Forgiveness

Heine, in a tone of contempt, said "God's job is to forgive". Let us not forget who he was: an atheist; so on his language: "trade" is equivalent to any profession: by profession Jesus ... forgives.

For the Church that possesses the Spirit of Jesus, it has another meaning: the same given by Jesus to his attitude.

That is to say: create a new creature. This is emphasized, for example, in the personal encounter of the master with Peter after the resurrection.

The time had come to fix that rotten business of denial. There had already been a meeting in the courtyard of the high priest after his arrest; but then Jesus could not stop. Just a glance, and it was enough to open a phenomenon that will last until the end of the life of the apostle: the crying.

After the resurrection Jesus wants to clarify the matter, and here is the face to face with the apostle. Peter was to be the "rock", the foundation for the new community created by Jesus, and instead fell painfully in front of a little woman, denying the Master.

Why does Jesus present himself to the apostle? Perhaps to withdraw the promise? None of this.

I did not come to judge you. I no longer remember your cowardice. It's me who comes back to you first, after what you've done. And I return to you only to ask you if you still love me, if your remorse, which is certainly great, has not destroyed in you the friendship that united us. If the feeling of guilt you feel towards me has by no means dried up in you the source of love.

I do not even say that I forgive you, like those who have nailed me to the cross; those did not love me; or rather, they did not understand that I loved them. But to you that you loved me, that you shared my daily existence, I ask you only if you still love me, if these dramatic days of my passion have not killed love in you. I only ask you this. Because this is the essential. It is the only one necessary for your happiness and your glory".

From all this we see Jesus going much further than a simple forgiveness and even a simple reproach.

Forgiveness destroys: reproach makes present; the first turns away from sin: the second calls him back. With the reproach one blames a fault that belongs to the past. Jesus does not reproach us with forgiveness; that is, it confronts the future, our possibilities and not our shortcomings.

The reproach ends up by folding the individual over his own sin. With the forgiveness Jesus makes us get out of sin, the rebuke of often is sterile. Forgiveness which is an offering of love is always creative.

With the reproach proves to know a person and his faults. Jesus, however, with forgiveness does not know us, does not want to know how we are, but how we must be, that is, different. The reproach forces us to look back. Forgiveness obliges us to look forward. For him, the past is closed. He takes it away, definitely. It's not that it keeps it hidden, maybe to reproach it at the right time. Jesus gives us the future. This delivery explains the motive of intentions, the leap forward to grasp a better good than the present.

At that moment Jesus tells us "now it goes ... I entrust you the future". Forgiveness rather than settling an account with the past, opens one with the future.
Falling produces discouragement, especially when repeated.
For Jesus, man, even after a thousand falls, always has the ability to recover and start all over again.
Man resembles God the creator of ever new things.