Forgiving is different than forgetting, or “letting it go”.  Forgiveness requires an acknowledgement, not only of what the other has done, but of who the other is.

Christ’s forgiveness is at once revolutionary and necessary, because it takes us first as we are, as we were created.  Christ sees us first as beloved children of God; after this Christ accepts what we have done and extends to us the absolution we sometimes do not receive from others and  can never give ourselves.

The burden we take up in Christ is easy because it replaces the pretenses, and false obligations we accumulate and it rejects the coordinating isolation by involving us in the deeply intimate act of forgiveness before ever requiring anything of us.

*Arendt The Human Condition (242)  and Matt. 11:30