Forgiveness

POINTS TO PONDER : FORGIVENESS

  • All the excerpts on this page are from the homily The Foundation of Forgiveness. See Homily : 9 March, 2008, Forgiveness Sunday, The Foundation of Forgiveness.
  • “It is important for us to forgive those against whom we have something negative. It is crucial that we forgive anyone who hurts us. It is crucial that we forgive anyone or everyone about everything, because our Lord says : '"If you do not forgive, neither will your Father in Heaven forgive you your trespasses"' (Mark 11:26). This is what He says to us. It is really serious. It is not merely a statement of principle. It is a statement of fact directed to each of us personally. The foundation of our Christian life is completely rooted in this forgiveness”.
  • “Non-forgiveness continues to sow poison in my heart : it continues to paralyse my life. Non-forgiveness continues to hurt other people, too, because it clouds my judgement. Non-forgiveness clouds my reactions to other people when they are inter-relating with me. Non-forgiveness poisons everything. Even if there is only one person or one situation in my life that remains unforgiven, it still makes everything cloudy and messy. It is really important that even though we may do nothing else great in our lives, we, in harmony with the Lord, must find the way to forgive everyone everything in our lives”.
  • “When we do, in the Lord, forgive everyone everything, finally we become free. We become truly free. We become free to be our real selves. We find our real selves in a loving relationship with the Lord. We exercise this real self in loving relationships with human beings and with creation, in healthy, loving relationships that are full of selfless love”.
  • “Therefore, needless to say, we have to forgive. How do we do this ? Saint Silouan of Mount Athos is a person of the previous century who (directly or indirectly) has told us how to do this simply. He tells us that we can come to forgiving by saying this simple prayer : 'Lord have mercy'. We say it over and over and over again for any person or anything or any situation that requires forgiveness. As Archimandrite Sophrony says, when we are saying 'Lord have mercy', we are actually making a statement which, all by itself, summarises the Gospel. We are confessing that the Lord is the Lord, and we are asking Him to have mercy on me, and on the person or the situation, everyone, everything, whoever”.
  • “When we are saying 'Lord have mercy', we are asking that He do exactly that : be His loving, healing Self to us all. Saint Silouan and Archimandrite Sophrony say that when this prayer passes through us to the other person, it passes through our heart, and opens our heart to this mercy from the Lord. It enables the other person to have some possibility of accepting the same mercy. Ultimately, it is always up to the other person freely to accept or to reject this mercy. The Lord does not force Himself, but this prayer enables the possibility”.
  • “Moreover, on top of all that, people are finding over and over again that when they are saying this prayer in this way, even though there may not be such a big change in the other person or the situation (because sometimes you cannot change the situation), the poison from that situation is removed from the heart. The Lord takes the poison out of the situation in the past that is so painful. He also takes away the poison of the memory of the wrongdoing from another person. The more we say this prayer, the more He extracts the poison. Through this prayer, the pain is dissipated, along with the death sown in our hearts by the anger and the bitterness that we may sometimes feel towards other people. Finally, it is taken away altogether, so that there is no remaining poison. I may remember the event, but it does not any longer poison me. I may remember the wrong, but it does not any longer poison me. Instead, I feel sorry for the person who wronged me”.
  • “When we come to the point of remembering a situation or a person or an event or whatever, and it no longer reflexively stirs up anger, no longer stirs up disturbance or depression or darkness or whatever else, then we will know that we have actually, with God’s mercy, been able to forgive. Because we have co-operated with the Lord and listened to Him, He has healed our heart, and healed our memory”.
  • “Sometimes, when something is particularly painful and particularly stubborn in our lives, the pain does not easily or quickly go away. It is important for us to offer this pain and suffering repeatedly to the Lord. It is important to supplement our supplication with taking holy water, and anointing with oil, through which the Lord does convey His healing love to our souls and bodies”.