Variety: Luke 23v34 again

“Father, forgive them; they do not know what they are doing.” —Luke 23:34 

Author Megan McKenna considers Jesus’ ability to forgive and how we are called to the same:  

We were created to be the friends of Jesus, the friends of God, friends with one another…. And so, we begin this journey of becoming, this way of being in the world guided by Jesus’s own words and actions that we will repeat over and over again in all our relationships and in so many moments of our lives.  

And the journey of becoming—of liberation—is the journey of forgiveness. As Jesus goes to the cross, tortured, in agony, he continues living with love, refusing to do evil, speaking the truth, doing justice, tending to all others with compassion, and relating to everyone with forgiveness and mercy….  

In his suffering, Jesus’s first words from the cross are among his last words to his friends (and the world): Father, forgive them. Our lives of soul, spirit, heart as human beings made in God’s image begin, speak, and fulfill these words over and over again. Father, forgive them. Father, forgive us.  

With Jesus, we pray always: Father, forgive them. It is Jesus’s foundational prayer with and for all of us, all ways…. We must forgive—we must begin with the words of forgiveness as a mantra that can transform our minds and souls. When we forgive, we do not consider all others as possible enemies but as possible neighbours, allies, and friends. And then we must forget—in the sense that we must make new memories, start relationships anew, open doors of possibility with different ways of relating to one another as equals, both and all intent on the fullness and wholeness of life shared and lived together as one.