Lenten Reflections on Forgiveness*
Each week we will provide some quotations and Bible passages. Choose one and use the process below to prayerfully reflect on it. Throughout the week you can reflect on the other quotations/passages or keep coming back to the same one.
Take several deep breaths to slow yourself down and help you move from your day’s agenda to this time with God.
Prayerfully ask for guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Read the text slowly, a few words at a time, pausing attentively, noticing what stands out to you and what emotions are evoked.
Read the text two more times in the same manner, pausing between each reading to allow time for the words to resonate. Pay attention to any “nudgings” you sense from the Holy Spirit. You may wish to note your thoughts in a journal.
End your time of reflection with a prayer of gratitude.
Week 2 – Quotations and Passages
I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise, it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him. (C.S. Lewis)
We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. (Martin Luther King, Jr.)
If the unity of Christians in One Body makes the Church a sign of God in the world, and if men [and women] tend unfortunately to conflict and division by reason of their weakness, selfishness and sin, then the will to reconciliation and pardon is necessary if the Church is to make God visible in the world. Nor can this pardon, this communion in forgiveness, remain interior and invisible. It must be clearly manifest. So the mystery of the Church demands that Christians love one another in a visible and concrete way... Christ will not be visible to the world in His Church except in proportion as Christians seek peace and unity with one another and with all [humanity]. But since conflict is inevitable, unity cannot be maintained except in great difficulty, with constantly renewed sacrifice, with lucid honesty, openness, humility, the readiness to ask forgiveness and to forgive. (Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude)
He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (Colossian 1:13-14)
Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. (Matthew 5:7)
* Thank you to Jenny Maseredjian from LCPC’s Contemplative Ministries Team for helping provide this reflection exercise and quotations.
