Suffering, betrayal and nastiness are not forgiven through our own willpower, argues Patrick Gormally. A retired university professor and Head of Department of Romance Languages at the National University of Ireland, he is now a volunteer Catholic Prison Chaplain in France.
The role of the prison chaplain is to listen to the prisoners regardless of the crime that has put them behind bars. Paradoxical though it may seem, they frequently have difficulty in forgiving others: traitors, prison staff, magistrates, journalists.
The chaplaincy is one of the few places inside where they do not feel judged. In the words of one prisoner quoted recently in Le Monde: You are really alone in the cell, the only one who is always available is him, God. Therefore, when the Rev’d Dr Hugh Kempster quoted Henri Nouwen in his reflection for Living Water on 19 August 2021, that “We need to forgive and be forgiven ‘every day, every hour – unceasingly’”, I was reminded of the prisoners and of how French writers of Christian inspiration treat forgiveness, and how they illustrate that love continues following betrayal or disappointment, without expectation of return, simply because that is the way God’s grace touches us.
John’s Gospel (Ch.6: 60-69) recounts the abandonment and betrayal of Jesus by those closest to him. “For Jesus had known from the beginning which of them did not believe and who would betray him.” A prisoner once explained in the discussion during Sunday Worship that Judas had actively helped Jesus in his mission and was therefore innocent of any wrongdoing; to which a fellow prisoner pointed out that Judas was a free agent and had done so for money, not out of a desire to help. The jury is still out on how Jesus continued to love Judas. When Jesus adds “that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them”, we are told that “many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.” C’est compliqué, as we say in France when faced with a situation which is painful in itself and which it is doubly painful to talk about.
How then is it possible to visualise the light of Christ’s love flowing into us and the person we’re trying to forgive, and grace transforming us both? Whatever the answer, it is not willpower; forgiveness is not in our gift, we are at best the conduit through which God's forgiveness touches others, without merit on our part.
French literature has long been concerned with spiritual matters. The Journal of a Country Priest (1936) by Georges Bernanos, voted one of the best French novels in the 20th century, illustrates the struggle between blaming God and accepting divine grace. The young, inexperienced and socially awkward Curé d’Ambricourt, a true disciple of Jesus Christ, whose love of his fellow human beings he shares, is confronted unexpectedly with the true nature of the local countess’s anger with God whom she blames for the loss of her baby son.
That scene sprang to mind recently during an exchange witnessed in the park between the grandmother of a severely mentally disabled three year old boy called Martin and a bystander to whom she unburdened her woes and her anger with God. The stranger listened quietly and then suggested that Martin needed his grandmother’s love more than all the medical care available. "Of course," she said "he adores us!" He suggested that the reason for her own mortal existence was for her to care for Martin. Her tears dried; an angel passed by, as they say in France. To forgive is to open the gates of divine grace.
In 1975 the Breton writer-priest Jean Sulivan (1913-1980) published the novella, Fidèle Félix ("Faithful Felix"). Félix becomes a priest by the will of his mother and marries Sabine, a nymphomaniac intellectual, to whom he remains married and faithful throughout. Aspects of the first person short story recall Sulivan’s account of his childhood in Devance tout adieu (Anticipate Every Farewell, 2000), but with an additional edge. A story of pain, violence and pressure, Fidèle Félix expresses a frankness, sincerity and audacity which simultaneously surprise and shock.
The narrator pulls no punches, describes Félix’s distress, embarrassment and powerlessness, and much to the surprise of others, his incapacity to judge Sabine’s hysterical behaviour.
Sulivan avoids both moralism and the binary opposition of faith-atheism. In the face of deceit and nastiness, Félix comes across as a human being out of the ordinary who struggles for survival, not salvation. Despite the torpor and Sabine’s mental illness, also reminiscent of Bernanos, his accompaniment of a fellow human being remains intact and leads not to fear or condemnation, but to grace.
Félix concludes that “a tough durable joy is possible”, an amour fou durable, "enduring total love", and he experiences a feeling of lightness at the end, the sign of an authentic spiritual experience.
Laurence Freeman OSB, Director of the World Community for Christian Meditation, writes that forgiveness, far from emanating from the victim’s "high moral ground"[1], begins, as in the case of Félix, in "facing the worst with truthfulness"; and grace, once released, leaves us feeling “that we are better than we were before, better and bigger." And, as in meditation, "forgiveness is released in us rather than bestowed by us ...", an insight which explains Felix’s unusual relationship with Sabine and his feeling of lightness.
Prisoners, like Félix, know that they must first forgive themselves and then discover that "Forgiveness … immerses us in the divine present"; it "restores peace and renews life." In the inner silence of the soul, in the prison cell and in a poisoned relationship, grace is possible.
Patrick and his wife Marie-Cécile live in New Aquitaine, southwestern France.
[1]Christian Meditation Newsletter, International edition, vol. 34, no. 3 October 2010, p. 3-6.