The Father Who Forgives: The Cross as a Window into The Father's Heart

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

These are the words of the dying Son to His Good and faithful Father. While Our Lord is the one speaking, the One He is speaking to is revealed to us by this prayer of Son to Father.

In His agony, in the moment of the greatest injustice the world has ever known, Jesus turns not to abstract justice, not to raw power, but to the One He has known from all eternity as “Abba”, as “Father”. The Cross, in all its horror, becomes a window into the Father’s heart precisely because it pierces the Heart of the Son loved by His Father. The Cross opens Christ’s Sacred Heart, and for that reason opens the Father’s Heart to us as well.

The Cross is a moment of love in its greatest and most exalted sense. The Father watches as His only-begotten Son is mocked, scourged, nailed, and lifted up between criminals. And when that Son uses His last strength to cry, “Father, forgive them,” the Father does not recoil in anger. He does not thunder from the clouds in righteous fury to save His Beloved Son. He listens. And He forgives, just as His Son asks Him to. This is no cold transaction. This is a family.

We know this intuitively. When someone wounds your child, it stirs something primal in you. The fatherly instinct is different but related to our instinct for self-preservation. The difference being that the fatherly instinct is to completely neutralize any threat to their child, even at the cost of his life. The heart of a father beats more for his son than for himself. And yet God the Father is so good, so faithful, so far beyond our natural instincts, that in the moment His Son asks for mercy for His murderers, the Father does not hesitate to forgive not because they deserve it, but because His Son who alone pleases Him asks Him to. 

The Cross is the greatest act of mercy the world has ever known. It is not just Christ’s mercy. It is the Father’s.

The Parable of the Prodigal Son is often told with gentle tones, as if the son’s sins are trivial and the father’s mercy is easy. But when you see the parable through the lens of Calvary, it opens a window into the Heart of the Forgiving Father. We are not just wayward sons that could easily be forgiven with a party and some new clothes, we are the ones whose forgiveness costs The Father everything. And the Father doesn’t wait for us to stumble back to Him in guilt. No, He sees us from a long way off, runs to meet us, and throws a robe around the shoulders still stained with the blood of His Beloved Son. The robe of salvation was bought with the Precious Blood of His Only Son, which we celebrate in a special way this July.

That is the Father Jesus knows. That is the Father who forgives.

So many people are afraid of God the Father. Some because of wounds inflicted by earthly fathers. Some because they can’t separate “Father” from “judge” or “disciplinarian”. Others because deep down, they don’t believe they’re lovable, at least not by someone as holy as God.

But Jesus would not have prayed that prayer unless He knew the Heart it would reach. He would not have said “Father, forgive them” unless He was absolutely certain the Father wanted to forgive, that He was just waiting for the opportunity, for His plan to reach its consummation in the victory of Christ on the Cross, that He loves you even when you don’t love yourself.

This is the truth of our faith: Divine mercy is not a concession made by a harsh God because the nice Son begged Him to go easy on us. No. “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son.” The Father didn’t need convincing. Mercy began with Him.

So what do we do with this?

First, we trust Him. Not vaguely, not sentimentally, but really. We entrust our sin to the Father who already forgave us before we knew to ask.

Second, we forgive others not because they deserve it, but because we didn’t either, and the Father forgave us anyway.

Third, we return home. If you’ve been hiding from the Father, fearing His justice or projecting onto Him the wounds of your past, stop. Come home. You are not a disappointment. You are not beyond hope. You are the child the Father has never stopped watching for on the road. You are the child of the Father of Jesus, the Father who gave Everything to get you back. The only thing between us and the Father is our pride, the pride not to humble ourselves and accept His mercy and His plan for our life. 

As we continue this Great Novena in preparation for the 2000th anniversary of our salvation, let’s let go of any distorted image of God that keeps us from the joy of knowing and loving Him. Let’s pray like children. Let’s trust like children. Let’s ask for the mercy that Jesus already won for us, and that the Father has already chosen to give.