How many times has the world witnessed discrimination? How many times have LGBT Catholics, because of their human variation of sexual orientation and/or gender identity, suffered exclusion, injustice, and even violence at the hands of other Catholics?

Sometimes interpersonally and sometimes collectively, in forms both crude and subtle, it’s too easy a case to make that LGBT Catholics have been unfairly singled out in some quarters. Our sins are somehow so much greater than our straight counterparts’. Our devotion couldn’t possibly be up to standard or our prayers just not as heartfelt. All because of who we are and/or whom we love.

The people of God absorb biases such as straight and cis-gender privilege from the culture, and some Catholics have used a distorted reading of church teaching to justify them to the point of depersonalizing, demonizing, and even doing violence to LGBT folk.

However, as people of the way, as the late All Inclusive Ministries chaplain Father Doug McCarthy, S.J., put it in one of the first homilies of his I had the good fortune to attend, whatever our sexual orientation or gender identity, LGBT Catholics are also more fundamentally called to a Christian lifestyle.

Jesus puts it this way in Matthew 5:43-45: “You have heard that the law of Moses says ‘Love your neighbour’ and hate your enemy. But I say love your enemy! Pray for those who persecute you! In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good and he sends his rain on the just and the unjust, too.”

So the assignment is to be like the Father when we’re only human?

“Impossible!” I remember the late Father Doug saying. But I was also shocked to hear him add that what this means is that LGBT Catholics are called to forgive the hurts and transgressions we have received at the hands of everyone, and everyone includes other Catholics and the institutional church.

It’s easy to salute forgiveness as the pinnacle of what it is to be fully human. After all, it’s modelled by Jesus himself during his crucifixion in Luke 23:34: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” But for many, the task does not seem possible, especially when the violence or injustice has created damage that requires years of healing treatment to remedy and that affects victims’ lives until the end of their days.

An imperfect and fallen world filled with imperfect and fragile persons is a sure-fire recipe for suffering resulting from injustice and violence. And in response to that suffering, it’s all too easy for anger to be allowed to congeal into hatred treasured proudly in the human heart.

The trouble is that as a person thinks in their heart, so are they! (Proverbs 23:7)

This is not the voice Christians are called to follow: “My sheep recognize my voice; I know them and they follow me.” (John 10:27) Hatred is not on the list of fruit of the Holy Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control are. (Galatians 5:22-23)

As Father John, S.J., reminded me many times in his homilies at Our Lady of Lourdes in Toronto, the way to forgiveness truly begins by making ourselves receptive and opening our hearts to God, for God is always wanting to love us.

Accomplishing this impossible spirituality always begins with acknowledging our weakness and being open to God’s grace. The paradox is “[Our] Lord’s power works best in [our] weakness… when [we] are weak, [we] are strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:8-10)

The impossible becomes possible with grace (Matthew 19:26). The beauty of our tradition is that we have vehicles to help us open to that grace.

One takeaway for you from this post might be the simple Our Father line, “as we forgive those who trespass against us.” When you pray it aloud or in silence, you could choose to consciously imagine the power of forgiveness flow through you, even if you haven’t fully recovered from the hurt in your heart. Over time, even a practice as simple as this can help work to set you free.

And make no mistake: freedom is what forgiveness offers you. Not to go back to the way things were, but rather to be able to move forward. In my experience, Jesus the great reconciler and our most deeply personal friend who knows us from both inside and out is not content with mere returns to the status quo. Rather, his wonders “make all things new.” (Revelation 21:5)

When faced with violence and injustice, how many times are we called upon to forgive our fellow humans who, caught in their own distortions and suffering, have sinned against us?

Jesus suggested a number in Matthew 18:22: “seventy times seven.”