A recent act of forgiveness in the face of tragedy made national headlines. Erika Kirk’s bold witness in publicly forgiving her husband Charlie’s assassin prompted people to consider, “What does forgiveness actually mean and entail?”

In the face of tragedy, how can people forgive those who caused it? How do we as Catholics respond? How can people who have endured tragedy forgive those responsible?

Ask Jennifer Hubbard, who has faced the worst. She and husband Matthew’s 6-year-old daughter, Catherine, died in 2012 in the Sandy Hook School mass shooting.

“Forgiveness, I believe, is a process,” she told the Register. “There’s no single act or rule book as to what forgiveness looks like to everybody. It’s a process that a person goes through with a lot of thoughtful prayer, reflection and reliance on the grace of God, and an understanding of humanity, and a willingness to allow God to move in our lives in the broken places of our hearts. And that takes courage.”

Giving It to God

Hubbard explained that to come to a place of forgiveness for her “was to understand where I was broken and what the offense of losing Catherine in such a horrific manner brought up in myself: the hurt, the pain, the vulnerabilities, the anger, the disappointment and the doubt — all of those internal questions. They bubble up. I think that in the face of tragedy, we’re called to wrestle with them, but not alone — to wrestle with them with Our Lord. When we can work through them with his grace and his guidance, then we can see where his love and his mercy are and allow his healing. I’ve allowed his healing to just touch me in places and in ways that I didn’t think possible.”

When that happens, and we can live in that state of forgiveness, of peace, “We realize that God has better things for us, where our focus is on him and not on an egregious act or those hurts and the wounds that resulted because of it,” she said. “That’s not where our focus is meant to be, or where our focus is intended to be.”

Nor is it meant to be in the expression “forgive and forget.” She does not believe in it. Nor do others.

“The adage ‘forgive and forget’ is really not healthy,” explained Catholic psychologist Timothy Lock, co-author of Choosing Forgiveness: Unleashing the Power of God’s Grace. “Forgiveness is not a feeling. It’s not ignoring; it’s not condoning; it’s not pretending it never happened. Actually, you want to forgive and remember so that you can deepen that forgiveness and live in that forgiveness.”

“There are consequences to everybody’s actions,” Hubbard explained. “We have to understand that there is sin in the world, and we have consequences for our behaviors and the things that we do. However, I believe that forgiveness is separate from that.”

Similarly, Msgr. Charles Pope, a pastor in the Archdiocese of Washington and Register contributor, finds that many people “misunderstand forgiveness. They think, ‘Oh, don’t worry about it anymore.’ That’s not what the teaching on forgiveness is about. At the heart of it, to forgive is to give it for God to take care of. Let God speak to us in something like this: ‘Look, I saw everything that he or she did to you or to someone you love. I saw it all. I heard everything. And I want to assure you’ — says the Lord — ‘that one day they will answer to me for what they’ve done. Now I want you to give it to me. I will handle this. Can you please give it to me?’”

“So to forgive is ultimately to give it for God,” Msgr. Pope said, pointing out how St. Paul referenced the Old Testament passage, “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord, I will repay.”

He clarified that this response is not diminishing the pain or injustice but is rooted in freedom. “This helps us to put down the bowling balls of anger and resentment that we’ve been carrying around. It’s a freeing thing. So forgiveness is for us, not against us.”

Keeping Despair at Bay

Hubbard said that fixating on the offense compounds its hold on one’s heart. “So often we stare at the offense or the person. It could be the simplest thing — an invitation that we didn’t receive to a party. When we fixate on it, it just gets worse. It snowballs.”

In a book she has written on forgiveness set for publication in 2026, Hubbard refers to a chapter titled “Steering Where You Stare” that describes how as Catholics we are called “to focus our gaze on the Lord, look at the cross and just fix our eyes on him.”

She said you can go to the Lord “with everything that you’re feeling and thinking and a trust that he loves you. Even if it’s an undesirable, ugly thought or feeling, he wants it to take it and mold it into something that’s beautiful. That’s when there’s this beautiful transformation, because you’re guided into a space that’s not down a rabbit hole of despair.”

Willful Act

Msgr. Pope emphasized that forgiveness is an act of the will. One way to start:

“Call to mind God’s promise that they will answer to him for what they have done. And then to say, ‘I’m going to give it to you. I’m putting it in your hands.’ It can affect our feelings, maybe not right away, but there’s a certain relief in just knowing God’s going to take care of that one day. We can certainly hope the person repents or whatever, but they will answer to him. And before maybe alleviating the anger, it at least makes us feel more free and relieved.”

Otherwise, unforgiveness can backfire. Msgr. Pope quoted an old saying:

“Refusing to forgive is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die,” explaining, “Because it really gnaws away at us, and we just get bitter. It’s very freeing to just say, ‘There’s not much I can do here now, Lord. It’s all in your hands.’”

He explained forgiveness as a work of God within us, “whereby he acts to free us from the poisonous effects of bitterness and grief that often go with the harm inflicted upon us. Forgiveness is first for us, more so than for the other.”

Serving the Good

Then we can direct our strength and energy to be able to love and be available to others.

