The theme of this preparatory Sunday for Great and Holy Lent, forgiveness, is so simple to conceptually understand, but it is at the same time, so difficult to practice. In many respects, our Faith is much easier to accept than to apply, to teach than to live. However, Orthodox Christianity is a way of life, a way of being. Never forget that the first Christians were called the People of the Way. We follow Christ's Path and His Way. We are His loyal, obedient Sheep, not His independent, stubborn goats.

 

           In today's memorable passage, Jesus admonishes us not to make spectacles of ourselves in our prayer. We should not be the center of attention. We should point people to God Who Alone should be the center and focus of our lives, and around Whom are lives should revolve. After all, we are not created to be anthropocentric beings who dizzy ourselves and spiral out of control, falling headlong into a vortex that sucks us down into a spiritual abyss of our own making.

 

We were created Theocentric beings whose lives revolve around God Who keeps us from wandering away from Him and one another like the sun keeps the planets from breaking away from their source of stability, warmth, protection, and light. We should in no way be an obstacle to people seeing, hearing, and coming to God.

 

We should declare the glory of God and bring people to God. Like the moon that is brilliant because it reflects the light of the sun, we should reflect the glory of God and give God all the glory, for like the moon, without sun, we are dull, cold, dark, and lifeless without God.

 

 Unfortunately, and oftentimes, our egos get in the way, and we want to impress others, and God, with obsequious gesticulations and mawkish, insincere theatre. To continue with the metaphor, our pride eclipses the sun and deprives people of the glorious, transfiguring light. Such self-centered behavior is Pharisaic at its worst.

 

           When we are ostentatious, we foolishly and arrogantly think we can impress the Word of God with our many words. Some people become inebriated in their own verbosity and fall over themselves and their long phylacteries in self-worship--idolatry. Jesus warns against such people and such behaviour. 

 

Prayer is dialogue, not monologue. We must listen. In His Infinite Wisdom, God gave us two eyes and ears but one mouth. Let us learn from our anatomy. We learn nothing when we are talking or thinking about what we want, or what we want to say. In short, we must be humble, still and calm, with eyes open to observe and ears attentive to hear. The greatest of the Saints, the Theotokos (the Birth-giver of God), was humble and receptive. Heed the lesson of the Orthodox Icons of our Saints. Their eyes and ears are large, and their mouths are diminutive.

 

           When we pray, Christ wants us to be simple, quiet, and humble. That is, after all, how He chose to come to the world, as a simple, humble, speechless Child (verbum infans). That is also the manner by which He chose to save us.

 

Ponder the Mystery of God’s Plan for salvation: The Pre-Eternal Word of God came to us as a Child with no words, and even when He was crucified, He was like a Spotless Lamb Who before His shearers was dumb. There is, ironically, much to be said about Holy Simplicity and Silence.

 

           Who are we, therefore, not to follow His Example, and who are we to try to impress Him with many useless, redundant words, pretentious incantations, and sterile formulae? Do we dare think we can add to His Sacrifice? Do we dare think we can add to or improve upon what He has accomplished for us and the universe? He, in fact, warns us clearly not to "use vain repetitions as the heathen."

 

           Knowing the proclivity of our Fallen State, and as the True Physician of our souls and bodies, Jesus gives us a prescription to follow in order to keep us focused and centered so as not to get dizzy and fall into our self-imposed traps. He gives us the Lord's Prayer. Upon this, we cannot improve, for it is indeed His Prayer, the Perfect Prayer.

 

           But we must notice and take heed about one clause in The Perfect Prayer that carries the theme of this fourth of the preparatory Sundays before Great and Holy Lent: "as we forgive those who trespass against us."

 

This is simple, but it is very difficult for most of us to follow. The clause is a conditional one. It means its condition must be fulfilled, if we truly want what follows. In other words, if we want our Father in Heaven to forgive us, then we must first forgive our brothers and sisters on earth. 

 

           We cannot escape it. Did not the Father forgive the Prodigal Son? Did not the Master forgive the servant what he owed and expected the servant forgiven to forgive his fellow servant in return by following the example of the Master? Does not Jesus will forgiveness and redemption and not judgment and condemnation?

 

Did not God send His Son for the forgiveness of the world and not the destruction of the world? Is not forgiveness the very last thing Jesus did before He died horrifically, naked, tortured, and disfigured before His Mother? Did not the Father forgive and sacrifice the Lamb for the Feast when the Prodigal son returned and asked for forgiveness?

