(photo: Tom Delaney, Sherburne County, Minnesota, 2025)
“Frost and cold, bless the Lord!” (Daniel 3:69) Yesterday morning we woke up to our first frost of this autumn here in on the oak savanna in Central Minnesota. The pastures were white and silver that tuned to a brilliant gold as the rising sun cast it’s first rays on the tall grasses. Every new day that we receive is a perfectly good day. All we have to do is refrain and restrain from doing anything that takes away from that perfect goodness, and simply pray that others will do the same. There are no bad days given to us now or ever, only good ones. We just have to keep them that way.
The morning prayers (lauds) in the Liturgy of the Hours, when combined with the daily readings from the Liturgy of the Word for the day, are a ceaseless source of insight and inspiration. The combination of one with the other – imagine two gears of different sizes rotating each other – puts things together in new ways all of the time. This morning is no exception, and the insight is very relevant to understanding how forgiveness works from a perspective of Catholic faith.
In the reading for the Liturgy of the Hours this morning, the apostle Peter writes (1 Peter 4:8-11a):
Let your love for one another be constant, for love covers a multitude of sins…As generous distributors of God’s manifold grace, put your gifts at the service of one another….The one who serves is to do it with the strength provided by God. Thus, in all of you God is to be glorified through Jesus Christ.
Peter encourages us to live our faith through a constant love for others, and explains that as many sins as may happen in our encounters and relationships with others, love has an overwhelming power over those sins. This includes including the transgressions and injuries we may experience in those encounters and relationships. In this way, forgiveness is an act of love.
Side Note: For some philosophical perspectives of love an human flourishing, read recent articles by Tyler Vanderweele (Harvard University, Human Flourishing Program) and colleagues: On an Analytic Definition of Love (2023) and Love and Human Flourishing, (2025).
Next Peter points to acts of love as generous distribution of God’s manifold grace. The original Koine Greek word that Peter used for “generous” is φιλόξενοι (philoxenoi), and means “loving the other.” In this way, our acts of love are God’s acts of love, given through us as God’s grace. This includes the act of forgiveness. In forgiveness, we receive God’s grace, and then we generously (“loving the other) pass on that grace to others in an act of forgiveness.
In his final words of this section, Peter affirms that we derive the strength for our acts of love, including forgiveness, from God. This is good news for us because it means we don’t have to rely on our own limited strength, especially at a time when we wouldn’t have the strength to forgive someone if we were on our own — we’re not! God is with us (always) and offering us as much strength as we need in order to forgive. The last sentence explains that the acts of love we do are a magnificent reflection of God’s love embodied in Jesus Christ — imagine a reflection of sunlight when it hits a mirror. Our forgiveness too is a reflection of the sublime mercy and forgiveness of God in Jesus Christ. We are living reflections and participants in that mercy and forgiveness.
How can I receive the grace I need so that I can forgive someone? The answer to this very important question is equally also simple — ask. Prayer is not just something that facilitates a forgiveness process, it is a core component for a process that results in full and lasting forgiveness. One kind of prayer is called a “petition,” and is the kind of prayer where we ask God for something. The word itself comes from an old Latin word, petitio, that means “to request.” In a prayer of petition we are requesting something of God. Asking God for the grace to forgive someone is a very (very, very) good example of a prayer of petition.
The important thing to know about prayers of petition, including and especially a prayer asking for God’s grace in order to forgive someone, is that Jesus said to do it. Today’s gospel reading in the Liturgy of the Word makes the point (Luke 11:9-13):
And I tell you, ask and you will receive;
seek and you will find;
knock and the door will be opened to you.
For everyone who asks, receives;
and the one who seeks, finds;
and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
What father among you would hand his son a snake
when he asks for a fish?
Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg?
If you then, who are wicked,
know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit
to those who ask him?
You never need to have the strength just on your own for forgiveness. When you ask God for the grace to forgive, you will receive ample strength to forgive, as much as your heart is open to receiving that strength from God as grace. The more sincerely you ask, the more open your heart is to God’s grace, the more you will receive it and be able to forgive as both an act of love that overwhelms sins, and as a magnificent reflection of God’s own love.
This kind of prayer is not complicated — just ask God for what you need. There are no special words to use or some kind of give-get situation to negotiate — it simply doesn’t work like that. God already knows what is in your heart when you pray (Matthew 6:8). If you need prescribed words, the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-15) works really well, and is the prayer that Jesus himself taught us — the same Jesus who told us to just ask. When we understand that God already knows what we’re going to ask for, we can see that prayer is really about opening up our relationship with God so that we can receive what God wants to give us, including the strength to forgive. It’s already offered! God wants to make delivery! We just need to use prayer so that we can receive what is already set aside, waiting, ad ready for us.
What do they say in commercials? “Don’t delay! Call now!”
This text is an original work of its author Tom Delaney and was entirely composed without the use of artificial intelligence (AI).
If your parish or faith community is seeking a deeper experience of forgiveness, healing, mercy, and spiritual renewal, Live and Forgive is here to help. To begin the conversation, email Live and Forgive presenter and facilitator Tom Delaney at tom@liveandforgive.com — he will be glad to connect with you for a conversation. Please type in your email and click “Subscribe” below to stay connected and get Live and Forgive articles delivered to you.
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