This is an article for people who want to understand from a Franciscan perspective how the wrongdoing they may experience of others, and the forgiveness granted to them, is part of a process of personal conversion, spiritual growth, and ultimately transformation with and in God. The recent theological explanations of Franciscan Fr. Roberto Pasolini are reviewed along with additional clarifying commentary that contextualizes the explanations in terms of forgiveness. People who read this article may find that the theological explanations of forgiveness and human interconnectedness from a Franciscan perspective are both practical and inspirational, and feel more motivated to engage in forgiveness of others because they have a better understanding of why forgiveness is important for their own spiritual growth.

Here’s a question that I have: If forgiveness has so many benefits for our physical health and mental health, why don’t we just naturally do it? Why do we resist doing something that is so good for us? We know eating food is good for us, and so we do. We know recreation and leisure is good for us, and so we do. But when it comes to forgiveness, we may easily stall out and not feel inclined to get into forgiving people, even if we’re aware that the benefits of forgiveness for our physical and mental health, as well as our growth in spirituality, are basically common knowledge at this point. We resist doing what’s good for us — why?

One explanation is that “unforgiveness” serves a healthy purpose initially of protecting us from further hurt by giving us an aversion toward the person who hurt us. We naturally make choices based on our thoughts and feelings that serve to keep us free and away from the person. Maybe what happens is that the attitude, aversion, and avoidance work really well and produce good and very much desired results for us, thus reinforcing the attitude, aversion, and avoidance. Understandably, that’s a pretty tough chain of behavior and consequences that would be tough to break. Some recent research on unforgiveness has also suggested that we could find that our experience of attitude, aversion, and avoidance reinforces our sense of self-identity and our personal values. If you add that in, then we really have a chain of causes, behavior, and consequences that can be deeply rooted and not really open to change.

Besides its negative impacts to physical and mental health, the problem with unforgiveness is that it hardens our heart and closes us off from growth in our spirituality and relationship with God. We can feel comfortable with that because we have such strong feelings of self-justification, and cling to them even when someone tells us that we would grow and be much more joyous in our life if we engaged in forgiveness. Maybe we do that because we hear the message but can’t quite come to take a chance and make an effort toward a more joyous life through forgiveness. It could also be that deeply rooted unforgiveness is a hard thing to come back from, even if we want to. We built a trap for ourselves and then stepped right into it — and now we’re stuck.

If we were just on our own, isolated, with no connections to anyone or anything, it is possible that we would remain stuck with our hardened heart, stagnant spirituality, and delayed spiritual growth for a very long time. Luckily, that’s not the situation. The real situation that saves us from being stuck is our inescapable interconnectedness with other people. This interconnectedness includes not just our friends and family, but the people who wrong us as well. What makes us interconnected is not only how one person’s actions impact another even at great distances, but also that everything about our lives takes shape and grows through our experiences of each other, and how we use those experiences to grow into our great potential for our relationship with God. All day, every day, and mostly in the most ordinary of circumstances, people encounter each other, experience each other, and integrate those experiences into their understanding of their own life’s meaning, purpose, and potential. We can have those experiences thoughtlessly, carelessly, and haphazardly, and reap thoughtless, careless, haphazard results for ourselves that show up in our lives as a jumble, a lack of wholeness, and headed no particular direction. The alternative is to recognize that all those encounters and experiences of other people in our everyday ordinary life are the ceaseless and unlimited opportunity to engage with the interconnectedness, grow in it, and have relationships with other people and God well beyond what we ever imagined was possible for ourselves — a real “I never knew it could be like this” experience that changes us to the core of our being, and forever.

When we understand that our everyday ordinary encounters with the people in our lives are opportunities to engage with our interconnectedness and grow, we also realize that forgiveness is an important part of those encounters and experiences we have of each other. Forgiveness becomes a response to the interconnectedness when we finally see it. As a matter of fact, it is the only reasonable response when we see our interconnectedness, and it is the response that keeps us growing in that interconnectedness and have relationships with other people and God well beyond what we ever imagined was possible for ourselves. Where unforgiveness and hard heartedness stagnates, stifles, and subjugates us, it is forgiveness that keeps us free, growing into our potential, and ultimately transforms us.

