This is Life!: Revolutions Around the Cruciform Axis

Sunday of Forgiveness

Today is the Sunday of Forgiveness, the last day prior to Great Lent (which technically begins this evening during Vespers).

The Gospel (Matthew 6:14-21) for today reads:

For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face; That thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret: and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly. Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Kontakion of the Sunday of Forgiveness Tone 2
O Thou Guide unto wisdom, Bestower of prudence, Instructor of the foolish, and Defender of the poor;
establish and grant understanding unto my heart, O Master.
Grant me speech, O Word of the Father;
for behold, I shall not keep my lips from crying unto Thee:
O Merciful One, have mercy on me who have fallen.

Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann says, of today's Gospel:

Lent is the liberation of our enslavement to sin, from the prison of "this world." And the Gospel lesson of this last Sunday (Matt. 6:14-21) sets the conditions for that liberation. The first one is fasting--the refusal to accept the desires and urges of our fallen nature as normal, the effort to free ourselves from the dictatorship of flesh and matter over the spirit. To be effective, however, our fast must not be hypocritical, a "showing off." We must "appear not unto men to fast but to our Father who is in secret." The second condition is forgiveness--"If you forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you." The triumph of sin, the main sign of its rule over the world, is division, opposition, separation, hatred. Therefore, the first break through this fortress of sin is forgiveness: the return to unity, solidarity, love. To forgive is to put between me and my "enemy" the radiant forgiveness of God Himself. To forgive is to reject the hopeless "dead-ends" of human relations and to refer them to Christ. Forgiveness is truly a "breakthrough" of the Kingdom into this sinful and fallen world. (Great Lent: Journey to Pascha, p. 28)

So in just a few short hours we will ask forgiveness of everyone in the parish, and give forgiveness in turn.

And then we will be prepared to go into the desert to be with our Lord, and to fight demons in his strength.