{"id":328676,"date":"2016-10-28T03:00:16","date_gmt":"2016-10-28T01:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/word-of-life-the-joy-of-forgiveness\/"},"modified":"2024-05-16T15:05:30","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T13:05:30","slug":"word-of-life-the-joy-of-forgiveness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/word-of-life-the-joy-of-forgiveness\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of Life. The Joy of Forgiveness"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"20161028\u00a0In jail<\/strong> \u201cI had some problems with this guy and both of us ended up in jail. We were enemies and there was no room for any understanding between us. But when I learned a bit more about Jesus\u2019s teaching on love, I thought about this \u2018enemy\u2019 of mine. How could I love him? The thought came to my mind that I could share some of the food that my family brings to me, because none of his family members ever brought food to him. We\u2019re good friends now. Another experience regards the only food container I owned. It was stolen from me and I knew who did it. I went to that person, but he refused to give it back. I didn\u2019t know what to do. I went back to my cell and read the Gospel which is always my point of reference now. I came across the New Commandment. There\u2019s the answer! Right away with all my heart I decided to never think about that food container again. Loving is more important.\u201d \u00a0(D. J. \u2013 Nigeria)<\/a> The Coffee Maker<\/strong> \u201cWe all use the coffee maker at work, but no one ever cleans it and sets it up again. They\u2019re used to having me do that. One day one of my colleagues approached me after a cup of coffee. She asked why I was always so benevolent towards others. I told her it wasn\u2019t so much trouble and that I was the only one who could do it for them. She answered: \u2018You\u2019re telling me something important. I always complain that my husband leaves a mess after himself and I should rather begin to do what he doesn\u2019t.\u2019 From then on there was a higher atmosphere at work.\u201d (R. C. \u2013 Spain)<\/a> That son we didn\u2019t know<\/strong> \u201cWe were always able to talk and offer moral support to our first son. But with his brother who had a strong character it had always been difficult. Having a teenage boy who didn\u2019t want to communicate created a bad feeling in all of us. Then, he didn\u2019t try at school and teachers were always complaining. My husband and I looked for a common way for us to reach our son. We encouraged each other in loving him as he was, always highlighting his positive qualities even though he seemed like someone we didn\u2019t know. Meanwhile we continued to pray and to knock on Heaven\u2019s door so that God might guide us in the difficult task of parenting. Then came an idea: change school. It worked! Ever since then our son has changed in a positive way. He\u2019s always willing to help out in the house. He\u2019s doing quite well in school and has gone back to church. We\u2019re all enjoying a breath of fresh air.\u201d (B.S. \u2013 Switzerland)  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This month\u2019s Word of Life helps us to resist the temptation to respond in kind, to return evil for evil and to see those who appear to be our enemies as people that need to be loved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-328676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328676\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}