Franciscan Fr. Roberto Passolini is the official “Preacher of the Papal Household” — that’s his real title! His job is to compose meditations on important seasonal topics, including Lent. Recently Franciscan Fr. Pasolini composed a meditation entitled “Fraternity: The grace and responsibility of fraternal communion.” Many of his points during the meditation relate directly to what I am saying about the importance forgiveness as the right response to our interconnectedness, and the response that keeps us growing in that interconnectedness, including our relationships with God and others. I made a list of highlights from Franciscan Fr. Roberto Pasolini’s text of the meditation, and am sharing it with you here, along with some additional notes from me. In the following list, quotes by Franciscan Fr. Pasolini are in italics, and my interpretation and additional notes are in regular text. Here we go! …

• “Have we not all one father? Has not one God created us? Why then are we faithless to one another, profaning the covenant of our fathers?” (Malachi 2:10). We are all brothers and sisters with the same heavenly father – God. We should see each other in this way, and all seek to fulfill our shared relationship to God as father. This includes people who may wrong us.
• The word “brother” alludes to this mystery. The old Greek word used in the Gospels, “adelphós” literally means “one who comes from the same womb.” According to the Gospel, this common womb does not simply coincide with our humanity, but has its roots in God. Brothers and sisters are people who are born from the same source. In that way, we are all brothers and sisters because we all come from God and are literally created by God. As brothers and sisters, we bear a spiritual resemblance to each other because we are ll created in the image of God, or “imago dei.” This includes people who may wrong us.
• Our brothers and sisters are not given to us to confirm who we already are, but to transform us. In their diversity, in their limitations, and sometimes even in their struggles, they become the concrete space in which God works on our humanity, softening our inflexibility and teaching us to live with a heart that is truer and more capable of love. Other people are here with us as a very needed part of our growth into full and whole human beings with an always expanding capability to love others and God. Other people work on us like sun, rain, and wind work on a growing tree.
• Recognizing the other as a brother is by no means an immediate process. Seeing people as separate and unrelated to ourselves is a rational human way of seeing, and it gets supported by many things that we hear, see, and think up ourselves. It takes time and work to open up the eyes of our heart and see the reality that all people are our brothers and sisters in God.
• Even after the evil he has done, God does not abandon him. The quote originally refers to Cain, but the point is that God sees all of us as his children, and does not abandon anyone, including the people who have wronged us. If God is with that person, our right relationship with that person is one that recognizes that person as our brother or sister, and that God is with that person, even if they made bad choices or wronged us.
• Within each of us lies the same potential to become rigid, to close ourselves off, to allow resentment to become distance and for that distance to turn into a form of violence. Not necessarily physical, but real: stubborn silence, hurtful words, indifference built up like a wall. Our human response to being wronged can be very different from God’s response to us as his children. Our human response can be all about “taking a stand” by justifying ourselves, putting mental and emotional distance between us and another person, and filling in that distance with resentment and other negative emotions — none of which are good for us in the long run, but we do it anyway.
• We are not alone and we are not everything. When we fail to come to terms with this reality, the presence of the other can become unbearable. When we repeatedly choose to judge other people only in comparison to what we think they should do, and then are repeatedly frustrated at them as they don’t do what we think they should do – and there’s so many people! – our own world becomes a very hard place to be in on a daily basis.
• The people who truly manage to do good are not the “good,” but those who have had the courage to acknowledge their own shadow. Not those who have built up a good image of themselves, but those who have seen their own potential for violence and have entrusted it to God, discovering that His face is slow to anger and great in mercy. Recognizing all others as a our brothers and sisters includes realizing our sameness, that the difference is not between ourselves and someone else in terms of who we are essentially, but a difference only in our circumstances and the way those circumstances have shaped how we “show up” in life. This is the foundation of empathy toward others who have wronged us.
• Authentic brotherhood does not arise from those who have never hurt anyone, but from those who have recognized that they are capable of doing so and decide never to do it again. This is what the experience of mercy teaches: those who know they have been forgiven learn not to repay with evil. When we realize that we are as capable to do wrong as someone who wronged us, especially under their circumstances, we can have empathy for the wrongdoer that gives rise to mercy and forgiveness.
• Recognizing that the potential for Cain also dwells within us is not the end of the journey, but the beginning. Realizing that we are as capable of doing wrong as someone who wronged us, and admitting that within our hearts, is not a reason for guilt or shame upon ourselves, but rather it is the beginning of deep spiritual journeying and transformation. See Genesis 4 for the story of Cain and Abel alluded to in the quote.
• Regard even obstacles and offences as opportunities for grace. When we understand our profound interconnectedness to all people, including the people who wrong us, know that there is a great sameness between us, and know that every wrong and offense results from the adverse experiences that person has had or is having, every time someone pits themselves against us, or offends us, is a blessed opportunity to have mercy for that person in their circumstances. Maybe this is how God sees us all every day and the things we do to each other, and never waivers in mercy. Maybe this is how we get to particpate in that ourselves.
