Forgiving the murder of a child

I had not read today's story when I wrote my response to the last story, so I was interested to note this: "If you want to live happily and at ease in this life you have to learn to forgive. It shouldn’t matter if the person is unable to ask for forgiveness or even acknowledge that they’ve done wrong, because forgiveness cannot be based on conditions" -which pretty much said what I was feeling towards. Graciousness is written into the forgiveness 'genetic code'. Resotrative justice then has to be based on the idea of the rehabilitation of offenders.

This story also picks up one of the other themes from earlier reflection; "from the very first day we heard about the death of Victoria, we began praying that one day we would be able to forgive." Forgivness is a process we have to go through. To forgive involves us in dllaing with our reactions and learning to see things clearly and to identify what is wrong and what is excusable and what is truly to be forgiven and to [re]discover a common humanity.