God’s Unmerited Goodness

I think forgiveness is the only event in which we simultaneously experience three great graces: God’s unmerited goodness, the deeper goodness of the one we have forgiven, and the experience of our own gratuitous goodness. That’s the payoff. This makes the mystery of forgiveness an incomparable tool of salvation. (p. 36)

• What is it like for you to read that “forgiveness [is] an incomparable tool of salvation”? How does it influence your understanding of both forgiveness and salvation?

• What feelings arise in you when you read that both you and the one you must forgive are good in God’s eyes? Is it harder to believe that you or the other person is good, and why? 

—from the book Things Hidden Companion Guide by Richard Rohr (page 28)