When a dear friend succumbed to cancer years ago and when a relative passed on from the same disease, I did not see a common denominator until recently when another friend was diagnosed with cancer. My friend who had died had harbored so much anger and hate at how her husband had philandered, abandoned her and their only son when he began to taste the power of money. See, when they married, she was the one who was economically well off. They lived in a home given by her parents and she alone provided for him and their child. When he finally found a good-paying job, instead of taking his turn to provide for them, he indulged in drinking, womanizing and gambling. He started coming home very late until he rarely came home. When he did, it was only to sleep for long hours, get fresh clothes, and then hasten to leave again. This angered her so much that one day she threw his clothes out of the house and never let him in again. She could not forgive him as he never said sorry to her.
My relative, on the other hand, lost his only son at the young age of nine. The boy was the extended family’s favorite for being extraordinarily bright and charming. Since the boy’s death, my relative never forgave God. He stopped going to church and refused to enter it even when the Mass was being offered for his son. He also stopped participating in religious traditions of the family like the reading of Christ’s passion and death (pabasa) during Lent. Years later, he contracted cancer and died.
What bothers me is, I am now witnessing another friend struggling to fight the big C. She is religious and prayerful but has not forgiven her husband for abandoning her and their three children to live with another woman. She was left alone to raise their children and send them to school. She refuses to file for a declaration of nullity of their marriage because she said, it would be giving her worthless husband his freedom in a silver platter. She also vowed to fight any attempt on his part to get their marriage voided. Thus, to date, she is tied to him in hate and bitterness.
It dawned on me that the common factor in all these three persons was their refusal to forgive. This drove me to research if there is any connection between non-forgiveness and physical illness. I discovered that there have been thousands of papers written on the subject and the common message is that refusal to forgive is poison and bondage. Studies say that if an offended person does not forgive, he turns himself over to the torturers because the one who hates is the one that suffers, not the hated. When we do not forgive, we hold on to bad experience, to the pain, to the trauma. This can cause fear, depression, frustration, anxiety, self-hatred, and loneliness. It’s self-destructive as the hater clings to self- righteousness and the knife that stabs him. A writer said that non-forgiveness results in emotional, physical and spiritual bondages. He said that 90 percent of all health, marital, family and financial problems come from non-forgiveness.
According to Dr. Steven Standiford, chief of surgery at the Cancer Treatment Centers of America, refusing to forgive makes people sick and keeps them that way. Forgiveness therapy is thus now being used to help patients with cancer and other chronic illnesses. Of all cancer patients, 61 percent have forgiveness issues, Dr. Michael Barry, author of The Forgiveness Project, said. Chronic anxiety and anger produce excess adrenaline and cortisol in the body which depletes the production of natural killer cells or antibodies which are the body’s foot soldiers in the fight against cancer, Dr. Barry explained. Most people do not realize what a burden anger and hatred are until they let them go.
How can one forgive? He must remember that he too has caused pain to someone at one time or another. No one is without fault or sin, after all. Therapists who help patients unburden themselves of anger tell them that when Jesus was tortured and nailed to the cross, he asked God, his father, to forgive his tormentors “for they know not what they do.” When people hurt us, we react in varying degrees of anger or hate, depending on how seriously or lightly we perceive the offense to be. It will help us release our anger when we realize that the offender may not even know that he has caused us pain. Further, therapists say, God loves us so much that his repeated admonition for us is, “forgive, forgive, forgive” because He knows that anger and hatred can destroy us.
This Christmas, the greatest gift we can all give ourselves is forgiveness. It heals the body, restores our peace and connects us with our Creator. We must realize how much He has forgiven us for all our sins and acts of indifference.
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