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This weeks episode is sponsored by the Crusader Rosary. Pray for virtue like the knights of old through the intercession of your mother.
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✨ Virtue Definition: Forgiveness (Gratia)
While gratia in Latin most directly means grace, favor, or goodwill, in the context of virtue, it points to a disposition of merciful pardon — the readiness to forgive and reconcile from love, rather than to cling to resentment.
This theological understanding aligns with divine grace: freely given, undeserved, and flowing from love. Forgiveness, then, is not merely venia (remission of guilt) or remissio peccatorum (judicial pardon of sin), but a moral virtue — an act of gracious pardon ordered by charity and governed by reason.
Forgiveness is not forgetting, nor is it tolerating evil. It is the deliberate moral act of releasing bitterness, anger, and the thirst for revenge. It restores relationship in a way that reflects divine mercy — rooted in the Cross, not sentimentality. Forgiveness is the only path that allows us to seek justice without vengeance, and to pursue truth without cruelty.
Compassion:Mercy::Meekness:Forgiveness
Forgiveness allows justice to be pursued without personal hatred. It purifies the heart, guards against pride and rage, and sets the soul free. Without it, the will remains chained to the offense and the offender. Practicing forgiveness is both emotionally healing and spiritually sanctifying.
🧭 Vice of Deficiency: Vindictiveness
The refusal to pardon, driven by a thirst for vengeance or ongoing bitterness.Like the “avenger of blood” in Mosaic Law, the vindictive soul believes justice is served only by punishment — often personally administered.
⚠️ Vice of Excess: Connivance
Connivance is willful tolerance of evil through silence or inaction. Connivance masquerades as mercy but avoids discomfort at the cost of justice. It is “forgiveness” without repentance, and thus a counterfeit virtue.
Connivance smiles at sin in order to keep peace — but it’s a false peace rooted in fear, not love.
Connivance is not kindness. It is moral cowardice that fails to love the sinner enough to correct them.
🙋 My Life: Vindictive, Not Conniving
In my early years of ministry, I struggled deeply with vindictiveness. A particular person often undercut my direction and questioned my leadership. I held onto that wound — letting it fester and distort my ability to lead.
Ironically, I was equally frustrated by what I perceived as connivance in our pastor, who seemed to turn a blind eye to the situation for the sake of “peace.” Patrick Lencioni calls this false harmony — the illusion of peace that only hides brewing bitterness beneath the surface.
Looking back now, I realize I was receiving just as much grace as I was being asked to give. In God’s providence, the journey of forgiveness began not with confronting that individual, but with being confronted by my own sin during a leadership retreat. Forgiveness followed repentance — and healing followed both.
🌍 The Secular Perspective
Modern culture elevates retribution. It rewards grudge-holding, call-outs, and score-settling. In families, politics, and the workplace, we justify our bitterness by pointing to the connivance of others.
Sometimes that connivance is real. But through vindictive eyes, everything looks like complicity.
We excuse vengeance as “balance,” as if our anger is a necessary counterweight to evil. But that’s not the path to virtue — that’s just another way to remain chained to the cycle of sin.
🌟 Saint Model: St. Maria Goretti
At just eleven years old, Maria Goretti forgave her murderer, Alessandro Serenelli, as she lay dying from his assault. She forgave him not sentimentally, but with grace rooted in Christ.
Years later, her mother also forgave Alessandro, who repented and was present at Maria’s canonization. Their forgiveness offers a stunning witness of gratia — mercy stronger than death, more powerful than revenge.
🙏 Prayer of Forgiveness
O my God,Grant me the grace to forgive those who have wronged me,especially when the wound is deep.I bless those who have injured meand release all resentment, bitterness, and desire for revenge.I know that vengeance only wounds my own soul.Let me follow the example of Your Son,who forgave His persecutors as He hung upon the Cross,still suffering for their sake.I now forgive all who have offended me,and I ask You to pardon themin the holy name of Jesus.Amen.
🛡️ Closing Prayer
Lord, bless us with faith, hope, love, prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice —that we may live as You intended man to live:in all virtue and righteousness.Help us to flee from sin, and avoid the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil.Protect us with a spiritual hedge: in front of us, behind us, above, below, to our right and left, within and around —and seal it all with the Blood of Your Precious Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.Help us keep You in everything we think, say, and do. Amen.
🕊️ Go out and fill the world with virtue. Deus vult!
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