Lord, I would like so much to be able to forgive. I dispose myself to it. I pray and it seems that I have washed my heart from all the sorrow.

However, I just need to see the person who assaulted me, slandered, betrayed and all the feeling returns.

This has been very bad for me, my Lord. I feel this weight inside of me, a bad-feeling and I have the impression that I have lost some part of my capacity to love.

Due to all I had suffered, I became suspicious. When a friend comes to hug me, I do not give all of myself. I start to think if he is being honest.

If he is not, as others, just faking some care that does not really belongs to his soul, and his attitude is only convenience. Even worse, I keep wondering when this friend will offer me the bitter fruit of the abandonment.

This is really bad, Lord, I know. However, I had become like that, after so much ingratitude I received from others, found in so many leaves, in many evasions of people to whom I gave my heart.

I turn the pages of the Gospel and I read them, between emotion and restlessness. I search on the life of the great followers of Your message and I ask myself:

Why have they got the ability to forgive? What am I missing to get that?

In the screen of memory, I see the image of the first Christian martyr, Stephen, stoned by love of the truth he propagated.

Still dying, with her sister, who discovers being the bride of his executioner, has words of forgiveness. Not the words of someone who, by dying, decides to give forgiveness.

Those are words of who shows to be grateful for having the opportunity to recover his beloved sister, after so many years forced to be apart.

Those are words of who is happy and will be able to die in peace, not just because he was faithful to Jesus until the end, but for knowing his sister will be safe for the one who had taken his life away.

Christ blesses them all... I do not see your fiancée as an enemy, I see him as a brother...

Saul must be good and generous. He has defended Moses until the end... When he meets Jesus, he will serve Him with the same fervor.

Be to him the lovely and faithful wife.

Unconditional forgiveness. He could have thought he would enjoy the happiness of living again with his sister, after many years.

They could stay together, as they were before the tragedy that separated them. But, no.

His words are not as to reproach those who had condemned the stoning. There is only forgiveness inside of him.

For all this, Lord, I beg You: Help me forgive. Teach me to forgive. Promote in me the change to better.

Do not let me lose myself by the dark alleys of sorrow, sadness and disgust.

I wish I can believe people again, believe in the sincere friendship, in flawless charity.

Remembering Your extraordinary example in the cross, concerned for those who have made You suffer and die, I ask You: Help me.

I know that, when forgiveness be the tonic of my acts, I will smile again, have faith, live intensely.

Help me, then, Lord Jesus, forgive. Because, I do not only desire to be happy, but equally I wish be, for those who live with me, a reason of contentment and joy.

Spiritist Moment Team, with statements attributed to Stephen, taken from chapter 8, part I, from the book Paulo e Estêvão, by the Spirit Emmanuel, psychographed by Francisco Cândido Xavier, ed. Feb.
April 19.2011.