Editor’s note: The following is a powerful testimony on forgiveness by one of the survivors of the shooting at the Century 16 Theater complex in Aurora, Colorado. It took place on July 20, 2012 during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises.
Eagan Holmes, 24 at the time, entered the theater, threw several canisters of tear gas and then began randomly shooting people.
There were 13 deaths including an unborn baby and 70 injuries. Fifty-eight people were injured by gunfire and the remaining while fleeing the theater or from the tear gas. Holmes was later arrested and is now serving 12 consecutive life sentences.
By Peter Baklinski
“I do, I do forgive him. I do. That’s God’s mercy right there.” -An interview with Bonnie Kate Pourciau, a survivor of the Aurora theater massacre, shows what a miracle of mercy it is to forgive.
(Aurora, CO)—In the midst of the darkness and chaos of the Aurora theatre shooting last month, one eighteen-year-old woman lay on the ground, her knee completely shattered by a stray bullet from the gun of the shooting’s sole suspect, James Holmes.
While bullets continued to fall around her, Bonnie Kate Pourciau prayed desperately for her life to be spared. Ultimately the young woman’s prayer was heard, and she escaped with her life. However, she has since undergone numerous reconstructive surgeries that have left her bedridden, in excruciating pain.
But despite the hell that Bonnie Kate has been through, she told LifeSiteNews.com in an telephone interview last week that she has made the choice to forgive the man that the world has condemned as a heartless, psychopathic monster, and wishes simply that she could embrace him, and tell him that hope and forgiveness are still available to him.
“When I was shot, in the midst of all the chaos, I didn’t really think of the shooter as a person, as someone who was trying to kill me,” said Bonnie Kate from her hospital bed last week. “But later, as I saw him on TV, I just wanted to cry. I felt so much for this man who is so broken, who doesn’t know the hope that we Christians have, who doesn’t understand the mercy of God, and who doesn’t know Jesus.“
During the hail of bullets [that night in the theater], Bonnie Kate remembers pulling her friend Elizabeth down to the ground and crouching behind the theater chairs.
“At that point I was just praying inside my head: ‘Father, please protect us, please keep us safe. I don’t know what’s going on, but please keep us safe if that be Your will. Please preserve our lives.’”
After getting hit, Bonnie Kate grabbed for Elizabeth and began praying out loud, saying “Father, please, come to the rescue. Preserve our lives. Please keep us safe.”
Bonnie Kate remembers that even though she had been shot, she was not scared.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” she said, “but God filled me with a peace. I felt Him so near, and He just sort of wrapped us up. And even though I was in a lot of pain in the midst of that darkness, chaos, and presence of evil, I felt that God was near. He filled me with peace, and I wasn’t afraid . . . Even in the middle of pain that was so violent that it made my whole body shake, I felt God there, holding me, comforting me.”
As she lies in her hospital bed, thinking about all the people who lost family members, she prays that she will not be made bitter or jaded by the shootings and that she will not harbor hatred for the man who so brutally ended so many lives, and harmed others.
“It just breaks my heart to see how the darkness and the woundedness just took over this man. He just looks so hollow, empty, and filled with darkness. My heart breaks for him and has compassion for him.”
“When I really think about this matter, I wish I could tell him—and I wish that he could understand and know and feel—that there is forgiveness. I wish he could repent and see how broken he is, so that he could see what he has done and how he has hurt these people.”
Bonnie Kate says that her choice to forgive the gunman is not always easy to live by.
“Sometimes I will get angry when I am hurting and think, ‘Oh! Why did he do that?’ But then I think about where he is at, and my heart breaks for him and I just wish I could hug him and even tell him that there is forgiveness. I wish he could understand his sin and understand what he has done, but not so that he would dwell on it, but so that he would be able to turn and understand that there is forgiveness from God who sent His son Jesus to die for evil broken people like him.”
“When people say to me ‘Oh, Bonnie Kate, you’re so strong and amazing’, I say ‘I am not strong and amazing but I have a strong and amazing God whose grace I rely upon.’”
The young woman says that her relationship with God is what makes all the difference.
“I do, I do forgive him. I do. That’s God’s mercy right there. Because I know that on my own strength, Bonnie Kate would just hate him. Yeah, I do forgive him. I do. I am in a lot of pain, and it’s hard, but I do forgive him.”
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Used by permission
OpentheWord.org 
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