Christ called us to a radical forgiveness, even towards our enemies, which is unique to Christianity.
Celia Wolf Devine on Tips to Help us Forgive
Who is Celia Wolf Devine
Celia Wolf-Devine is a retired philosophy professor, author and lecturer. Her philosophical work has been in Early Modern Philosophy (Descartes) and social philosophy. Her first and most complete book on prayer is The Heart Transformed: Prayer of Desire (Alba House, St. Paul). She wrote “A New Companion to Prayer: Meeting God Where You Are” for a distinctively Catholic readership. She is just winding up work on an anthology: Naming God: Selected Readings Representing Differing Perspectives.” However, her workshops focus mostly on prayer- related topics. These are usually for diocesan in service programs to train catechists in Providence, Boston and Portland Maine. Her most popular workshops have been “Prayer of the Heart” and forgiveness based “Setting up a Morning Prayer Routine.” Additionally, she was recently interviewed about her conversion by Marcus Grodi on the Coming Home network. You can find more about her and her work see www.celiawolfdevine.com.
In this episode, I talk to Celia Wold Devine about why forgiveness is important and how to forgive better. She talks about:
-What Jesus teaches us about forgiveness
-Seven steps to forgiveness.
-How to forgive ourselves?
-How to truly do our penance without thinking of it as ritual?
Seven Tips To Help us Forgive
I first came across Celia through her post on forgiveness. Surprisingly, she had no idea her post had been syndicated and so widely shared and commented upon. It was hard to track her down. When I reached out to her, she said “I’d love to do it. I’m happy to use my talents for God’s work.” We finally managed to get our dates in order despite my traveling and her own personal work.
Celia’s tips about forgiveness are relatively simple. Since she’s a philosophy professor, everything she says is backed by data and proof. Simple things like why it’s not a good idea to vent or why an apology is necessary are explained. She even talks about setting up a forgiveness ritual with whoever you live with.
What I loved about this podcast is her suggestion to look at people the way God looks at them. It ties in very well with our previous podcast where Karl Ericksen talked about every person being someone whom Jesus died for.
It is hard to forgive
I agree forgiveness is hard. Especially when you’ve been betrayed and hurt. Even moreso when those betrayals have forced you to change drastically. But as Celia says forgiveness is a process, sometimes a very long process. And who are we to hold a grudge or judgement. Contrarily, forgiveness is not ours to give. The only way you can forgive is by asking God to give you His grace to help you. Therefore, prayer becomes important. You have to pray for God’s grace to forgive.
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ANNIVERSARY GIVEAWAY
As mentioned, for our 50th episode anniversary we’re giving away a free Christian Book Bundle until 15th July. One of the books is Charles Johnston’s book, the Beauty of the Mass.
