Rarely has the truth that forgiveness constitutes the core of Christian faith been communicated more powerfully and more publicly than it was on Sept. 21, immediately after Erika Kirk cast her tear-streaked eyes briefly heavenward to gather strength for what she was about to say.

“On the cross, Our Savior said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they not know [sic] what they do,’” Erika said, speaking directly about the killer of her husband, Charlie, during his memorial service in Glendale, Arizona. “That young man, I forgive him.”

No one would ever have asked Erika Kirk to offer this monumental Christian witness at this moment, only 10 days after the Turning Point USA co-founder was gunned down on the campus of Utah Valley University as he fielded questions during one of his trademark “Prove Me Wrong” rallies.

Surely, most people, as a result of being robbed so cruelly of love and companionship and strength, and of shared dreams of a long and fulfilling family life together with young children, would feel drawn toward anger and perhaps even toward hate.

Yet, directly inspired by the words and actions of Jesus, Erika instead forgave her husband’s killer.

Without the gift of Christian faith, hope and love, this response can seem not merely inexplicable, but also profoundly unjust. Doesn’t the perpetrator of such a hateful act deserve to be hated?

No, not if you are an authentic Christian disciple.

“I forgive him because it was what Christ did and is what Charlie would do,” Erika said. “The answer to hate is not hate. The answer we know from the Gospel is love and always love.”

Although President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and numerous other members of the administration and the U.S. Congress were in attendance, Erika wasn’t seeking to score political points with her words. As the grief-stricken widow noted repeatedly, Charlie’s mission was never fundamentally political, even though Turning Point USA is closely aligned with the Republican Party and he was a supporter and friend of the president and the vice president.

From its inception, Turning Point was always principally religious in nature, Erika stressed, and oriented primarily toward helping “the lost boys of the West.” The “turning point” her husband proposed to these floundering young men was that they should discard the false claims of contemporary secularist ideologies and in their place embrace the transcendent truths of Christian discipleship and the invigorating challenges of becoming strong and selfless husbands and fathers.

This, Charlie insisted, is how God intends for young men to live out their masculine vocation.

It is sometimes said that to understand all is to forgive all. Like Charlie, Erika understands that countless young men of our era lack sound direction and have no coherent vision about how to live constructively. In consequence, they become easy prey for the numerous evils that beset today’s digitalized societies. Her own realization of this crisis of manhood contributed significantly to her ability to extend forgiveness to the “lost boy” who assassinated her husband and broke her own heart.

Bishop Robert Barron, who has made reaching out to disaffected young men a central part of his own priestly and episcopal ministry, was among the crowd of more than 100,000 in attendance at the Arizona service. The Catholic bishop from Minnesota praised its unapologetic public display of Christian faith afterward on X, and he highlighted Erika Kirk’s expression of forgiveness as “the single most moving moment for me.”

Unfortunately, President Trump responded in a starkly different way. Unlike Charlie and Erika Kirk, “I hate my opponent and I don’t want the best for them,” was his declaration in his remarks that concluded the memorial service. He should have done better.

Jesus knows there’s a better way, and so does Erika Kirk. As Erika affirmed in Glendale, so painfully yet so eloquently, an unshakable commitment to love is the only way to achieve lasting reconciliation, nationally as well as personally.