We find ourselves in Forgiveness Week. As we contemplate the fullness of how to forgive others, we find our thoughts mingling with the issue of prayer. If we seek to forgive someone, we should pray for them. Can I with all sincerity pray for the one I seek to forgive? Yes? Then we've made a good start! But for what do I pray in such a prayer? How do I pray for him/her? Words have meaning. What words do I offer?
Do I ask the Lord to “guide them”? If so, I am judging them to have strayed from the path, and I’m seeking that God change THEM. In praying for one whom I seek to truly forgive, it is better to ask the Lord to change ME, to bless me with the ability to divest myself of pride and judgmentalism, to forgive my anger that I held BEFORE I chose to truly forgive!
Do I ask the Lord to forgive them? If so, my words show that I’ve not myself truly forgiven them. For how can one contemplate a person (me) having granted true forgiveness, but God not having done so? How could I possibly have a virtue not ascribed to God? How can I have forgiven, but God has not? Indeed, I have usurped the spiritual authority our Lord gave to His Apostles, for I am binding on earth while insincerely praying for God to unbind in heaven. Let me first unbind my own heart from judgmentalism and from pride, then ask God for mercy on both me and the one I have truly and fully forgiven.
My enemy will forever be my enemy until I love him! And as the Holy Fathers teach, my having true love for one who was my enemy does not assure that he or she will in turn love me. Can one love someone who does not love in return? If we truly forgive and can honestly answer yes, we begin to see things as God does! For how many of us (ALL of us!!!) have sinned against God, but know full well that He never stops loving us!
Saint Theophan the Recluse says it this way. "For if you forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." (Mat 6:14-15) What a simple and handy means of salvation! Your trespasses are forgiven under the condition that you forgive your neighbor's trespasses against you. This means that you are in your own hands. Force yourself to pass from agitated feelings toward your brother to truly peaceful feelings - and that is all. The day of forgiveness - what a great, heavenly day of God this is! If all of us used it as we ought, this day would make Christian societies into heavenly societies, and the earth would merge with heaven.
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