I would share just a few more thoughts on the ninth step: Remembrance of Wrongs. The remembrance of wrongs is not a minor imperfection, however natural being permanently angry with those who have done us ill may seem to be. Furthermore, being a spiritual sin (and, therefore, a sin easy to disguise and ignore), the refusal to forgive is no less common in religious people than in anyone else. St. John says: “Never imagine that this dark vice is a passion of no importance, for it often reaches out even to spiritual men and women”.

Even the most devout Christians can be brutally unforgiving. For though we may know the Gospel like the back of our hand, we yet manage “to make excuses in sins,” even to the point of applying wishful hermeneutics (ways of interpreting) to the Scriptures in order to justify our own weakness. We often hear people attempt to argue away the words of Jesus which deal with the love of one’s enemies and those who hate us. Forgiveness is something the majority of Christians struggle with, whether they care to admit it or not. I suspect that all of us have struggled with forgiving those who we feel have hurt us, unjustly accused us of wrong, or have spoken ill of us.

But while we must always be compassionate to human weaknesses and not condemn Christians for being nothing more than human, we should at the very least learn to ask God to help us and have pity on us for being unforgiving. That would be a start! Alas, too many of us refuse to even admit that we should forgive, and we fail to see how hypocritical we are for not doing so. Thus we turn Christ’s commandment to forgive into a naïve platitude, rather than a very real and stern commandment by which we shall all be judged. Let us pray thus: Lord, I believe I should forgive, help me to really believe it. This 9th step is critical in our development.