Do You Really Forgive Others Without Resentment?

Or do you keep remembering the past and wanting revenge?

It is difficult to forgive someone who hurts you, but you should always forgive each offender because you will feel better after forgiving the person who was unfair to you, especially if they regret it.

True forgiveness is unconditional and without resentment. Even if you cannot forget what the person who hurt you did or said to you, you should not desire revenge, whether they regret it or not.

Everyone ends up paying for the mistakes they make in one way or another over time. You don’t need to take revenge on someone who made a mistake because that person will certainly have to face the consequences of the evil in their life, without you having to do anything to make it happen.

However, you should not rejoice in this idea but pity those who make mistakes and suffer later.

Many believe that those who sin are not punished on Earth, but according to my experience curing mental illnesses and reading the biographies of several patients, whenever someone does something wrong they end up facing serious problems at a certain point in their life.

You cannot do evil without facing tragic consequences in the future because our world works like a big hospital that aims to heal our psyche and help us eliminate our wickedness. The fight between good and evil characterizes the functioning of the world because life is actually a process of transformation. Nothing here happens by chance.

However, you should not wish for something bad to happen to the person who hurt you, but be sad because that person will certainly suffer as much as you suffered because of them or much more.

You must forgive this person without resentment and accept them without showing anger for what happened in the past. Otherwise, you will not have the right attitude and will actually behave like the person who was unfair to you.

Don’t Think You Are Better Than Who Hurt You

We all make mistakes. Even the kindest people end up making mistakes at some point in their lives. Nobody is perfect.

You’ve certainly made many mistakes yourself and have regretted it several times, even if you think you’ve never done anything as cruel as what someone else did to you.

Your actions may not seem so serious to you when you evaluate them, but perhaps they were much worse than you think. Only God can judge each person correctly.

You do not know what the true consequences of your sins were for those who were victims of your wickedness.

You also don’t know what you would have been capable of doing to others if you hadn’t received the education you did if you hadn’t had a family, and if you hadn’t grown up with good living conditions.

If you were in the shoes of the person who hurt you and had faced the problems they faced in life, perhaps you would act much worse than they did.

So, don’t think you are better than anyone else.

Help Those Who Hurt You Start a New Life

You need to give the person who hurt you the opportunity to start a new life without the mistakes of the past.

You must help this person change and be better in the future, after having learned a sad lesson with their regret for being unfair to you.

Even if they didn’t clearly ask for your forgiveness but simply expressed regret through their behavior, you should help them feel better.

I have forgiven many people who hurt me without waiting for them to ask for forgiveness and I have always found that these people felt grateful for my forgiveness thanks to their gestures. They began to admire me and be kind to me.

I could tell you many stories about this matter, but I won’t take too long to give you examples of other people’s repentance and the change of attitude of others after being forgiven by me because I don’t want you to think that I am superior to those who hurt me.

Instead, I will tell you a story about when I was forgiven after hurting someone else.

This case profoundly marked my life and helped me understand the value of forgiveness.

How I Learned the Importance of Forgiveness

When I was 16 years old I became very aggressive after being in a car accident the previous year, and I was very cruel to some people.

I was once very offended by a nun who taught religion at the Catholic school where I studied, Sister Louise. I got to the point of swearing at her in the classroom!

After that, I regretted it and didn’t know what to do. Another nun advised me to talk to the school principal and explain what happened. So, I talked to her, but in fact, I tried to defend myself instead of showing her that I was sorry for being rude.

In other words, I didn’t have the right attitude even after I regretted what I did.

However, to my great surprise, the next day I saw that Sister Louise had an exemplary attitude towards me. Instead of sulking and avoiding talking to me, she asked me several times what my opinion was about what she was teaching us, encouraging me to participate in class and say what I thought.

In the end, she became my best friend!

It was then that I really regretted being so aggressive towards her, whereas at first, I was more worried about how I would be judged by the school principal. In fact, when I went to talk to her I wanted to avoid being punished instead of apologizing for the way I treated Sister Louise.

This moral lesson was very important to me and guided me whenever I felt like taking revenge on those who had wronged me.

Thanks to Sister Louise’s example, I understood that true forgiveness and love for those who hurt us are capable of profoundly transforming a person and are worth much more than resentment and revenge.

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