It is divine forgiveness that we need, since no sinner of us all knows the malice of sin. One man is a slave, let us say, to a sin of the flesh, and seeks to reassure himself by the reflection that he injures no one but himself; ignorant as he is of the outrage to God and the Holy Spirit whose temple he is ruining. Or a woman repeats again every piece of slanderous gossip that comes her way and comforts herself in moments of compunction by reflecting that she “means no harm”; ignorant as she is of the discouragement of souls of which she is the cause and of the seeds of distrust and enmity sown among friends. In fact it is incredible that any sinner ever knows what it is that he does by sin. We need, therefore the pardon that descends when we are unaware that we must have it or die; the love of the Father who, while we are yet a great way off, runs to meet us, and teaches us for the first time, by the warmth of His welcome, the icy distances to which we have wandered. If we knew, anyone could forgive us. It is because we do not that only God who knows all things, can forgive us effectively.
And it is divine forgiveness that we ourselves have to extend to those that sin against us, since only those who so forgive can be forgiven. We must not wait until wounded pride is made whole by the conscious shame of our enemy; until the debt is paid by acknowledgement and we are complacent once more in the knowledge that justice has been done to us at last. On the contrary, the only forgiveness that is supernatural, and which, therefore, alone is meritorious, is that which reaches out to men’s ignorance and not their knowledge of their need.
Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson
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