OUR NEED TO FORGIVE

OUR NEED TO FORGIVE Fr Luke A Veronis A missionary shared a story of a former man-eating cannibal, a tribesman from some small South Pacific Island, who encountered the power of Christ’s Good News, and converted to Christianity. One subsequent Sunday, the missionary observed how this man began to approach the Holy Altar to receive Holy Communion, only to quickly turn around and rush out of the Church. After a few minutes, the tribesman returned into the Church and received the Holy Sacrament. Following the service, the missionary approached the tribesman and asked for an explanation of his behavior.  The tribesman replied, “As I approached the priest, I noticed in the line in front of me the man who had killed my father, a man whom I swore to kill the first time I should see him. The desire for revenge seized me, and I rushed outside thinking about how I would kill this man once he left the Church. Yet as I contemplated this action, I heard an inner voice say to me, “As I have shown mercy to you, you also should show mercy to one another… By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” I thought also about how our Lord Jesus on the Cross was able to say, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they do.”  With a renewed spirit of mercy and peace in my heart, I returned back into the Church and received Holy Communion. How many of us hold on to some bitter memory? Some hurt or even trauma we’ve experienced long ago, and we simply can’t forgive or forget. Our Christian faith is founded on the lesson of forgiving one another, especially those who have hurt us, and reconciling even with our enemy. Of course, how difficult this is! The most frequent sin and struggle I hear in confession or counseling is the stubbornness and inability of people to forgive those who have hurt them. And obviously, the more serious the hurt, the harder it is to forgive. Our Christian faith, however, centers on the spirit of love, mercy, and forgiveness. We can’t exaggerate the ways our Lord Jesus taught the utmost significance of “loving mercy” and “forgiveness” as indispensable characteristics in the lives of His followers. In the Gospels, we hear it over and over again: “Turn the other cheek. Love one another as I have loved you. Forgive even up to seven times seventy. Show mercy as I have shown mercy to you. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Love your enemy. If you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” Of course, the epitome of forgiveness and love is our Lord who willingly died on the Cross for the sins of a fallen world, a world that had rejected and crucified Him. Then as He suffered on the Cross, He could still cry out, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they do.” Precisely this spirit of forgiveness we see again and again in the lives of the saints, as they suffered terribly from injustice, hatred, and persecution. Saint Stephen, the first martyr, could look at his murderers with a peaceful countenance and say, “Lord, do not charge them with this sin.” Saint John the beloved disciple writes while in exile, “If someone says, ‘I love God’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?” No serious Christian can ignore the importance of forgiving and loving one another, and how the virtue of mercy stands at the center of our faith. The difficulty, of course, lies in each of our particular cases – when someone has specifically betrayed us, hurt us, lied to us, or done some evil to us. We all can recall when we’ve been hurt or even traumatized in some way, and the struggle we have to forgive. We may hold on to ill feelings towards another and seem unable to forgive and go on. How many people are estranged from a family member, a former friend, a colleague, or some other acquaintance? And how many harbor inner resentment, hurt, anger, and pain deep within our hearts? Not forgiving, only adds on to this pain. As Nelson Mandela once said,  “Holding on to bitterness is like drinking poison, and hoping your enemy dies from it.” We all can agree that Christ’s command to forgive surely is NOT easy to fulfill! And yet, that is a central part of our spiritual development and maturity. It’s OK to admit that we have difficulty forgiving another but as Christians it’s NOT OK to accept the status quo of holding on to our bitterness. We need to realize how essential it is to forgive for our own sake! It may take time to gain the strength and courage, and we may need to grow spiritually, but we can never lose sight of our ultimate goal – forgiving those who have hurt us. When we are out of communion with another, we have lost our communion with our Creator. Love of the other is intimately connected with our love of God. We are as close to God as we are to our worst enemy. Think about that! Reflect about the one we have difficulty forgiving and then place the image of God on that person. As we keep a distance from them, we are distancing ourselves from God! As followers of Jesus Christ, forgiving one another is a part of our identity, a part of our DNA. We live in Christ, therefore, we forgive! That’s who we are. Yet, for many people, the question still remains - how can we learn to forgive? How can we gain the inner strength needed to forgive? I want to forgive, but what concrete steps should we take to actually forgive? Our Orthodox Church tradition offers several suggestions. First, we must properly understand God’s love for us and constantly remind ourselves of the great mercy He showers upon us. Begin by remembering that life itself is God’s greatest gift to us – a life which includes our health, our family, our friends, and the beauty and love that surround us. A key element of this life is the mercy and grace we experience with our Lord Jesus Christ. When we reflect on our blessings, our hearts should overflow with gratitude towards the Giver of our life! After we properly think about God’s love for us, we need to see ourselves as we truly are. Our faith teaches us that all of us have fallen away from God in a variety of ways. To sin does not mean simply to break a commandment, but it means to turn away from our relationship with God. We’re called to become saints after the likeness of our Lord. When we fail to live up to this calling, then we have sinned and not fulfilled our potential. By understanding our own sinfulness, we then can better appreciate God’s extreme mercy and love towards us. It is when we don’t understand God’s extreme mercy that we may find no reason to forgive one another. This is where we find inspiration in today’s Gospel story about the Forgiving King and Unforgiving Servant. A king forgives a servant an unbelievable debt that he could never repay, only to watch this same servant show no mercy towards his fellow servant who owed him a small amount. “How can you be so unforgiving and unmerciful,” the king said to his servant, “when I have shown you such great mercy!” God asks us this same question – “How can you be so unforgiving and unmerciful, when God shows you such great mercy!” These words alone should compel us to forgive those who have hurt us. When we base our forgiving others on the mercy God has shown us, we realize we do not forgive others because they deserve our mercy. We forgive others because God has first forgiven us! A third step is to try and understand the other person’s perspective. Think about what the person has experienced in life and try to understand them before allowing ourselves to condemn them. Anyone who hurts others is wounded in their soul. There’s something amiss within them. That is why they have hurt you. A fourth step is trying to put the hurt behind us. As long as we brood upon an injury, there is little hope we can forgive. Don’t print the incident permanently in your mind. When the hurt recurs in your mind, turn your focus on something else – like on your own shortcomings, on God’s mercy towards you, on the countless blessings you have in your own life. Don’t dwell on the past hurt but dwell on God’s present love and mercy! Finally, learn what true divine love is all about. Dwell on Jesus Christ, Divine Love Incarnate. The more we develop an intimate relationship with Christ, the deeper we will enter into His Divine Love, and the greater our ability will be to show that divine love through forgiving one another. A transfigured life in Christ implies becoming new creation in the likeness of Jesus. May we all strive to live out such transfigured lives through the mercy we show others!