Those words appear only in the Gospel according to Luke. It was as if Christians had gradually come to the certainty that Jesus died to reconcile the world to God s peace, and only through forgiveness could that healing peace enter human history. You can only confront unjust violence with just violence. But at least that is a very provisional truth. Forgiveness is the deeper, more practical truth.
Forgiveness is the refusal to let the past control the future.
It cuts the nerve of revenge and insists on replacing it with sinews of hope. It looks forward to new community with those who have so dreadfully damaged community. Forgiveness knits up the raveled bonds of the collective lives of sinners. It is the great repairer of our fractured humanity. And from the great practitioners of that truth we Christians, in particular, must forever be learners.