Forgiveness prompted by love is the only way to repair the devastation that so often mars our relationships.

One day a woman went to the saintly Father John Vianney, the Curé of Ars, in France, and said, "My husband has not been to the sacraments or to Mass for years. He has been unfaithful, wicked, and unjust. He has just fallen from a bridge and was drowned —a double death of body and soul." The Curé answered, "Madam, there is a short distance between the bridge and the water, and it is that distance which forbids you to judge.

Peace comes with forgiveness. And sometimes forgiveness must be earned—not from other men, but from our own hearts and spirits.

I believed that was the point of real forgiveness: It was freely given. Grace-filled. Unsolicited.

The remedy for most marital stress is not in divorce. It is in repentance and forgiveness, in sincere expressions of charity and service. It is not in separation. It is in simple integrity that leads a man and a woman to square up their shoulders and meet their obligations. It is found in the Golden Rule, a time-honored principle that should first and foremost find expression in marriage.

So many of us make a great fuss of matters of small consequence. We are so easily offended. Happy is the man who can brush aside the offending remarks of another and go on his way.

Somehow forgiveness, with love and tolerance, accomplishes miracles that can happen in no other way.

Each of us can do a little better than we have been doing. We can be a little more kind. We can be a little more merciful. We can be a little more forgiving. We can put behind us our weaknesses of the past and go forth with new energy and increased resolution to improve the world about us, in our homes, in our places of employment, in our social activities.

Given what we have and what we know, we ought to be a better people than we are. We ought to be more Christlike, more forgiving, more helpful and considerate to all around us.

Men are more compassionate/(nobler)/magnanimous/generous than God; for men forgive their dead, but God does not.

Since we do not take a man on his past history, we do not refuse him because of his past history. I never met a man who was thoroughly bad. There is always some good in him if he gets a chance.

Forgive, son; men are men; they needs must err.