The Holy Spirit gathers us into communion, burns away the roots of bitterness, and teaches us to receive the forgiveness of Jesus so deeply that it can overflow into our relationships.
By Fr Joby George VC
I was listening to some of the talks during this retreat whenever I could. Because of other responsibilities that come with priesthood, I was not able to sit through the whole retreat, and I was actually unhappy about that. Even while I was sitting for confession, whenever there was a break I tried to listen. I was hearing these beautiful reflections about the Holy Spirit and how He leads us, and I kept thinking, Why am I missing this? I also wanted to attend the retreat.
As I listened and then prepared to speak, one work of the Holy Spirit kept coming strongly to me: the Holy Spirit is the Spirit who unites. He is not the Spirit who divides.
Look at Pentecost. When the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples, they were strengthened to go out and preach the name of Jesus. People had gathered in Jerusalem from different parts of the world, with different languages and cultures, yet they heard the disciples in their own languages. There is something beautiful happening there. In the Old Testament, at the Tower of Babel, language becomes associated with scattering and division. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit gathers people again. Different languages remain, different peoples remain, but the Spirit brings them into communion around one Gospel.
Saint Paul expresses the same mystery when he writes, “For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body — Jews or Greeks, slaves or free — and we were all made to drink of one Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:13). One Spirit, one body. We hear the same prayer at Mass after the consecration when the Church asks that, partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ, we may be gathered into one by the Holy Spirit. This is what the Spirit does. He gathers, He unites, He creates communion.
Then I have to look at my practical life. I have to look at my family, my community, my relationships and ask a difficult question: what do I see more of — unity or division? If the Holy Spirit is the Spirit who unites, I also have to recognise that whatever keeps feeding division cannot simply be accepted as normal Christian life.
The Root That Causes Trouble
When I was once in Colombo with Fr Michael and our singer Gerry, we were speaking about the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Gerry was very particular about English, and he said to me, “Father, it is not fruits of the Holy Spirit. It is the fruit of the Holy Spirit.” I resisted. There are nine of them, so surely it should be fruits! I think my ego became involved and I was ready to declare the Bible grammatically wrong if it used the singular. Then I checked. It really is fruit.
I had to admit that Gerry was right, but it also gave me a beautiful thought. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness and the rest are not separate things coming from unrelated sources. They are the fruit of the one Spirit working in us. In this talk I want to stay particularly with patience and forgiveness, because if the Holy Spirit unites, one of the things that most easily tears that unity apart is the root of unforgiveness.
Hebrews warns us, “See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble” (Hebrews 12:15). A root can remain under the surface for a long time. We may see only a reaction, a cold silence, an angry word, a relationship that has become distant, but underneath there can be a root that has been growing for years.
What happens to me when I harbour unforgiveness? During the retreat people answered: I become bitter; I lose peace; I become angry; I can even become physically unwell. Someone mentioned blood pressure, and I said, half-jokingly, that everyone struggling with blood pressure should start forgiving. But there is truth in the humour. When anger rises, the body reacts. More importantly, the whole person begins to change.
You have seen me laughing and smiling. If I suddenly change my face and become cold, immediately the atmosphere between us changes. The same thing happens in a family. When I carry hatred, resentment and anger, I become a different person, and then the relationship begins to suffer with me. We normally say the problem began with what the other person did, and sometimes there really has been injustice or serious hurt. But after that event, something can also begin growing inside me. That bitterness starts to shape the way I speak, the way I look at the person, the way I pray and even the way I see myself.
The Lord wants to free us from that. If the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of unity, then I cannot be content to let bitterness become permanent within me.
“Father, Now Both of Us Defeated Satan”
I learnt this in a very simple way after I was moved from Australia to Colombo. A family here had sent some things for me, including a phone I had been waiting for. Someone travelling to Colombo agreed to bring them. There were several things in the package, and because of the luggage allowance he was able to bring only part of it. When I received the bag, I was happy and went quickly to my room, but the one thing I was really looking for was not there.
I came down and asked about it. I was told that the rest could be brought later. Usually when something like this happens, I do not say much. I let it go. This time I could not. I turned my back and walked away faster than I normally would. I knew the person would understand that I was offended. In fact, that was my intention.
I went upstairs and sat down. After some time I could not do anything. I was carrying the disturbance within myself. This was not completely new to me; even in seminary I had struggled with patience and unforgiveness, and I knew what it could do to my prayer. So I decided that if I saw this person, I would ask forgiveness. At the same time my prayer was almost, “Lord, please let me not see him.”
I came out, and there he was.
He was an elderly man. I went to him and said, “I am sorry. I knew that what I did was offending you. I am sorry about it.” He stood there, smiled a little and said something I have never forgotten: “Father, now both of us defeated Satan.”