 

           Forgiveness was Jesus' last act upon the earth before His death. Through forgiveness, the undeserving thief, at the last moment, with Jesus' last word and last breath, was granted Paradise. The One Who created the universe with His First Word, saved creation with His Last Word upon the earth. 

 

If this was Jesus' will for fallen humanity, and this is Jesus' will for us as His Followers, who are we not to forgive? After all, are we not His followers? Should we not then follow His Perfect Teaching and Example? Should we not be obedient to the Master?

 

           Forgiveness is Divine. Forgiveness is God's Will embodied and Exalted up High upon the Cross. When we forgive, we cooperate with His Divine Grace and participate in His Divine transfiguring power. When we forgive, we obey God's Will for us, and we find redemption from the disobedience, and its tragic, cosmic consequences of the First Man, Adam, whom Christ, the Second Adam, came to forgive, reclaim, heal, restore, and reconcile.

 

Who are we to question His Teaching, His Example, His Purpose, and not obey? Are we not His rational Sheep? Then should we not hear and follow His Voice? Is not His Shepherd's Staff our Standard that guides us, gathers us, protects us, leads us, and saves us?

 

           Knowing us as our Creator, and intimately as our Brother, having become a human being perfectly and, therefore, perfectly sharing our human nature, He knows we must forgive for our own physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being--both now, and for eternity.

 

           You see, forgiveness is as mysterious as life itself. Truly, forgiveness is for others, but it is also, and moreover and ultimately, for us. When we forgive others, we help ourselves even more than we help them. Hence, by helping others, we help ourselves, and we instantly feel better.

 

By forgiving, we become God-like, we obey God's will for us, and we follow His Perfect Human Example, but we also liberate ourselves from the paralyzing anger and smoldering resentment that comes from not letting go of any real--or perceived--wrong perpetrated against us that we perpetuate ourselves.

 

This anger and resentment eat away at us and devour us. They eviscerate us spiritually and emotionally, harming us and those who love us, without doing any good whatsoever. Indeed, resentment becomes an insatiable, insidious, merciless spiritual cancer; but this cancer can easily be cured, and Jesus Christ, as the True Physician of soul and body, gives us the freeing and redemptive medicine--"forgiveness."

 

           Ironically, when we do not forgive and let it go, we give the person who hurt us power and control over us. We become slaves to the harbored and nurtured memory of the hurt or insult. Forgiveness liberates us from this pernicious obsession and empowers us. Not forgiving, we become prisoners in a hell of our own making. Furthermore, it damages relationships with others who were never party, or even aware of, the insult or the harm someone else caused us.

 

This alienates us and casts us outside of fellowship and community. This then becomes our own doing, and not the other's. If we forgive as God did for us on the Cross, then we will find the Gates of Paradise opened to us and experience a foretaste of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth by doing and living what our Lord has taught and done for us.

 

           Shakespeare famously quipped that “to err is human, but to forgive is divine.” We quote that aphorism often, and it has become somewhat cliché, but if you ponder it from the viewpoint of an Orthodox Christian Anthropologist, it is quite profound.

 

We are fallen. The ancient Greek word for sin means to err or miss the mark, like an archer. As sinners we are off the mark and off the course. As sinners, for our salvation, we are in need of forgiveness, which leads to healing and reconciliation. Yes, forgive is divine, but furthermore, to forgive is to live. Forgiveness is to be in Christ, to liberate, let live, and live forever in Christ.

 

When Adam (being a composite of the material and spiritual and a microcosm of the universe) sinned and fell, all human nature and creation broke fellowship with God. In order to be reconciled to God and to one another, we had to be forgiven by God. The distance between the Creator and the created, God and Man, is infinite. Only God could bridge the unfathomable chasm created and bring about the restoration.

 

For this reason, God sent His Son (The “Reason” of God), the New Adam, to reconcile us, and He did it by forgiving us on the Cross, the New Tree, to redeem us from the curse that hung upon the Old Tree which deceived the Old Adam into thinking, and erring (sinning) that he could be god on his own terms apart from the Fellowship of God.

 

           Thus, the last act Christ did upon this earth for His creation was to forgive us on the Cross (The New Tree) and open once again the Gates of Paradise once closed. The sin that lost us Paradise was indeed human, but the forgiveness that gained us Paradise was truly Divine.

 

 All this was made possible by the God Man, Jesus Christ, Who taught us to forgive as He forgave. As His disciples, we are called to do as He taught, and we proclaim it together in the Perfect Prayer He gave us, fittingly called the "Lord's Prayer."

 

Beseeching your forgiveness, I humbly remain,

 

yours in Christ,

 

†Father Jim