An homily from St. John’s Russian Orthodox Mission Church by Priest Paul Siewers, for Forgiveness Sunday, 7534/2026.

Father, forgive them for they know not what they do, said our Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross, in the worst type of tortured death, and the worst possible sin committed against God. Yet He forgave, and at His Resurrection he appeared to those Apostles who had not stayed with Him at the Cross as well as to John who had. He had breathed on them the Holy Spirit to forgive sins, and promised them the fuller coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost to establish the Church to redeem humanity which had killed Him. From the Church the Body of Christ He did not separate Himself from all of us of bad character, He welcomed us to redemption. Following His example, Tsar-Martyr Nicholas wrote in His diary how he was surrounded by All around me there is treachery, cowardice, and deceit.” But his daughter Saint Martyr Olga sent these words to the royal family’s supporters during their imprisonment before their execution: “Father asks to have it passed on to all who have remained loyal to him and to those on whom they might have influence, that they not avenge him; he has forgiven and prays for everyone; and not to avenge themselves, but to remember that the evil which is now in the world will become yet more powerful, and that it is not evil which conquers evil, but only love.” As the Lord’s Prayer tells us, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”

Forgiveness beloved gives us insight from God into our lives and lifts us up out of the stresses that kill us to see on the horizon the Resurrection of Pascha beyond Great Lent. There is a healthy restorative otherworldliness to forgiveness, an anti-toxin. Dostoevsky’s character Elder Zosima said we must recognize that we are connected to otherworlds, other dimensions of God, to find meaning in life. Recently a friend died and had an Orthodox Christian funeral. She was a caring person, particularly to the sick. A young family friend was in the hospital the day of the funeral, under general anaesthesia for surgery. When she came too she was in a panic: Tell them to stop the funeral, she said, our friend is alive. For she had seen the friend who had passed two or three days before, in the operating room with her, comforting her. She described the friend’s clothes and head covering and their colors, and they matched exactly what the deceased was wearing in the coffin at the funeral, although the young friend would not have known this. Now maybe this was hallucination from the anaesthesia, some would say. But in Orthodox Christian tradition, the soul can wander for a short time after death with the guardian angel. Such events we don’t look for to make a big deal of the supernatural. That’s because they are natural in Christian tradition. As an early Christian writer once put it, drawing on St. Maximus the Confessor’s writing, in God nature is (from a human perspective) both that which is and that which is not. Forgiveness draws us into that kind of natural otherworldliness, into another dimension. Orthodox Christianity after all finds a closer analogy to quantum physics than to Newtonian physics. In quantum thinking, you find that the closest difference between two points lies in folding the paper, so the two points are atop one another, not in drawing a straight line between them. Forgiveness is like that, too. It is as necessary to forgive as it is to breathe. God counts each heartbeat and moves it by the Holy Spirit. Forgiveness renews our heartbeats by removing blockages of hate and stress. The flow of uncreated light (or grace) from God in us keeps us truly alive, gives meaning to our life. This uncreated energy of God sustains us in body and soul. For what the world calls sustainability comes from meaningfulness, the working of divine Providence, and letting our light shine from Him.

St. Theophan the Recluse (from Now is the Accepted Time) wrote of Forgiveness Sunday:

