Reconciliation with One’s Adversaries

5. Be reconciled  as quickly  as possible with your adversary, while you are with him on the way so that he does not hand you over to the judge, and so that the judge does not hand your over to the Minister  of Justice, so that you may not be imprisoned. Verily, I say to you that you will not leave there as long as you have not paid the last farthing. (Mt. 5:25-26)

6. In the practice of forgiveness and the good in general, there is more than a moral effect: there is also a physical effect. We know that death does not free us from our enemies. In their hatred, vengeful spirits often pursue beyond the grave those against whom they harbor rancor; thus the proverb that states, “The beast dead, the venom is dead”24 is erroneous when applied to human beings. An evil spirit awaits the one against whom it wishes evil to be imprisoned in the body and less free in order to more easily torment it, striking it in its interests or dearest affections. In this fact, one can see the cause of most cases of obsession, especially those that display a certain gravity such as subjugation and possession. Obsessed and possessed persons are therefore almost always victims of a prior revenge which they probably caused by their conduct. God allows this in order to punish them for the evil they committed, or if they did not commit it, then for having lacked indulgence and charity by refusing to forgive. Consequently, from the point of view of one’s  future peace-of-mind, it is important to repair as quickly as possible the wrongs one has committed against one’s neighbor, and to forgive one’s enemies in order to eliminate, before death, all motives of dissention and all causes based on ulterior animosity. In this way, one may make of an obstinate enemy in this world a friend in the other – or at least put oneself on the side of the good – and God will not allow the one who has forgiven to be the target of vengeance. When Jesus recommends  being reconciled as quickly as possible with one’s  adversary, it is not only with a view to mitigating discords in the course of one’s current existence, but rather to keep them from continuing in future ones. “You will not leave there,” he says, “as long as you have not paid the last farthing,” meaning, as long as you have not completely satisfied God’s justice.