Indeed, Hubbard lives this truth, having founded Catherine Violet Hubbard Animal Sanctuary in Newtown, Connecticut, in honor of her daughter; she also writes for Magnificat.

In Ohio, Rachel Muha founded the BrianMuhaFoundation.org to “overcome evil with good,” helping shape a better future for inner-city youth on a path different than those who took the life of her son Brian and his friend in 1999, then students at Franciscan University of Steubenville. Every day, she chooses mercy and forgiveness.

When Muha received a phone call reporting Brian missing, she began praying the Our Father, she recalled to the Register. “And when I got to the words ‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us’ — I prayed the Our Father hundreds of times, all day long, while searching — and those words always made me shiver. So I asked myself, ‘What is this forgiveness God wants from us?’”

“Forgiveness does not mean you are excusing someone, does not mean you think they shouldn’t be held accountable or punished,” Muha explained. “Forgiveness means to refuse to hate or want revenge. And for Christians, the Christian meaning of forgiveness includes doing something good for someone who has hurt us. What is the best thing we can do for someone who has hurt us? Pray for them, that they realize the gravity of what they have done and do what it takes to right the wrong. God asks a lot from us, and he asks that so we have to do it, trusting God will bring good out of evil.”

In her book Legacy of Mercy: A True Story of Murder and a Mother’s Mercy, Muha also observed that forgiveness is not a feeling. “One never feels like forgiving. Forgiveness is an act of the will, not of the emotions. Jesus commands us to forgive so we have to do it. The faster we do it, the better. When Jesus was asked how often we should forgive, He didn’t say anything about waiting until we ‘feel’ like it. He didn’t say ‘Take your time.’ He simply said to forgive over and over again.”

Forgiving does not mean excusing; that will not help anyone. “Our Lord forgave the good thief, but he didn’t take away his punishment.” To those who cannot forgive, she recommends, “Think about what forgiveness really is — it is not absolution; only God can do that. It is refusing to hate and it is doing something, prayer or more, for someone who has hurt us.”

“Also, work with God to bring some good out of evil,” she added. “Do something. Serve others. Serving others heals everyone.”

‘A Journey’

These reactions are confirmed from a psychological perspective too. As founder of Goretti Center for Healing & Forgiveness in Brookfield, Connecticut, Lock treats from a Catholic perspective. “Forgiveness is like a journey. It’s a process,” he said. “It’s not a light switch — done and move on. It’s much more of a dimmer switch.”

He pointed out four parts that constitute forgiveness: 1) Make the choice; 2) release the bad; abandon one’s right to resentment and negative judgment towards the one who injured us; 3) give a good (“Abandoning that right to resentment, we’re fostering the undeserved qualities of compassion, generosity and even love for the offender”); and 4) drop expectations, “abandoning the demand that the offender acknowledge the harm done.”

We have to abandon it even though it is normal to look for it. “But in forgiveness, we’re even letting that go,” Lock said.

“This is where we talk about forgiveness from a Catholic perspective. This is really heroic, really grace-filled. You can’t just do this on your own. This has to be in the context of your relationship with God, which may be one of struggle, but that is still relationship with God.”

What should a person struggling with forgiveness do? Lock offers some advice. “First, be honest with the Lord and say, ‘I don’t want to forgive.’ But you wouldn’t be even saying that unless you had a desire for your heart to move in that direction.” Realize the Lord is merciful and that he is with us in these very painful times.

Someone can pray, “Jesus, I don’t want to forgive this person. Either you have to do it or you have to help me with it,” Lock gave as example. “The Lord will work with that, and it will work in the person’s heart.”

As part of the forgiveness process, he recommends sitting down maybe in church or adoration and noting, with the exact date and time, you forgave the person for the offense (naming the person and offense).

“It’s a moment of prayer … making a prayer and a proclamation, of ‘I’m forgiving this person.’ So that’s the moment of forgiveness.” If waves of feeling unforgiveness come, recommit to forgive. “We don’t have to forgive again because we’ve already forgiven. We’ve got the date written down.”

How does someone grow in a desire for the offending party to experience a good, “to use the Thomistic definition of love, of desiring the good of the other”? Lock observed. Pray, “Lord, help me to grow in that, and help me to deepen that, and help me to act that out.”

That response is really heroic because it goes against our natural response. “And when we do that,” Lock explained, “we see all kinds of benefits in our mental health, even our physical health, even with heart disease. When people hold on to unforgiveness, negative manifestations occur in the body — more depression, more anxiety, more anger. And on the physical side, blood pressure is increased. There are negative health effects to unforgiveness.”

Forgiveness is a process. “And as we are gentle with ourselves, and we seek the Lord, this is something that’s possible,” Lock asserted. “We can see this in our own lives, maybe in little ways, and then we see examples like Jennifer Hubbard in these rather huge movements of forgiveness that really inspire us.”

He pointed to St. Maria Goretti, who forgave the man who murdered her. “This is beyond heroic. But it shows what the heart is capable of with the grace of God. So as we strive to walk in this Catholic life, we seek these examples of living this heroic virtue. And we pray the Lord gives us the grace to live that in our own life.”