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In the expansive realm of great ideas we'd rather not practice in our personal lives, turning the other cheek and forgiving "seventy times seven" certainly rank up there. 

Much easier it is to condemn, criticize, resent and even hate. Indeed, we spend chunks of each day tallying the sins of others, aloud or in the privacy of our cranium. As a stern woman in Zora Neale Hurston's novel, "Their Eyes were Watching God," thinks to herself, "There was so much to disapprove of."

Yet these grim satisfactions do not last. Our unyielding habits yield bitterness, a hard knot inside that we alone cannot untie. At the same time, we also suspect or know outright that our cold hearts will hurt us most. 

Each conscious Catholic has, at some point, been shaken by Christ's admonition, "For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get." 

During Lent, we are called to repent and confess. I can't say I love the season.

These gray days when the snowy white of winter melts into the mud of early spring match my mood. The very sky and air chastens us, just as the rituals of Lent direct our attention to our faults and neediness. 

Thankfully, our God is one of love and forgiveness. Yet in our search for absolution, we often do everything before we turn to God. 

It's a fruitless search. Humans are incapable of unconditional love; that's God's job. But He can certainly give us a big dose of the love that allows us to love others with mercy and compassion.

We can always jump-start our forgiveness of others by remembering that God forgives us, even before we ask. As part of their recovery, many alcoholics and addicts try to clean up the mess they've made in life and make amends to those they have harmed. They report that the easiest way to start is by forgiving everyone else first. 

Few of us have as much to forgive as Antoinette Bosco, the Albany native and prolific journalist whose latest book, "Radical Forgiveness," just came out in her 81st year. Among other trials, she lost one son to suicide and another son, and his wife, to murder. 

"We know not the day or the hour when soul-deep pain can strike again - from evil coming from any source - demolishing all belief that forgiveness makes sense or is justified," Ms. Bosco writes. 

There is a clarity and conviction to her writing on the topic brought about by her many years of life, her pain and her naked willingness to find God in and through her loss and suffering. 

This is why we follow Christ. No one else told humanity in such clear terms that God forgives and we are to do so as well, despite the cost and anguish. On the other side is a peace that transforms us and those we forgive. 

Remember, as Ms. Bosco writes, that Jesus dies on Good Friday hanging between two thieves. He offers forgiveness. To the one who accepts, Jesus promises that he will be in heaven "this day." Jesus does not, as we would, insist on due punishment. 

From deep experience she writes, "Paradise begins the moment we realize forgiveness." Put most simply, we just have to let God's love pass through us. So this Lent, let go and let God's love happen.[[In-content Ad]]

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