Chapter 34: The Face of Forgiveness

The word “sin” has taken on a number of unpleasant connotations. In my mind sin does not equal evil. Sin just means that, as humans, we are fallible. I don't really see it as a negative judgment – God hardwired us with the capacity to exercise our free will to sin, so He probably planned on us doing so.

In this respect, all human wars are essentially an exchange of friendly fire because we are all fighting on the same battlefield where sin is concerned.

Christ knew this was the deal from the get go. His mission was clearly defined: to save us...from ourselves.

Christ bears the eternal burden of human sin so that we are free to redeem ourselves through the eternal love of forgiveness.

In this way, every misstep of ours is another opportunity to learn to forgive ourselves and accept the forgiveness of God, endowed to us by the suffering and sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

We make it surprisingly hard on ourselves and become our own worst enemy by judging ourselves as wrong for backsliding. I don't believe God created us as “wrong” or lets us suffer for sport. But in giving us the capacity and choice to sin, He in turn gives us the capacity and choice to forge a deeper relationship with Him, one wherein we can choose to re-gift our free will...back to Him.

And when we do that, He moves into a very deep place inside us. There we are sheltered and freed from the bonds of living as our unhappy self, the one who is trapped by egocentric bad habits like cruelty, greed, stupidity, weakness, fear... the list goes on.

Our faith is never forced; we are not required to believe in any God or religion. Our guilt for being less than perfect is self-inflicted because forgiveness is already a done deal.

Once we invite Him in, we become the best possible rendering of ourselves. That doesn't mean we won't backslide every once in awhile, spiraling down the tunnel of our imperfection, but we will recognize and remedy it much more quickly by forgiving ourselves. We will place ourselves in His hands by folding ours together to pray for the strength to be better.

The image on the cloth of the Shroud is a road map of the capacity for human sin. The record of torture and suffering is encoded in a way that we can witness but cannot explain.

But the face...the face is the gift of the serenity of forgiveness. In gazing upon it, we fall into His protection, into our innate purity, into the divine remedy within...