If there is a mystery greater than the conversion of heart in the sinner who repents, then it is the mystery hidden in the wounds of the victim who forgives. Those wounds are the mysterious font of forgiveness. The victim does not just say to the perpetrator, “I forgive you for these wounds” but indeed “I forgive you from these wounds.” The victim creates a new meaning from the previously closed and definitive meaning inflicted upon him or her in the offender’s wounding act. These sites of violence are now sites of forgiveness. The peace of reconciliation flows from these wounds.

This mystery of forgiveness is hidden in the body of the crucified and risen Christ. When he appeared to his disciples on the evening of the first day of his Resurrection, he first offered them peace. “When he had said this”––in other words, only then––“he showed them his hands and his side” (Jn 20:20, RSV). They see his wounds. But what are those wounds? Those are the wounds for which they themselves are culpable. Those are the wounds of their neglect, their complicity, their betrayal, their abandonment, and their cowardice. Those are his wounds alone and not wounds they themselves also bear because they were not there with him. And yet, before he showed them his wounds, he offered them peace. Not the peace achieved through suppression and domination, but the peace of freedom (see: John 14:27).

Read the whole essay in the Church Life Journal.