We all know that love is the answer to all our ills. Yet something within us warns us that there is more to it than that. To say that love is the answer is merely a glib, sentimental attempt to to avoid rather than to answer a very complex question. While every human being has a capacity for love, it doesn't necessarily mean that every human being is loving, or is loved. We are not born with a quality called love. There is nothing spontaneous about it. Forgiveness, like many everyday things, sounds straightforward and simple in theory. The practice is a different matter. We may read all the relevant books; we may listen to or even deliver learned homilies on the subject, but we still hesitate when it comes to letting go of resentment and nursing long-cherished grudges. Irish are notorious for harbouring grudges.

There is an old saying which I have used more than once in this church, and it neatly sums up this side of our nature. It goes as follows: "If a man likes scratching he won't thank you for removing the itch!" Forgiving is certainly love's toughest work, and love's biggest risk.

Bitterness and anger are destructive emotions. As we all know, bitterness can turn a man into a monster. Forgiveness, on the other hand, is a liberation. It liberates both the forgiver and the one who is forgiven. To forgive is to live and let live. To refuse forgiveness is to die and make die. A glance around our world today reveals the rotten fruits of failed forgiveness. There are prisoners of the past everywhere. Hatred and anger reign in so many places and suffering continues unremittingly. The gospel truth is that wars cannot end, discrimination cannot conclude, ethnic divisions cannot be healed until someone says "I'm sorry." The north of Ireland is a prime example of this truth: Peace processes are cosmetic exercises unless old resentments are healed. Communal hatred is infectious. People get high on it. It makes the adrenaline flow. As the first reading puts it today: "Resentment and anger, these are foul things."

Love is a habit, a way of life, a set of attitudes and responses that are learned over many years. Love is something that cannot be learned alone, in isolation. We pick up various ingredients as we advance along the road from childhood to adulthood. And two of today's readings highlight the most important and most unpalatable ingredient of love, that is forgiveness. Forgiveness is the treadmill on which we learn to love. Forgiveness redeems Christian love from mawkish sentimentality. But if we fail to forgive, wallowing instead in our resentment, we destroy not the object of our resentment, but ourselves. As we seethe with futile anger, the world passes us by."Showing no pity for a man like himself, can he then plead for his own sins?" the writer asks. This question is of course answered in the gospel. It is not that the Lord or master will not forgive. Unless we ourselves have trained ourselves in forgiving others, we will not ourselves have the capacity to receive forgiveness. In other words, unless we ourselves are familiar with forgiveness in our own experience, we will not recognise it when it is offered us.

What Christ has to say about forgiveness and love applies to our personal inner lives, to our domestic lives and indeed to the way men and women throughout the world relate to each other. Whether we are talking about family life, about our relationship, or about international political dealings, resentment and anger are always foul things.

Forgiveness, then, destroys the tyranny of the past. The person who cannot forgive others breaks down the very bridge over which he or she must pass one day. If you have long since given up the idea of entering heaven through the door marked "Canonised Saint" or "Martyr", the good news is that you and I can still enter by the back door marked "Forgiveness."

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