Forgiveness is an interesting but
also a great virtue. It is a term and a reality found in Holy Scripture and in
the Tradition of the Orthodox Church. We Christians should endeavour to forgive
those who wrong us, our friends and our enemies. In the Lord’s Prayer we recite
‘. . . And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against
us. . .’ Here we see that it is not only important to forgive, but also to
receive forgiveness, to ask for it. Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh expands on
this and claims:
‘Judgement would hold nothing but
terror for us if we had no sure hope of forgiveness. And the gift of
forgiveness itself is implicit in God’s and people’s love. Yet it is not enough
to be granted forgiveness, we must be prepared to receive it, to accept it.
We must consent to be forgiven by
an act of daring faith and generous hope, welcome the gift humbly, as a miracle
which love alone, love human and divine, can work, and forever be grateful for
its gratuity, its restoring, healing, reintegrating power.
We must never confuse forgiving
with forgetting, or imagine that these two things go together. Not only do they
not belong together, but they are mutually exclusive. To wipe out the past has
little to do with constructive, imaginative, fruitful forgiveness; the only
thing that must go, be erased from the past, is its venom; the bitterness, the
resentment, the estrangement; but not the memory.’[1]
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