You can forgive

Forgiveness is the highest expression of the power of good. A complex path that proceeds at different speeds: sometimes a choice of reason, other times a passage enlightened by faith. For Gemma Calabresi Milite it was like this. Hers is a story of a private pain that has become public. She, wife of Commissioner Luigi Calabresi, killed in 1972 by Lotta Continua. She was widowed in her early twenties, with two small children and one yet to be born. After more than 50 years, the very human sharing of her experience, the path of forgiveness as a meeting ground, already opened in the heart on the day of the murder.

What happened?
In those hours, everyone rang at the door: a friend of my father's, then the superintendent, Luigi's colleagues. Everyone hesitated: some said that Luigi had been wounded in the shoulder, some spoke of an operation in progress, some advised me to wait. At a certain point my parish priest, Don Sandro, arrived. "Tell me the truth!" he told him.
He with only the movement of the lips, without making any sound. "He died". I collapsed on the sofa with a searing pain, a feeling of total emptiness, of bewilderment as if nothing else had meaning around me in life. Yet something shocking happened

What?
While I was there on that sofa together with Don Sandro who was trying to stay close to me, I suddenly physically felt an incredible inner peace. Something absurd, out of context. However, that feeling of peace my body had registered. I felt that I was not alone, that I was in an elsewhere.
A feeling that I have been carrying with me for almost 51 years. Here, I am convinced that I have been visited by God.
There was someone who showed me the way. That morning, I received from God the gift of faith that doesn't take away the pain, but fills it with meaning. For me this was a sign.

There is another one that strikes today. It was the choice of the sentence to be combined with her husband's obituary...
My mother suggested it to me. It was Jesus' phrase on the cross: "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing". I accepted it because I felt it was the right time to counter all that hatred, that violence with words of love.
I didn't think about it for years. But one day, entering the church, I said to myself: «Gemma, you wrote that obituary, you signed it, the time has come to make it yours». I prayed over it and caught a new nuance. Jesus at that moment did not directly forgive his murderers. Why? I gave myself an explanation. Yes, Jesus was the son of God, but in that moment of pain he was a man and he realized how difficult it was, almost impossible for us men to forgive. The Father can do it in our place, leaving us all the time we need to walk a path. This awareness set me free. I said to myself: “God has already forgiven on my behalf. I'll do it too, but with all the time it takes."

Some meetings were fundamental for her. Starting with the children of the school where she taught religion…
That's right. Immediately after my husband's murder, I hit my lowest point: sadness, crying, anger, desire for revenge. If I had met the killers, I would have shot. I was ashamed of these thoughts, also because when you wake up with this hate on you you have already lost the day that was given to you. The comparison with the children was unsettling. Once, one of them asked me: «Teacher, why is it that when someone dies they always talk about it well? Only the good ones die?». I accepted that question, explaining that it was right because of a person who is no longer there one must remember the good. And I added that God in his infinite mercy would have judged us for the good things we have done and not for the mistakes we have made. Leaving the classroom, that answer continued to resonate inside.
It's like I gave it to myself. Suddenly I thought of my husband's murderers and I thought that their life could not be reduced only to that gesture, to the evil done. Maybe they were good fathers, good friends, they walked like me through joys and sorrows.
I told myself clearly that I could not have the right to relegate them forever to the worst act they had committed. In that moment it is as if I had restored humanity to each of them, recognizing their facets, seeing them as people. From there, my path of forgiveness never looked back.

Can you forgive without faith?
First, I think it is possible to forgive. Is it possible to still love life after excruciating pain!
It's possible to still believe in others even if you've been cheated on!
It's possible to change your opinion about the people you used to see as all the evil in the world! Above all, it is possible to still be happy. I am of the opinion that forgiveness is a feeling that concerns everyone, it is not the prerogative of religions, it concerns believers and non-believers. In my opinion, one can forgive with one's humanity, but one must want it, one must set out on the road, without getting discouraged. I realized that God sends signs to everyone, not just those who believe.
You have to know how to see them.

When did he figure it out?
In prison, in Padua, meeting a group of life prisoners. I listened to their experience and asked to speak to them. Almost everyone told me that in the lowest moment of despair, of guilt, of wanting to end it all, they had suddenly felt an enormous inner peace, a great strength. Some had read it as the presence of God. I was shocked because it was the same description of what I had heard on the sofa the morning of Luigi's murder. Until that moment I had thought that God had come to me, because I was the victim and instead it wasn't like that. God goes to all people who suffer, so he goes to everyone, believers and non-believers. After that experience, those men had spoken to the prison chaplain and had begun to make a journey of faith to prepare themselves to ask for forgiveness.
Not only that, they had begun to pray incessantly for the families from whom they had taken their loved one.
I saw us as a bridge that concerned me. They walked on one side to ask for forgiveness and I saw myself on the other side together with the victims to give them this forgiveness.
I realized that you can meet halfway to hug and forgive each other.

What is the most important thing you learned from your experience?
The main teaching is that you need to see a person in toto, know his story, his suffering.
Each of us has feelings, difficulties. But everyone can walk and improve.
When we are wronged and we nail those responsible for that wrong, we remain prisoners. Only if you are ready to consider the fragility of the other can you begin a path of forgiveness and see before you not an enemy, but a person.

Matteo Spicuglia
FOCUS
NP May 2023