Today the Orthodox Church celebrates the Day of the Holy Spirit. The Epistle to the Ephesians reminds us that 'the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth' (v. 9), and calls us to 'be filled with the Spirit' (v. 18). The apostle Paul calls this new state of the human being 'light in the Lord'; the apostle John also turns to this image of light when he speaks of brotherly love among believers (1 John 2:10). In the spirit of love we are called to 'seek those who have gone astray' (Matt 18:10-14), to resolve problems in our relationships (Matt 18:15-18), and, finally, to receive God's grace in unanimous prayer in the name of Christ and in His presence, just as we were promised.

Today's reading is devoted to one of the most important Gospel themes: the forgiveness of sins. Both the meaning of the parable and the meaning of the teaching come down to one thing: God forgives us our sins only if we ourselves are ready to forgive the sins of those who sin against us.

Sometimes this demand is taken as a call to forgive everything without distinction. But on closer reading of the text, it turns out that this is far from the case. After all, forgiving everything without distinction often means that the offended person simply does not notice the sin committed against him or pays no attention to it. Sometimes in Christian circles there are even calls to learn to ignore the sins of one's neighbor, including those directed against us. In practice, however, such ignoring usually sooner or later leads to an emotional explosion, in which all the accumulated grievances spill out so completely that no trace remains of the appearance of peace.

Jesus does not call us to ignore sin at all; on the contrary, He considers it necessary to call things by their names, openly and, if needed, in the presence of witnesses, and sometimes publicly, in the church assembly (vv. 15-17). Of course, such an explanation can lead not only to reconciliation but also to a break; yet in any case the relationship between people will be clarified, and only then will forgiveness and restoration of relationships become possible.

It is no accident that the teaching also mentions the assembly of the faithful (vv. 19-20), because it is impossible as long as relationships have not been restored. But they cannot be restored by failing to notice or by ignoring sin; this is possible only through repentance on one side and forgiveness of the sin on the other.

And this is not surprising, because what is at stake here is spiritual life, where relationships come to the fore, both between people and between individual people and God. To fail to notice sin, to pretend that nothing has happened between brothers, would mean building these relationships on a lie from the very start, and that would be a serious spiritual error.

But no less an error would be to absolutize sin, to treat it as something that from now on has made normal relationships between brothers forever impossible. Of course, in our still untransformed world the consequences of sin committed consciously and deliberately were indeed considered irreversible; but we no longer live in former times, we live in the age of the approaching and unfolding Kingdom, and now sin, even when committed consciously, cannot have irreversible consequences if the one who committed it sincerely repents of what he has done. And if we live in the Kingdom, we will be able to see the person behind his sin, and therefore we will be able to forgive him; if not, then a sin committed against us once will destroy our relationship with him forever.

But we can count on the forgiveness of our own sins only in the Kingdom. God does not require us to forgive our neighbors' sins because without this we will not be good enough for Him and for the Kingdom; rather, by failing to show readiness to forgive our neighbor everything and begin the relationship with him anew, we refuse the Kingdom, where everything begins with a clean slate, including for us ourselves.

This approach to life and relationships can seem maximalist and therefore not very realistic, but only at first glance. In fact, the apostle's words are deeper than they appear at first, and therefore they are entirely realistic, provided, of course, that one looks at love not as emotions, dividing everyone around by the principle "like - dislike," "appealing - unappealing," but as relationships that do not depend on emotions or sympathies. In that case it becomes clear that relationships are precisely what condition everything else, everything included in the concept of the inner Torah. Indeed, the inner Torah is above all the aspirations, desires, and intentions that determine a person's spiritual life. These can either correspond to God's commandments, experienced by the person as an inner spiritual and moral imperative, or fail to correspond to them.

It is customary to think that physically we are what we eat, and psychically we are what we think and feel. Spiritually, however, we are what we desire and what we strive for. Jesus Himself says this briefly and simply: where your treasure is, there your heart is also. But desires, aspirations, and the intentions connected with them can exist in our heart in different ways.

They can be something self-sufficient, governing us and determining our attitude toward those around us and toward the world in general, while submitting to no one and nothing, including ourselves. Or they can be part of relationships and work to support and build them. In the first case, one can speak of love only in a certain sense and only up to a certain point, because often it is precisely our desires that destroy our relationships with other people when they become self-sufficient.

At times relationships can collapse because of the most ordinary and not very deep negative emotions, which take our will captive and force us to desire, or more precisely in this case not to desire, what in fact is important and dear to us but does not look that way when emotions gain the upper hand over us. In the second case, however, when relationships themselves are experienced by a person as true value, no emotions or desires in themselves become self-valued for him anymore. And then he can be at peace about keeping the commandments: with such an attitude toward one's neighbor, it is hard for a person to think of violating them, at least those that define his relationships with that very neighbor.

If you love, you no longer need to train yourself in polite words and polite smiles; you no longer need to restrain negative emotions toward another person: they simply are not there, and words and smiles arise on the tongue and on the face by themselves. Then following the inner Torah becomes completely natural and organic for a person. All the more if we are speaking of the love that unites the inhabitants of the Kingdom: here there is the fullness presupposed by the ideal of the living Torah, toward which in Gospel times every Christian strove as the goal of spiritual life, as that which would make him like Christ.