At this time of year, messages arrive in Jerusalem from everywhere with the same wish: Happy New Year! Although here we have as many new year’s as there are calendars. Nevertheless, all share something in common: beginning a new year is a feast with the joy of starting something new.
In the atmosphere of these days, during an informal conversation, the question arose:
– How do you imagine the first day of the world? How did Adam and Eve feel upon seeing before them a world boundless to the senses, in which everything was good—Very good! — and it was there right before their eyes, like an enormous gift ready to be unwrapped!? (Gen 1:1-31). Nothing less than a gift tailored to the infinitely Good, Almighty God: God-Love, whose delight is to be among the children of men (Proverbs 8:31).
Jesus of Nazareth
The conversation grew lively, and it stirred our childhood memories: on the feast of the Epiphany or on December 25th, depending on family customs, we received Christmas gifts under the pleased gaze of our parents, who watched us as we unwrapped them and began to handle them. Depending on the case, they helped us discover their use: how to treat them so as not to damage them. From the gift packages emerged a ball, a doll, a bicycle, a notebook with blank pages, pages and pages yet to be used… Even the simplest objects acquired a very particular added value: They were gifts! A gift, as I heard Professor Dr. Luis Romera [1] say in one of his classes, means that someone loves you, that they will always be there, that they will not abandon you.” The immense joy of giving and receiving, of surprising! What a great opportunity to leave behind the lists of grievances, the blots and the numerous cross-outs on the pages that make up the book of my life, and to begin again with the enthusiasm of the first time!
Throughout the centuries, this desire to start afresh, to be reborn, has been manifested in many ways across different eras and cultures; in mythologies, in literature. It is also present today. It is a deep aspiration that can become reality through forgiveness.
Forgiveness breaks the negative bond that had been created between the offending party and the party they offend. True forgiveness liberates both the one who receives it and the one who grants it; it does not eliminate the evil, but it does remove the sting, the poison of resentment that hardens the heart: forgiveness allows the recovery of interior freedom. Viktor Frankl [2], the Jewish psychiatrist who survived Auschwitz, expressed this masterfully, as the fruit of his own life experience.
Jesus of Nazareth is the great teacher of forgiveness. He brings men face to face with the merciful love of God, “whose nature it is to always be compassionate and to forgiving.” What a challenge! But we have 365 days ahead to attempt it and to learn.
By Carmen Rodriguez Èyre.