An actress shares a heart wrenching account of her mother’s murder and how she was able to forgive her mother’s killer.
Cherry Pie Picache is a Fillipino actress whose world crumbled in September of 2014, when her mother, Zenaida Picache, was brutally murdered in her house.
Zenaida’s in-home assistant, Michael Flores, confessed that he murdered the 75-year-old woman while high on drugs during a horrible robbery attempt. Picache was in two minds, whether to forgive her mother’s killer or not.
Pinache explains in a documentary titled, “Radical Love,” in what circumstances she was able to forgive her mother’s killer. Picache said her faith in God helped her to forgive Flores, as she got the revelation that God unconditionally forgives her regularly.
“How can I possibly ask for forgiveness if I cannot forgive?” Flores said. Although she managed to forgive the killer, it was not that she had inner peace and liberty in her heart immediately. She says that forgiveness is a journey she walked with trusted friends and mentors who helped her make peace with her feelings and emotions through a God perspective.
Picache’s family did not support her decision to forgive Flores, but still Picache moved ahead with her decision believing that she would genuinely have feelings of forgiveness towards him.
In 2019, she visited Flores in prison to look him in the eye and talk to him about her mother’s death. A she walked towards the prison, Picache was still doubtful about her decision to forgive Flores. But she prayed for the presence of God to be with her as she would meet Flores.
“God really took over, it’s really by his grace that I was able to do it,” Picache said. “While I was walking, when I was about to see him, I was not fully decided at first if I can forgive him,” she said. “I was willing to forgive him but I was praying to God, ‘I hope I can do it.’”
Pinache said she was praying to God, ‘Please take over.’ When she met Flores, she was crying and then she told him that she had forgiven him, and that he needed to forgive himself, he told her he was sorry and asked for her forgiveness.
She has a message to those who can’t forgive others in painful times, she quotes about radical love: “Radical love is the only thing that can fight evil. Because that is how God works.”
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Picache hopes others in similar situations will hear her story and it will help them to forgive as well. After watching the docu, I only hope and pray that we can be reminded of the radical love we were all blessed with from the start,” Picache said.
“If at least one more person can be reminded of love, compassion and kindness … to care for other human beings and to act on it … and to boost our respect for the gift of life, then it’s all worth it, by God’s grace.”
As we forgive those who have done wrong against us, it’s not that we are letting them off the hook, but we are allowing the compassion of God to touch them and forgive them.