You know, the problem with these Orthodox readings sometimes is that you never know when they’re going to suddenly be talking to you in a very specific way instead of talking about others in a very general way. While reading Metropoitan Anthony Bloom’s “Living Prayer” this morning, I got to this passage where he’s examining the idea of forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer:

As you forgive, the measure which you use will be used for you; and as you forgive, you will be forgiven; what you do not forgive will be held against you. It is not that God does not want to forgive, but if we come unforgiving, we check the mystery of love, we refuse it and there is no place for us in the kingdom. …

But forgiveness is something extremely difficult to achieve. To grant forgiveness at a moment of softening of the heart, in an emotional crisis, is comparatively easy; not to take it back is something that hardly anoyne knows how to do.

Ouch.

What we call forgiveness is often putting the other one on probation, nothing more; and lucky are the forgiven people if it is only probation and not remand. We wait impatiently for evidence of repentance, we want to be sure that the penitent is not the same any more, but this situation can last a lifetime and our attitude is exactly the contrary of everything which the gospel teaches, and indeed commands us, to do. So the law of forgiveness is not a little brook on the boundary between slavery and freedom: it has breadth and depth, it is the Red Sea.

What we call forgiveness is often putting the other one on probation. Double ouch. But that’s very true. It’s actually very rare for me to have anything very important to forgive. But when I have, I find that it’s just as Mpn. Bloom has said: I can easily get to a quick and immediate statement of forgiveness, and I even mean it sincerely. I can re-establish the lines of communication and not bring up the offense again.

What I can’t do is keep from putting the other person on probation. It’s as if I’m not really letting them out of prison, I’m just putting them under house arrest. I can act as if the bad thing didn’t happen, but I can’t act as if I don’t know what that person is capable of. I withdraw from them a little bit and substitute a version of myself that’s a little more polite, a little less generous.

What a long way we all have to go. At least I hope this involves everyone. If not, I’m certainly out there giving my brothers and sisters a LOT to forgive.