The Sunday mornings of my childhood had been blessed by the wondrous events of the life of Jesus Christ – unreal though they seemed. In later years, having burnt my bridges, while I found myself confronted with inner tensions and outer aggressions, excerpts from those sacred texts came back to me and I realized how spiritually significant they were, still potent and as relevant as ever. Concerning forgiveness, for example, let’s consider the startling prayer of Christ on the cross, addressing God: “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do”.

This statement is startling in more than one way. Injured, mocked, sneered at and finally crucified, Jesus is at the height of suffering and yet, devoid of anger and resentment, brimming with compassion. The emotional impact is enormous and compels veneration. It also upsets the established order – undermining the prevalent law of talion which legitimizes the impulse of revenge in response to the impulse of aggression – by opening the way to a revolutionary concept of justice rooted in rational enlightenment. Indeed, how can you reasonably hold a grudge against those who do not know what they do? The crowd, sheeplike as all crowds, taunting Jesus along the Way of the Cross – did they know what they were doing? Those who had conspired against him in order to get rid of a man they considered dangerous for the establishment, did they know what they were doing? Of course not. The teachings of Christ were too innovative, well beyond the confines of their knowledge and experience. So, how could they have known? How can a grudge be held against ignorance?

This is all very remarkable, you’re going to say, but what is it to us? We can’t make use of it ! Yes we can, I answer, we can definitely put it to good use.

“ … they know not what they do”: that was the reason put forward by Jesus for his plea. In our daily life, all the troubles we consider as offenses inflicted by the others are either deliberate, even premeditated, or unintentional.

Let us first deal with troubles caused unintentionally. Someone gets on my nerves, upsets me, or hurts my feelings, but not on purpose. I may think such a person thoughtless, tactless, or too impulsive etc., but I can’t hold them truly responsible for the suffering they caused me, because it was not intentional. They actually didn’t know what they were doing and it is reasonable, in such a case, to dissociate the agent of suffering from the suffering itself, which must be analyzed; for the very fact of being vulnerable to other people’s behavior points to some obscure zone or a weakness in our psyche that needs to be looked into. That’s when we shall find that the fault lies not with the presumed offender, but with the one who felt offended.

And what about the suffering inflicted consciously, either on the spur of the moment or with premeditation? What am I to do when I am faced with someone who deliberately wants to do me harm? In the first place, I must not allow my emotions to get the better of me, rather, I must try to understand. Throwing light on a situation makes it easier to put up with it. A careful review of what has just happened might enable me to detect that I myself have been partly responsible – directly or indirectly – for the spiteful behavior of my tormentor; in which case I have no better choice than to tell myself that I am reaping what I have sown, and try to set things right as best I can. It is even better if I realize that the person who acts impulsively, prompted by negative feelings towards the others, is the one who really suffers and causes more harm to himself, endangering his spiritual health as he is caught up in a dreadful, downward spiral of which he is unaware. This is the ignorance Christ referred to – I think – when he said: “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do”.

All things considered, at our level of average humanity, to react in a real-life situation to the aggressive behavior of someone, by reminding oneself: “he/she does not know what he/she is doing” has a sweeping effect. I have been through it and I have found that one ceases to hold a grudge against the others, and, better than that, something begins to blossom inside: the flower of compassion.

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