Biography
Fr. Patrick Brennan is Pastor of Holy Family Roman Catholic Church in Inverness, Illinois, a large and vibrant parish outside of Chicago. For thirteen years, Fr. Brennan was the Director of the Office of Evangelization for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, where he developed innovative renewal programs for local churches. He is an expert in the field of evangelization and church renewal and has acted as a consultant throughout the country. Fr. Brennan is a psychotherapist, author, and the host of a weekly radio program. His upcoming book is called The Way of Forgiveness. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]

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          and 30 Good Minutes.

"The Way of Forgiveness" 
Thirteen years ago, a policeman in New York City, Steven McDonald, tried to stop a robbery that was taking place in Central Park. He was shot by a fifteen-year-old teenager, Shavad Jones. From that day, thirteen years ago, Steven McDonald has not moved anything below his neck. He breathes through a breathing tube and spends much of his day in a wheelchair. He has taken on a new vocation, traveling to grade schools and high schools speaking about the need for forgiveness, and the need to practice non-violence in response to conflict and problems. He tells his listeners that he has forgiven Shavad Jones, that in fact he forgives him everyday, for everyday he must deal with the pain of his massive afflictions. He encourages children to sign a pledge of non-violence, a commitment on their part to not use aggression or hurt in their dealings with each other.

Shavad Jones was released from prison and, only several days after his release, was killed. Steven McDonald's third grade son, Connor, went to his teacher after he heard his father's assailant had been killed and asked the teacher if they could pray for the man who shot and crippled his dad. Obviously, Steven McDonald and his wife are doing something right with their son. They are teaching him reconciliation as a way of life.

As followers of Jesus Christ we have been taught by our teacher that sorrow, forgiveness, and reconciliation are absolute necessities for discipleship. We receive powerful teachings about sorrow, forgiveness, and reconciliation. In the 18th chapter of Matthew, Jesus gives the power to bind and loose to all of his followers, to the disciples in general. The power of binding and loosening was a rabbinic role, or power, in the Jewish community--the power and authority to interpret the moral code, the moral law, to speak on what is good and what is evil, to exclude and include members from the community based on morality. That places a tremendous responsibility on us as disciples: morality, conscience, reconciliation are no longer the work of one rabbi or the person holding the Petrine office in the church. Jesus wants all of His disciples to assume responsibility and leadership in morality, conscience, and reconciliation.

Matthew, chapter 18, suggests other things about reconciliation. Jesus teaches us that reconciliation is a process. I find it interesting that He tells us that if someone hurts us we are not to wait around for them to come and say that they are sorry; we are to take the initiative to go to that other person and point out the difficulty and try to begin the work of reconciliation. Jesus knows human nature well. If we wait around for someone else to take the lead in expressing sorrow to us, we run the risk of generating resentment, grudges, feelings of retaliation within ourselves. Jesus suggests that perhaps the first try at reconciling will not be effective. He suggests that sometimes this reconciliation work and process require the help of others. Sometimes in trying to work a process of reconciliation, Jesus suggests that the person who has hurt us will not want to reconcile. So often human beings want to hold onto their anger. We want to hold onto our resentment. We want to hold onto our feelings of being right. Jesus suggests in Matthew 18 that at times we have to accept limits in the reconciliation process. Or to put it another way, we must work the process of reconciliation but working the process does not insure there will be repair or even a return of the status quo of the relationship.

Matthew 18 is rich in its teachings. When Peter asks how many times he must forgive someone else, Jesus' response is "innumerable times." In the parable of the master who forgives one of his servant's debts, a servant who in turn will not forgive someone who is in debt to him, Jesus teaches us that God forgives us innumerable times and He expects us, in imitation of Him, to forgive each other innumerable times.

In Matthew 18, Jesus teaches us we must forgive from the heart. This forgiving from the heart really does mandate working a process. I sometimes feel that we are never done working the process of reconciliation. It takes time for our hearts to catch up with our words.

In talking about this process of reconciliation I may be talking as if it is something easy to do. If it were easy, more of us would do it with greater regularity. To reconcile and to forgive really requires the involvement of and dependence on a Higher Power. We cannot do it on our own. That certainly was the wisdom of Jesus when he encouraged us to pray for enemies and when he himself prayed for his crucifiers from the cross.

At a recent gathering at our parish of folks who have been away from the church, someone anonymously asked "What is the value of the Sacrament of Reconciliation? What is the value of engaging in a liturgical rite of reconciliation?" I said that the Sacrament of Reconciliation, in the Catholic tradition, mediates to us, or reminds us, of an existential fact that God's power is love and mercy and He extends that power to us over and over again--innumerable--times in the face of our sin. The ritual reminds me and helps me to remind others of this deep truth of the Good News of Jesus Christ. But I also said the Sacrament of Reconciliation can indeed be very empty. It can be rendered hocus-pocus activity if it is not joined to real-life reconciliation between us and other people. The Sacrament, the ritual, needs to celebrate that reconciliation is really going on in our lives.

I would like to make the notion of real life reconciliation very practical. I would like to list some steps that I think are crucial in moving towards the words, I am sorry, if I have hurt someone, and some steps in moving towards the words, I forgive you, if we have been offended or hurt.

I would like to explore, first, the steps of moving toward the expression of sorrow. I think we need to take a different kind of moral inventory each day. In the spirit of trying to live out Jesus' commands to love God, neighbor and self, I think we need to make a daily practice of asking the question, perhaps at the end of the day, who might I have hurt today by omission or commission? Sometimes we do not have to wait for a posture or time of inventory. Sometimes we know on the spot if we have hurt someone and our words of sorrow should follow quickly. But if we are trying to work reconciliation as a life-long process, I think we ought to take time each day to ask the question, whom might I have hurt?

