The Catholic Center
for Family Spirituality
at
Immaculate Conception Seminary
School of Theology presents:
70 x 7: Faith, Family, & Forgiveness
High School Essay Contest
About the Award
Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology’s aims to increase high school students’
knowledge and understanding of the importance of forgiveness and the power it has in our lives.
Winners of the essay contest receive a monetary prize, and portions of their essays will be read aloud
at the final retreat of the Forgiveness Retreat Series on June 6, 2015.
Topic
Students may choose to answer 1 of 3 questions considering the theme of forgiveness from selections
from either the Bible, Les Miserables, or Anna Karenina. See questions on following pages.
Entry Criteria
All students in grades 9-12 living in the Archdiocese of Newark and surrounding dioceses enrolled in
home, private or public schools are eligible to apply. Students must submit original work.
Essays should be 500-800 words in length, typed and double-spaced with 12 point sized font.
Submissions should be emailed as PDFs to theology@shu.edu with the title “High School Essay
Contest Submission” in the subject line.
Deadline
Essays may be sent in as early as February 20, 2015 and not later than April 30, 2015.
Award Recognition
First Place: $250
Second Place: $100
Third Place: $50
Questions can be directed to:
Anna Capizzi at theology@shu.edu | 973.275.2440
70 x 7: Faith, Family, & Forgiveness
High School Essay Contest
Option 1: Les Misérables
First Passage
“The bishop approached him and said, in a lower voice, ‘Do not forget, ever, that you have
promised me to use this silver to become an honest man.’ Jean Valjean, who had no recollection
of any such promise, stood dumbfounded. The bishop had stressed these words as he spoke them.
He continued solemnly, ‘Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil, but to good. It is
your soul I am buying for you. I withdraw it from dark thoughts and from the spirit of perdition,
and I give it to God!” (105-6)
Second Passage
Volume V, Book 4, Chapter 1 titled “Javert Derailed” can be found at
http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/135/pg135.txt
In the novel Les Misérables, the protagonist’s Jean Valjean’s first experience of forgiveness
comes after 19 hard years of imprisonment. After his release, he stays with Bishop Myriel, and
steals silverware. When the authorities confront Myriel about the theft, the Bishop acts as
though the silverware had been a gift, saying that Valjean had forgotten to also take the
candlesticks. Bishop Myriel reminds Valjean about this act of mercy and challenges him to go
forth changed. Valjean takes up the spirit of Myriel’s generosity and makes it the cornerstone of
his new life. Eventually he gives pardon and freedom to his long-standing enemy Inspector
Javert, a policeman committed to unbending justice. Javert cannot accept this mercy and
commits suicide.
In a 500-800 word essay, please include your answers to the following questions in 1 and 2:
1. Compare the scenes where the bishop forgives Valjean and where Javert is unable to accept
Valjean’s forgiveness. Valjean’s acceptance leads to transformation and new life while Javert’s
inability to accept leads him to commit suicide. Why do you think they respond so differently to
forgiveness? What are the consequences of their responses?
2. What was your first experience of forgiveness? How did that shape the way you approached
forgiving others after they had wronged you? Why does God require us to forgive others in
order to receive his mercy? Is there a connection between the spirit of forgiveness, the Holy
Spirit, and happiness?
(Further options on following pages)
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70 x 7: Faith, Family, & Forgiveness
High School Essay Contest
Option 2: Anna Karenina
First Passage
“The nervous agitation of Alexey Alexandrovitch kept increasing, and had by now reached such
a point that he ceased to struggle with it. He suddenly felt that what he had regarded as nervous
agitation was on the contrary a blissful spiritual condition that gave him all at once a new
happiness he had never known. He did not think that the Christian law that he had been all his
life trying to follow, enjoined on him to forgive and love his enemies; but a glad feeling of love
and forgiveness for his enemies filled his heart. He knelt down, and laying his head in the curve
of her arm, which burned him as with fire through the sleeve, he sobbed like a little child. She
put her arm around his head, moved towards him, and with defiant pride lifted up her eyes.”
(5.17).
Second Passage
“‘Dear Madame, To be reminded of you might have results for your son in leading to questions
on his part which could not be answered without implanting in the child's soul a spirit of censure
towards what should be for him sacred, and therefore I beg you to interpret your husband's
refusal in the spirit of Christian love. I pray to Almighty God to have mercy on you. Countess
Lidia’
This letter attained the secret object which Countess Lidia Ivanovna had concealed from herself.
It wounded Anna to the quick.
For his part, Alexey Alexandrovitch, on returning home from Lidia Ivanovna's, could not all that
day concentrate himself on his usual pursuits, and find that spiritual peace of one saved and
believing which he had felt of late. The thought of his wife, who had so greatly sinned against
him, and towards whom he had been so saintly, as Countess Lidia Ivanovna had so justly told
him, ought not to have troubled him; but he was not easy…. The memory of how he had received
her confession of infidelity on their way home from the races (especially that he had insisted only
on the observance of external decorum, and had not sent a challenge) tortured him like a
remorse. He was tortured too by the thought of the letter he had written her; and most of all, his
forgiveness, which nobody wanted, and his care of the other man's child made his heart burn
with shame and remorse” (5.25).
(Continued on next page)
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70 x 7: Faith, Family, & Forgiveness
High School Essay Contest
In the novel Anna Karenina, Alexey Alexandrovitch Karenin is a cold fish who, when his wife
confesses to him that she committed adultery, does not respond with passion, but insists on
external observances of decorum to preserve his career. As all around him discover the scandal
in his personal life and laugh behind his back, his professional life and composure disintegrate.
But Karenin’s crisis warms up his emotional life and brings him to forgive Anna from his heart
(Passage #1). Disapproving society and hypocritical friends, however, weaken his hold on the
spirit of forgiveness and rob him of his spiritual happiness (Passage #2).
In a 500-800 word essay, please include your answers to the following questions in 1 and 2:
1. Compare the first passage which describes Karenin’s decision to forgive Anna and the second
passage in which he abandons that decision. Why does forgiveness bring him inner joy and peace
and why does unforgiveness rob him of these?
2. What was your first experience of forgiveness? How did that shape the way you approached
forgiving others after they had wronged you? Why does God require us to forgive others in
order to receive his mercy? Is there a connection between the spirit of forgiveness, the Holy
Spirit, and happiness?
Option 3: The Parables of the Prodigal Son and the Unforgiving Steward
Read the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:11-32 and the Parable of the Unforgiving
Steward in Matthew 18:21-35.
In a 500-800 word essay, please include your answers to the following questions in 1, 2, and 3:
1. In the first parable, how does the Father react when he sees his son return? What does he do?
What is the relationship between forgiveness and memory?
2. The second parable, Jesus tells Peter that he must forgive his brother “seventy times seven”
times, or a limitless number of times. He illustrates this teaching by a parable about a steward
who has been forgiven much but who fails to extend the forgiveness to those who owe him little.
What is the connection between the teaching and the parable? Why do you think the
Unforgiving Steward fails to extend the forgiveness he received? Is the master of the
Unforgiving Steward right to restore the original debt and punish the steward?
3. What was your first experience of forgiveness? How did that shape the way you approached
forgiving others after they had wronged you? Why does God require us to forgive others in
order to receive his mercy? Is there a connection between the spirit of forgiveness, the Holy
Spirit, and happiness? Describe an instance where you had to apologize to another. What were
your emotions and thoughts before and after the apology?
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