(1) First, it is _Divine_ Forgiveness that we need, since no sinner of
us all knows the full malice of sin. One man is a slave, let us say, to
a sin of the flesh, and seeks to reassure himself by the reflection that
he injures no one but himself; ignorant as he is of the outrage to God
the Holy Ghost Whose temple he is ruining. Or a woman repeats again
every piece of slanderous gossip that comes her way and comforts herself
in moments of compunction by reflecting that she "means no harm";
ignorant as she is of the discouragement of souls of which she is the
cause and of the seeds of distrust and enmity sown among friends. In
fact it is incredible that any sinner ever _knows what it is that he
does_ by sin. We need, therefore, the Divine Forgiveness and not the
human, the pardon that descends when we are unaware that we must have it
or die; the love of the Father Who, _while we are yet a great way off,
runs to meet_ us, and Who teaches us for the first time, by the warmth
of His welcome, the icy distances to which we had wandered. If we
_knew_, anyone could forgive us. It is because we do not that only God,
Who knows all things, can forgive us effectively.

(2) And it is this _Divine_ Forgiveness that we ourselves have to extend
to those that sin against us, since only those who so forgive can be
forgiven. We must not wait until wounded pride is made whole by the
conscious shame of our enemy; until the debt is paid by acknowledgment
and we are complacent once more in the knowledge that justice has been
done to us at last. On the contrary, the only forgiveness that is
supernatural, and which, therefore, alone is meritorious, is that which
reach out to men's ignorance and not their knowledge of their need.