Forgiveness is a complex subject, way too long to pursue in any depth in this short meditation. Whole books have been written about how to forgive, why to forgive, whom to forgive, when to forgive. My focus today is on the source of true forgiveness, “from your heart,” Jesus tells Peter. Just going through the motions, letting forgiveness be a head exercise won’t work. We can say, or think, “I forgive you,” seventy seven times or even seventy times seven (KJV), but if it doesn’t come from our heart, we are no better off than when we started the process. As long as our forgiveness doesn’t come from our heart, from the very center of our being, we remain bound up in our unforgiveness.

Forgiving from the heart doesn’t come easily to us. It somehow seems easier to hold onto our negative feelings against the offender, to rationalize our unforgiveness as righteous in our particular circumstances. When, however, we finally get to the place where we recognize that the grudge isn’t going away on its own, and in fact, keeps on growing, when we are at last ready to let it go and move on with our life, God reaches into our hearts with his transforming grace and lights a spark of forgiveness that enables us to release those bonds of unforgiveness so that we can forgive from our hearts.

Forgiving from the heart frees us from the burden of our anger, bitterness, resentment that we have been carrying around like a millstone around our necks. When we are no longer weighed down by all those negative thoughts and feelings, we are ready for reconciliation: reconciliation with God from whom we have been hiding in our unforgiveness, reconciliation with our brothers and sisters with whom we have been in conflict, and reconciliation with our true selves whom we have been avoiding.