Forgiveness . . .

From time to time I receive emails from Sister Anastasia that I really want to share with people. Sometimes because they make me smile, and sometimes because they move me to tears. This time, it is the latter. It is quite a long post but worth reading, I think. It really made me realise what true forgiveness is all about.

A STORY ABOUT FORGIVENESS –
FROM THE BOOK "CALL ME DAVID" THE MEMOIRS OF BISHOP DAVID CREMIN.

The story is one of Nelson Mandela's from “The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission”.

A frail black woman stands slowly to her feet. She is over seventy years of age. Facing her across the court room are several white security officers, one of whom, Mr. Van de Broek, has just been tried and found implicated in the murders of both the woman's son and husband some years before.

It was indeed Mr Van de Broek, it has been established, who had come into the woman's home many years back, had taken her son, shot him at point-blank range and then burned the young man's body on a fire while he and his officers held a party. Seven years later Van de Broek and his cohorts had returned to take away her husband as well. For many months she heard nothing of his whereabouts. Then almost two years after her husband's disappearance, Van de Broek came back to fetch the woman herself. How vividly she remembers that evening, going to a place beside a river, where she was shown her husband, bound and beaten but still strong in spirit, lying on a pile of wood. The last words she heard from his lips, as the officer poured gasoline over his body and set him aflame, were `Father, forgive them.'

And now the woman stands in the courtroom and listens to the confession offered by Mr. Van de Broek. A member of the commission turns to her and asks, `So, what do you want? How can justice be done to this man who has so brutally destroyed your family?'

‘I want three things” began the woman, calmly but confidently. `I want first to be taken to the place where my husband's body was burned so that I can gather the dust and give his remains a decent burial.' She pauses, then continues, `My husband and son were my only family. I want secondly, therefore, for Mr Van de Broek to become my son. I would like him to come twice a month to the ghetto and spend time with me so that I can pour out on him whatever love I have remaining within me.

'And finally,' she says, `I want a third thing. I would like Mr. Van de Broek to know that I offer him my forgiveness because Jesus Christ died to forgive. This was also the wish of my husband. And so, I would kindly ask someone to come to my side and lead me across the courtroom so that I can take Mr. Van de Broek in my arms, embrace him and let him know he is truly forgiven.

As the court assistant comes to lead the elderly woman across the room, Mr Van de Broek, overwhelmed by what he has just heard, faints. And as he does, those in the courtroom - friends, family and neighbours, who were all victims of decades of oppression and injustice - begin to sing softly the great hymn, `Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me...'

(Author of "Call Me David" is John McSweeney).