• Love them who do these things to you. And do not desire anything from them, except as much as the Lord will give to you. And in this love them; and do not want that they be better Christians. The real love within the mercy we have for others does not wish that they were more like how we wish they would be, even when we wish they would be better Christians. Real love accepts a person as they are, and all of what they are, not just the parts we like, or desire, or think are good. This is how God loves us — with all our flaws and frailties. The closer our regard for others in love and mercy can be to that kind of acceptance, the more true it is.
• “[Let] there be no [person] in the world, who will have sinned, as much as one can sin, who, after he has seen your eyes, will never leave without your mercy, if he seeks mercy. And if he does not seek mercy, you are to ask from him if he wants mercy. And if he would sin a thousand times before your eyes, love him more than me for this … and you will always pity such ones” (Franciscan Sources 235). Mercy is constant and never ending because the interconnectedness between all people, and with God, is constant and never ending. Those relationships are never absent or run out, and because our mercy and forgiveness is actually a response to that interconnectedness, it never has a real reason to be absent or run out. It only ends when we personally lose sight of that interconnectedness, including the times we choose to look away. In that way, it ends for us first.
• On the occasions that relationships break down and communion is wounded, the Gospel does not suggest, first and foremost, that we defend our own rights, but that we seek the greatest good that is always possible: that which allows us to recognize the other no longer as an adversary or a debtor, but a brother loved by the Lord. We can’t fix a relationship by using our own defensiveness and self-justifications to dismantle the relationship even more, pulling away and distancing ourselves further. Relationships are fixed when we work with them in a different way: a way where we look for what is good for everyone, how God cares for each and all of us, and what God wants for each and all of us. That is the greatest good that is possible,
• [There is] resurrection of our life in Christ as an event that concerns only the future. In reality, it begins right now and takes shape in the way we live our relationships and learn to love. Resurrection is a transformation of ourselves in which we go from not living, or partial and incomplete life at the most, to being fully alive, whole, and with fulfillment of our potential beyond what we ever may have imagined possible for ourselves. This transformation does not have to be a far away event in time, but can start for ourselves now through seeing and responding to our interconnectedness with others, with love.
• We tend to see the brother who hurts us or causes us distress as an obstacle, someone too far removed from our way of thinking, to the point of perceiving him almost as an enemy. [Saint] Francis, however, turns this perspective on its head: it is precisely that person who can become the means through which God opens us up to eternal life. The transformational experience of seeing our interconnectedness in love and mercy is available to us through the people who cause us distress. As a matter of fact, it is practically necessary in order for us to enter into that transformation.
• “Let us attend, all brothers, to what the Lord says: ‘Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you.’ For even the Lord Jesus Christ, whose footsteps we must follow, called his betrayer ‘friend’ and freely gave Himself up to those who crucified Him.
• All those who unjustly inflict on us trials, anxieties, shame and injuries, suffering and torture, martyrdom and death: We should love them greatly, for out of what they inflict on us we have eternal life.”
• Sometimes our conversion arises precisely from what others do to us, even when they hurt us or put us to the test. It is a difficult truth to accept, but a very realistic one. When someone wrongs or hurts us, we always have the choice to protect our own peace, and as challenging as these events are to us, they are also times when we can turn to God for wisdom, fortitude in our peace, and even compassion and forgiveness to those who hurt or wrong us. The compassion and forgiveness is easier once we have realized and attained peace for ourselves (John 14:27) because we know that the hurt and wrong we experience is simply not worth the price of our peace.
• Indeed, the best opportunities for entering eternal life are found precisely when we are wounded: in those moments we can renounce violence and choose instead the path of forgiveness, allowing God’s love to manifest itself and be fulfilled in us. God’s deep and limitless love for us is always offered to us — in every moment and every event. This gives us a choice when we are wronged or hurt by others, and we can always choose the experience of peace and God’s love for us rather than unforgiveness and the vexations of resentment, animosity, and enmity. Sometimes choices don’t make too much of a different in our lives and are not what we’d call a “huge opportunity.” That’s not what’s happening when we are hurt or wronged, and have the opportunity to choose God’s love — that’s truly a huge opportunity.
• Faith does not separate us from others: rather, it reminds us that no-one can be excluded from our heart, because no-one is absent from the heart of the heavenly Father. Forgiveness lets us see others as God sees us all: no separation, no exclusion, no absences from the heart.

We have opportunities in life to remove the separateness between our own will and God’s grace so that we can actually participate in God’s work for good in the world. Removing our mental picture of separateness between ourselves and others is an important way to take the opportunity, make the choice, and give ourselves a gift of experiencing humanity as deeply and spectacularly interconnected. Forgiveness is an important way we give ourselves this experience, removing our view of separation between ourselves and another, and by doing that, removing in a real way the separation of our will from God’s grace. Forgiveness let’s us see ourselves – all of us – as God sees us: interconnected and capable of generating the love needed for ushering in the good things that God intends for our world.

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This article is an original work of the author and was not composed by or with artificial intelligence (AI). The author is solely responsible for the contents of this article and the opinions and perspectives expressed in the article are solely those of the author. © 2026 Thomas Delaney. All rights reserved.

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