resentment and bitterness. Forgiveness takes its time. We are not robots which can be re-programmed at the push of a button. People hurt us because we live in a fallen world by our heritage and humanity. We often hurt others through our own fragility, in judgement, in speech and in action. We constantly need forgiveness as much as we need to forgive ‘those who have trespassed against us’, not purely out of a religious conviction, but as the highest and most beautiful form of love.

And if we are struggling to forgive, let us recall that in the midst of excruciating pain, after having been beaten and tortured, one man, the Son of God, who was without sin and deserved no punishment, paid the price for all our iniquities, crying out to His Father, ‘Forgive them, for they do not know what they do’ And as much as Christ was resurrected and glorified, we too, after the painful process of forgiveness will receive abundant peace and an inner joy and freedom that cannot be put down in words. It is the joy of having loved.

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

(THIS ARTICLE WAS PUBLISHED IN PINK MAGAZINE IN JULY 2011. AUTHOR GORDON P VASSALLO)