That was a revelation for me. There is something in forgiveness that releases grace. In one moment of unforgiveness, even if I have a reason for being hurt, I can become trapped inside the injury. But when I forgive, or when I humble myself and ask forgiveness for the way I have behaved, division loses some of its power. If we could learn to forgive one another, we would bring something of the kingdom of God into the place where we live, because forgiveness defeats the work that keeps people separated.
We pray this every day in the Our Father: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” We know the words. The more uncomfortable question is whether we are willing to live them. If I ask, “Can you forgive?” most Christians will answer yes. If I ask, “Will you forgive?” suddenly the answer becomes, “It depends.”
But the Gospel keeps bringing me back to the forgiveness I myself have received. Saint Paul teaches us to forgive as the Lord has forgiven us. The question is not simply whether the other person deserves my forgiveness or whether I have reached the end of my patience. The deeper question is whether I am living from the forgiveness of Jesus that has already been given to me.
Human Forgiveness Gets Exhausted
I do not want to pretend that forgiveness is easy. From my own little experience, it is not easy at all. Fr Michael spoke during the retreat about dying to self, and forgiveness brings us directly into that struggle because the self wants to protect itself, justify itself and remember why it is right.
I once met a husband and wife in Colombo who were carrying serious problems in their marriage. They had heard about another Vincentian priest named Fr Joby Kachappilly, a well-known preacher, and when they saw my name advertised they thought I was that Fr Joby. They came to speak with me anyway. I spent a long time listening to them separately and together because there was much that needed forgiveness between them.
At the end, the husband told me that forgiving his wife had seemed possible until he spoke to me. I was confused. He had come for help precisely because he wanted to forgive. Then he explained that there was another person involved in their pain and, unfortunately for me, my voice sounded exactly like that person’s voice. Every time I spoke, I reminded him of the person he was trying to forgive. He said, “Father, I don’t think talking to you I can forgive.”
It was funny, but it also exposed something real. We may sincerely decide to forgive, and then a voice, a face, a place, a sentence or a memory brings the whole wound back. Human forgiveness has limits because our patience becomes exhausted. Saint Peter’s question to Jesus already shows this instinct: how many times must I forgive? Seven times? We want a number because a number gives us a point at which we can say, “I have done enough.” Jesus answers by taking away that comfortable limit.
This is why I distinguish, in a pastoral way, between human forgiveness and divine forgiveness. If I am trying to forgive only out of my own emotional strength, I will eventually say I have no more to give. I may stop speaking to the person and call that peace. I may keep the relationship externally polite while keeping the anger alive within me. Our human forgiveness can become exhausted.
But Jesus takes us somewhere else.
On the Cross, in the middle of injustice and suffering, Jesus prays, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). I am not trying here to turn that sentence into a technical argument about the Trinity. I am looking at Jesus in His humanity, suffering on the Cross, and hearing the prayer He gives us: “Father, forgive them.”
For me, that prayer means I do not have to manufacture an endless supply of forgiveness from myself. I can ask the Father to fill me with divine forgiveness. I can receive what Jesus has won for me and let that forgiveness work in the place where my own strength is failing. The more I enjoy the forgiveness of Jesus in my own life, the more that forgiveness can begin to pass through me to somebody else.
Our human forgiveness fails. Divine forgiveness does not have to stop where my strength stops.
Hold On to the Cross
I learnt this slowly in seminary. We were twenty-four young men from twenty-four different families, with twenty-four different personalities, strengths, habits and ways of doing things. At that age I did not spend much time thinking about what the other twenty-three might find difficult in me. I mostly noticed what all twenty-three were doing that I did not like.
I was angry often. I could become stressed and withdrawn, and I knew it was affecting community life and my vocation. Eventually I went to my spiritual director, Fr Joseph Pichnat, and told him I was struggling with unforgiveness and did not know whether I could continue living in community like this.
He told me very plainly that unforgiveness was serious because I could not live community and ministry while allowing it to control me. I asked him, “Father, how do I forgive?” He gave me a Scripture to pray and then gave me an extraordinarily practical instruction: when I became angry, I was to keep a rosary in my pocket and hold onto the cross.
At first I thought it sounded silly. My anger was an issue between me and another person. What was holding a rosary in my pocket going to do? I joked during the retreat that at least it kept one hand occupied, so I could not hit anybody. But I followed his advice because I knew the anger was getting in the way of my vocation. Some days I held the cross so tightly that I broke the plastic crosses on two or three rosaries.
And yet it helped me.
I cannot reconstruct every thought that passed through my mind in those moments, but one thing became clear. When I held the cross, I was holding onto the place where Jesus prayed for me: “Father, forgive them.” The them includes me. It includes you. The forgiveness of Jesus comes to me first. If I remain open to it, that same forgiveness can overflow from me towards another person.
