There is a moment in today's first reading that should stop us in our tracks. Stephen is being stoned to death. Rocks are flying. The crowd is furious, and he is dying on the ground. And his last words are not a curse, not a cry for justice, not even a final declaration of his innocence. They are a prayer: "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." It echoes almost word for word what Christ said from the Cross. Which is, of course, the point. Stephen had not simply learned a teaching about forgiveness. He had absorbed it so completely that it poured out of him under the worst possible circumstances, the way clean water still runs clean when the pipe is crushed. We live in a world that has decided forgiveness is for the weak. Retaliation is celebrated, grudges are curated, and the person who refuses to hit back is quietly suspected of having no self-respect. Nowhere is this more visible than in politics. Leaders who extend an olive branch are accused of capitulating. Those...