Lent seems gloomy until one enters into its field Glory to Thee, O Lord! We are again vouchsafed to live until Great Lent; still we are given time to come to our senses; and still the Lord has declared His readiness to receive us in the Fatherly embrace of mercy….We stand at the entrance of Great Lent: the field of repentance and God’s mercy to us. Let us enter with boldness and enter with desire. Let no one refuse. Let no one turn aside and go elsewhere. Lent seems gloomy, until one enters its field. But begin and you will see that it is light after the night, freedom after bondage, respite after a burdensome life. Have you heard what the Apostle now says: “The night is far spent, the day is at hand” (Rom 13:12). The night is the time before the fast, but the fast is the day. The Apostle desires that meeting the fast would be just as desirable for us, as meeting the day after a long night…. For what does the fast require? Repentance and correction of life. What does it give? Forgiveness of all and a return of all the mercies of God. What does it promise? Joy in the Holy Spirit here and eternal blessedness there. Take all this to heart, and you cannot help but desire the fast. The flesh alone rebels against the fast, and those not favorable to the fast are carnal, although they do not want to put themselves in this category, and they explain their estrangement from the fast somewhat more plausibly. They do not desire to abandon a life of freedom for the flesh, so they raise up complaints against the fast. But our spiritual side loves the fast, thirsts for the fast, and is at ease in it. We should say: “Awaken and develop the spiritual side in yourself, and you will be in harmony with the fast, as with a friend.” But it is for the purpose of revealing this side, that the Lord has enacted the fast. That is why self-compulsion is necessary beforehand. Bitter labor is necessary first, in order to later taste sweet fruits Let carnal reasoning shun the fast. Submit to the yoke of faith and heed the Apostolic teaching: “For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be” (Rom 8:6–7). That is why those who follow this wisdom “cannot please God” (Rom 8:6–8). This is what estrangement from the fast due to pleasing the flesh and submitting oneself to carnal “wisdom” borders on: the loss of the opportunity to please God and even enmity against God! Thus, whoever has even a small spark of the fear of God will not be alienated from the fast, but with the light of this fear will ward off all deceptive pretexts for violating it. We should say: “Revive the fear of God in yourself and you will gladly enter the field of the fast, and without difficulty will pass through it all, from the beginning to the end.” But again, how can one revive fear without the fast? Vanities, cares, empty amusements, comforts, passionate preoccupations, and even just the hustle and bustle of established relationships do not allow us to enter into ourselves, to come to our senses, and to vividly acknowledge our obligatory relationship to God! It is therefore necessary to force ourselves to enter the field of the fast and fulfill all its requirements. Then vain desires, thoughts, and passions will subside, the voice of conscience will be clearly heard, and the awareness of God and our responsibility before Him will vividly arise….. the fear of God, having in this way been revived, will become an irresistible force that knows no barriers, the action of which is aimed directly against all pleasing of the flesh, supported by self-pity. When you enter this state, then all the rights of the flesh to the privileges that we provide it in ordinary life will seem strange and ridiculous. But until you enter this state, there is nothing to expose the falseness of pretexts for pleasing the flesh, which divert us from the fast… pass through your entire life, no matter how long you promised yourself, stand at your deathbed and consider: can your conscience promise you a good outcome if at this moment death finds you as you are now? If it cannot, then know in advance that in that moment you will be ready at once to undertake the burden of ten, a hundred, a thousand fasts in order to only receive mercy, and it will not be granted to you. Thus, instead of then experiencing such a bitter rejection, Lent is now given to you, which alone is sufficient to receive mercy. Enter into it cheerfully and spend it according to God’s intention. Who knows, it could be your last Lent, and your last mercy? If you miss it, do not expect more. It seems that this would be sufficient motivation to resolve to embitter the flesh with ascetic struggles of self-mortification in the approaching fast. But something strange occurs with us. He who might be able to give the flesh ease, embitters himself more than others through fasting. But he who should embitter the flesh more than others, gives himself the most liberties. The righteous undertake toil after toil, but sinners allow themselves exemption after exemption. Is this not because the righteous feel themselves to be sinners, but sinners place themselves in the ranks of the righteous? But if so, then what better indication of the self-blindness, in which love of the flesh holds us, and what more reasonable a basis for not heeding it, and acting in opposition to it? Let us enter with courage into the field of the fast. Let there be among us no timid pleasers of the flesh, who tremble for their life, if you deprive them of any dish or remove any comfort. Let there be among us no vainly wise pleasers of the flesh, for whom coddling of the flesh has turned into a law by some special teaching of theirs. From the beginning, the Apostle put such people to shame, calling them “enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame—who set their mind on earthly things” (Phil 3:18–19). Nowadays, we hear of many teachings that expand the paths of life, and many customs have already been introduced in which our flesh is ease. But let us remember the words of the Lord: “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it” (Matt 7:13–14). Let us also cleave to those few and watchfully enter the gate of the confining fast that is opening before us, not allowing oneself superstitious interpretations and willful deviations from what was legitimized so wisely and what has been so salvifically fulfilled and is being fulfilled by all who understood and understand the purpose and value of life in the flesh but not “according to the flesh” (Rom 8:12). Amen.

So writes St. Theophan about today. Brothers and sisters, metanoia is Greek for repentance. But its full meaning really is closer to the English word transformation. And it also means to bow. To give a metanoia to someone in Orthodoxy is to bow physically before them and ask forgiveness, as we will soon do at Forgiveness Vespers. In this, forgiveness is synonymous with repentance. Glory to Jesus Christ! 

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew,

§17 [6:14-21]

The Lord said: ‘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 who is in secret; and thy Father, who 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.