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I was worried. I had just been assigned to be housemother for the women guests. I’ve gotten better, but I had at that time, a tendency to speak without thinking, to put my foot in my mouth. Mostly it was me that this made problems for, but sometimes, too, I hurt someone else. I didn’t want to hurt the guests.
When I told this to my spiritual director, he simply said, “If you say something wrong, apologize.”
Sure enough, one Sunday morning before Mass, shortly after I began my new job, I did it: I said something I shouldn’t to a guest.
Pretty quickly, I realized I had hurt her. I looked for her in order to apologize, but she had already left the dorm.
When I went to the chapel for Mass and looked for her, she was not there. Oh, no!
She walked in a few minutes after Mass began, and it was obvious she had been crying. I felt terrible.
Immediately after Mass, I went to her and said, “I’m so sorry. I should not have said that. Will you forgive me?”
She looked surprised, a bit startled actually; then she said, “Yes. Yes. I forgive you.”
Things were all right between us after that—actually they were quite good. When she was about to leave a week later, I asked her what was the biggest grace she had received while she was here.
She said, “When you apologized to me. No one in my family ever apologizes. Now I know that things can be fixed.”
Paulette Curran
What happens when you are wounded by someone and that person doesn’t ask for forgiveness? And what if you can’t bring yourself to forgive that person and yet don’t want to harbor the hurt forever?
There are times when one is just too raw and the wound too deep, and forgiveness seems impossible.
I was on staff at a Madonna House mission house, and I was not doing very well. Wounds from my past were surfacing, and at the same time, I was expected to carry out my responsibilities.
I couldn’t do it, and I felt like I was being crushed. I felt I was being judged rather than understood, and I finally asked to be transferred from that house.
For years, I couldn’t even be in the same room with the others involved, and keeping a distance between us was the most viable solution.
But then one day, I received a letter from the person that had given me the greatest difficulty. She wrote saying that she was sorry and asked if I would forgive her for the ways she had hurt me. Could we move on together as sisters?
To say I was surprised would be putting it mildly, but her apology opened my heart and suddenly I could forgive. I said, “Yes, I forgive you. Let’s move on.”
Janine Gobeil
One of my Madonna House sisters had died. Let’s call her “Susan,” not her real name. As always, when someone dies, for a little while, that person comes up a lot in conversations.
Whenever someone said that Susan had been kind or generous or shared a memory of an incident of that, I reacted inside. I felt, “She didn’t live with her in a small house as I did. She doesn’t realize how controlling Susan was.”
Yes, I felt that, even though I knew that Susan was, in truth, also kind and generous, and I was aware of other good qualities in her as well.
Memories kept surfacing, mostly memories of times when I felt rejected by Susan because I disagreed with something she said or I wasn’t doing things the way she wanted. (This had nothing to do with obedience; Susan was not my director.)
Even though I had good memories of her as well, these were the ones that kept coming to mind.
Why, I kept asking myself, and it was a few days before the answer came.
Suddenly, I realized that even though it was many years since Susan and I had lived together, I had not forgiven her. And I had not been aware of that.
This was not a case of reconciliation; Susan was dead. But I knew I had to forgive her.
This was not as easy as it might seem. I had to struggle and pray, and pray for her, until, one day, I was able to forgive her.
a staff worker
