I was one then, and my five-year-old brother, Daniel, had slipped through the large gate in the courtyard where we had an apartment. He went to the nearby small military base—just two blocks away—to play with "his" soldiers. On earlier walks through the neighbourhood, he had found some friends there—soldiers in training, bored and in need of diversion even if it came from an energetic five-year-old.
On that fateful day in 1957, one of them put him on a horse-drawn bread wagon. As they were passing through the gate on a bumpy cobblestone road, Daniel leaned sideways and his head got stuck between the post and the wagon. The horses kept going. He died on the way to hospital—a son lost to parents who adored him and an older brother that I would never know.
Aunt Milica should have watched him. But she didn't. She let him slip out, she didn't look for him, and he was killed. But my parents never told me that she was partly responsible. They forgave her ….
The pain of that terrible loss still lingers on, but bitterness and resentment against those responsible are gone. It was healed at the foot of the cross as my mother gazed on the Son who was killed and reflected about the God who forgave. Aunt Milica was forgiven, and there was no more talk of her guilt, not even talk of her having been guilty. As far as I was concerned, she was innocent.
Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge: Grace and Forgiveness in a Culture Stripped of Grace (Zondervan, 2005)
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