So when I tell somebody struggling with unforgiveness to hold onto the Cross, I do not mean the rosary is magic. I mean we need to put ourselves deliberately before Jesus and receive again what He has done for us. I can pray, “Father, I cannot do this simply with my human forgiveness. Into this broken relationship, let Your forgiveness from the Cross come upon us. Let it fill me, and do not let it stop with me. Let it overflow.”
The parable of the unmerciful servant in Matthew 18 shows us what happens when that flow stops. The servant is released from a debt he could never repay, but almost immediately he meets someone who owes him a much smaller amount and refuses mercy. For a moment he has forgotten the enormous mercy he himself has just received.
We can do the same thing after Confession. We enter carrying sin, failure and weakness. Jesus forgives us. We are given the grace to begin again. Then we walk out and meet the same person who irritates us, and within minutes we can become the old person again. It is as though we receive forgiveness into a bottle and then screw the lid tightly shut. Nothing more enters, and nothing flows out.
I want my heart to remain open. I need continually to receive the mercy of God so that I have something more than my own limited patience to give away.
A Heart That Is Free
Jesus’ forgiveness is costly. He went to the Cross. I am not telling people to seek suffering or to remain where they are unsafe; forgiveness does not remove truth, justice, accountability or the need for appropriate protection. But if I want to forgive as Jesus forgives, I must recognise that forgiveness will sometimes cost my pride, my demand to have the last word, or my determination to keep replaying the offence as the centre of the relationship.
The Scriptures keep joining prayer and reconciliation. Jesus says, “Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone” (Mark 11:25). In Matthew 5, He tells us that if we bring our offering to the altar and remember that a brother or sister has something against us, we should first seek reconciliation. Sirach asks the uncomfortable question: “Does anyone harbour anger against another, and expect healing from the Lord?” (Sirach 28:3).
These words are not meant to make a wounded person feel guilty for being wounded. They are an invitation to freedom. Bitterness can become another form of bondage. I may think I am punishing the person who hurt me, while the anger is living inside me, disturbing my prayer, my sleep, my family and my peace.
This is why simple spiritual practices matter. Take the rosary. Hold onto the cross. Kneel when you pray if you are able. Put your body into prayer. Some of these practices can look small or even silly when we analyse them from the outside, but sometimes a small act helps the heart become available to grace.
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of unity, and where the Spirit brings unity there is freedom. I want a heart that is not bound by unforgiveness or hatred. I want the Spirit to burn down even the little roots before they grow deep enough to shape everything else.
At the end of the talk I invited everyone to stand and pray. I asked them to imagine themselves at the foot of the Cross, with Jesus praying, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Then I asked them to bring before the Lord the people who had offended them — not to plan retaliation, not to keep searching for reasons to condemn, but to place those people before the Father and pray with Jesus.
Some wounds are very deep. There can be cheating, injustice, exploitation of kindness, years of sacrifice that seemed to receive no gratitude, words that still hurt when remembered. Forgiveness does not pretend those things did not happen. We ask the Holy Spirit to anoint the wounds precisely because they are real. We ask Him to heal the heart so that our future is not governed by the injury.
Then there is another side. We also have to remember people whom we have offended. Sometimes we know exactly what we did, yet ego stops us from saying, “I am sorry.” Sometimes the Lord brings back a word we spoke in anger, even words of curse said in helplessness or frustration that wounded people around us. The Holy Spirit leads us not only to release others but also to humility, apology and reconciliation where that is possible and appropriate.
This is the work of unity. It is not sentimental. It may require prayer, repeated decisions, Confession, difficult conversations and time. But when the Spirit is leading us towards truth, repentance, mercy and communion, we are moving in His direction.
My dear brothers and sisters, the joy of forgiving and the joy of being forgiven belong together. We cannot create that joy merely by making a resolution at a retreat. We go back to the same families, the same relationships and often the same situations. That is why our resolutions themselves must be placed into the hands of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus promised that the Spirit would remind us. So I pray: Holy Spirit, remind me of what You have shown me. Remind me of the forgiveness I have received. When the old anger comes back, give me strength again. Clothe me with Your power. Keep me open to the forgiveness of Jesus until it overflows from me. Burn down the roots of bitterness and gather us again into communion.
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit who unites. Let us allow Him to begin that work in our own hearts.
Pastoral note: Christian forgiveness is not a command to deny abuse, injustice, coercion or danger, nor does it require immediate restoration of trust or reconciliation where another person remains unsafe or unrepentant. Forgiveness concerns releasing vengeance and bitterness to God and receiving the grace to live in truth and freedom. Appropriate boundaries, accountability, professional help and protection may still be necessary.
Adapted and edited from a talk delivered by Fr Joby George VC during Divine Australia’s “Powered by the Holy Spirit” Live-In Retreat, held at Belgrave Heights Convention Centre, Belgrave Heights, Victoria, on 19 July 2025.