Forgiveness

Here's an excerpt from Jose Granados' article from Communio entitled, "Risen Time: Easter as the Source of History":

Forgiveness is an example of this possibility to extend the significance of an event retroactively.  Let us note that forgiveness cannot be the mere expunging of the traces of an evil committed.  Since a person's past belongs to his identity, sheer forgetfulness would destroy both the evil and the person who committed it.  What is required of forgiveness is that it reshape the past, transforming it in goodness and incorporating it into a different narrative of the person's life.  To forgive is to untie the bonds of the past and to liberate the person toward a new future.  In order for this operation to be possible one must assume the existence of a past that is more original than the past of the evil committed, a source that the evil act was unable to touch and from which regeneration is possible.  We are able to forgive a friend because we remember an initial goodness that opened up in our relationship with him, and we judge that this goodness does much deeper than the offense he has committed against us.  The difficulty of forgiveness grows with the depth of the offense and it decreases with the solidity of the perception of this original goodness.  This goodness, in its turn, is deep enough only because it is tied to the transcendent origin of the other person's foundation in God.  Memory, then, is connected to our coming from God, to our being his children.  This link of memory with filiation is at the roots of the possibility of our forgiving.