Step One is to make a list of those people in our own mind and hearts.

Step Two is to try to practice empathy, to feel with them. How might I have made that person feel today? Did I wound his/her self-image? Did I rob him or her of self-confidence? Did I offend him or her by making them feel not important?

Step Three is to make a decision to work the process of repentance/reconciliation.

Step Four is to turn to God in prayer and pray for the grace to repent, to be contrite. I am suggesting that deciding to express sorrow and praying are interwoven. The decision needs prayer. An additional step might be to rehearse how we will approach the other person and what we will say--as the Prodigal Son rehearsed in preparation to return to his father. This leads to the next step, somehow connecting with the one hurt, whether it is a face to face encounter, a phone call, or a note.

Step Five, if I am in the presence of the one hurt, is to suggest that we pray together--pray for the ability to reconcile with each other.

Step Six, then is, humbly asking for forgiveness. Sometimes in asking for forgiveness we might run the risk of rationalizing, euphemizing, trying to make what we did or did not do, not as bad as it was. In a true spirit of humility, we should simply name the behavior or the omission and ask for forgiveness. If the person is open in spirit, open to the grace of God that is flowing through such an encounter, perhaps the person will say "I forgive you." When we are forgiven we are released from the prison of guilt and shame.

Step Seven is certainly a step that is very important: to return to prayer, either with the person, or, after the encounter, alone, to praise God that we have been allowed to share in Christ's victory over sin, aggression, power, and hurt.

Step Eight, the final step, is this: many folks speak of the phenomenon of forgiving and forgetting. I always teach to forgive, say you are sorry, and don't forget. Reconcile and remember--remember and learn. In this step we may ask questions like, Why did I engage in this kind of behavior? Why did I hurt that person? How can I avoid doing that again? Whom else should I go to and ask for forgiveness? Practicing these steps can lead us to living in an ongoing mode of joy and peace because we are people who are willing to express sorrow.

The steps of forgiving are quite similar to those of expressing sorrow.

I think Step One, when we have been hurt, is to listen to ourselves--to listen to the hurt within. And as we listen, secondly, to grow in congruency with ourselves and to grow in accuracy in naming our pain. What hurts? How does it hurt? Why do we hurt? Why does it hurt so much? Why are we so explosive with anger or rage or judgment?

Step Two is to make that decision to forgive. And related to it is the step of wedding that decision to prayer, for as we saw in the previous material, it is prayer that energizes the decision.

Step Three is actually lifting up in prayer those that have hurt us, engaging in that enemy love that Jesus teaches--prayer for enemies that begins to shift our perspective on the person that we are angry with or the person that has hurt us.

Step Four is to receive the person that may be coming to us for forgiveness, to create an environment of hospitality and welcome. This is very difficult to do. At this point we may very well feel like engaging in passive aggression or active aggression, retaliating, getting even, hurting back. The need for prayer is quite evident in creating an environment of hospitality for the person that has hurt us. It is like trying to play the part of the father in the Prodigal Son story. In fact, the Prodigal Son story is a good example for us. I am sure the father had to rehearse a hospitable welcome for his son. There is a step in the process in which we have to rehearse, prepare for welcoming and receiving someone seeking our forgiveness.

If the process is working well, we reach Step Five: we find it within ourselves to say to another person, I forgive you. In the forgiving we release another person from shame and guilt. We release ourselves from anger and resentment.

Step Six is to return to prayer, celebrating our share in the victory of Christ over sin and aggression, prayerfully celebrating the new freedom the other person and we are experiencing.

And finally, Step Seven is the important "forgiving but not forgetting" step. We should forgive another person and remember. We should ask ourselves why this whole experience has hurt us so much. What does it say about us? We should ask questions like, Whom else should we be forgiving? And, To whom should we be going to express sorrow? I guess another way of explaining this step is to deepen the experience of reconciliation. We must try to work this process with humility, integrity and prayerfulness when no one comes, when there is not a prodigal son, if you will, who comes seeking forgiveness.

I think the essence of the steps that I have shared can be worked in other situations of anger, resentment and hurt. I think the essence of these steps needs to be practiced with people who have died, people that we need to express words of sorrow to, or people that we need to forgive who have hurt us. I think these steps need to be used sometimes in forgiving ourselves.

Many of us have issues with people from family of origin that require reconciliation. Some people have the need to forgive someone who has been emotionally or physically abusive. Some of us have the need to forgive institutions and systems like the church, or companies that have fired us or let us go. Some people need to forgive someone who has been grossly unloving and abusive through emotional and/or physical infidelity, especially in spousal relationships. There are some racial or ethnic groups that need to engage in this process around hurt that is lodged in shared historical memory.

The more I study and pray about sorrow, forgiveness, and reconciliation the more I am convinced that this is core Jesus, core Reign of God material. I feel if more of us lived these steps as a way of life we would nudge sin, hurt, and aggression out of our world and help God's Reign to emerge in our world.

Interview with Patrick Brennan
Interviewed by Lydia Talbot

Lydia Talbot: A powerful statement on forgiveness, Patrick. How did writing the book unleash feelings in you personally?

Patrick Brennan: I got in touch with my own radical need to forgive people from the past and people in the present. I was writing the book at the time of many of the shootings in our country, in schools and public places. I just became more and more convinced that we are an angry, violent nation, and the key to ceasing or stopping some of this is to teach people the simple skills of forgiving--of letting go, of expressing sorrow--and the simple skills to connect again.

Talbot: What happens when there is no remorse?

Brennan: I think there is no remorse often because we are developing into a sociopathic culture in which we are desensitized to sin. This will abound more.

Talbot: But there is always hope, hope for that unconditional forgiveness.

Brennan: Which always comes from God.

Talbot: Thank you so much, Father Patrick Brennan.