We almost all know the „Our Father“ and almost every believing Christian says this prayer several times a day. The main plot of this prayer, (as of all prayers), to put it simply, is the glorification of God and our petition to God… But in addition, in this prayer there is our promise and obligation both to God and to people… „And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors“… With these words, we tell God that He forgives us our debts, as we forgive our debtors, that is, we make a kind of agreement with God with these words. And this should be remembered by every sensible person and try to be forgiving, merciful, and not quarrelsome. The Lord says: For if you forgive men their debts, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses (Matthew 6:14), that is, the Lord made the forgiveness of our sins dependent on us…
Forgiveness is one of the components of the chain of virtues, at the head of which humility is exalted. Forgiveness is a quality of generous and strong people, a person who owns himself is able to be forgiving and merciful… Forgiveness is the beginning of reconciliation, peace, mutual understanding and the greatest love… You know that our Patriarch, His Holiness and Beatitude Ilya II, declared April 28 the Day of Forgiveness and thus called us all to reconciliation, to love each other and to renewed loving unity… Today, Georgia needs unity the most, and this unity in this case goes through a little retreat of our „I“, through forgiveness, patience and our willpower…
When there is loving, prayerful agreement among us, God is with us, and our hearts are filled with joy, but unfortunately, or for our good, this is not our permanent spiritual state, because man is changeable and cannot constantly maintain joy and peace in his heart, because there are many contradictory movements in his inner world… And the same is true in society, there is no permanent peace and mutual understanding, because all of us have a different inner world, and therefore ideal unity and agreement on earth almost does not exist in any society… And this is by God’s permission, so that we remember that ideal unity and eternal joy are only with God in heaven…
Here is our place of work, this is the arena where we must work and sweat for unity in love. For a Christian, work is primarily an inner spiritual work and is also to some extent related to suffering, because often a faithful Christian, for the sake of peace, unity, and the spread of love… has to deny his own „self“, has to be patient, has to endure insults, etc. Let us recall the words of the Apostle Paul: “Love is long-suffering and kind; love does not envy, does not boast, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, …. … bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things….“ For example, someone has hurt you or insulted you, and you really want to get back at them, to take revenge, but you do not repay the evil and do not take revenge on them, this can also be said to be suffering and labor – not giving your own seemingly logical, aggressive response to the opponent. By the way, in ancient Greek, labor and suffering were written the same way, which probably means that suffering was also to some extent equated with merit and labor. But is it really so difficult to forgive and pardon? Is it really suffering to forgive a person for a sin? If we know that nothing makes us more like God than when we forgive evil people and those who bother us…
We know that this quality is one of the qualities of Almighty God, which quality reconciled man with God, and wouldn’t it be good if we also acquired this divine quality and were strengthened in it? Let us remember, our Lord Jesus Christ, crucified, when He prayed on the cross and, in His human nature, begged God to forgive His crucifiers this terrible sin… Couldn’t God have destroyed these executioners right there? But He, in His love for mankind, left them the opportunity for salvation and He destroyed the cause of their evil… You know, according to church tradition, that one of the soldiers, who pierced Christ’s side with a spear, received healing from his diseased eye with the blood and water flowing from the wound. Later, this horseman - named Longinus - was canonized and today the Church prays for him. So forgiveness is a necessary quality that every Orthodox Christian should have, it is a condition for our salvation, the manifestation of God's mercy towards us and our deification. We should always try, in dialogue with each other, to find those sides and those issues that unite us more and connect us with each other, and not vice versa - separate us.
May God grant us the spirit of unity in the love of Christ and our homeland!!!
Amen!!!
May God bless you, strengthen you, and make you happy!!!
With Christlike love, Priest-Nun John.
Saturday, May 2, 2009, Huntington Beach.
