NOTES for Mat 6:14-21

Forgiveness Sunday is one of the most remarkable days in the church year. And the old custom comes to mind: when someone asks for forgiveness, to answer, "God will forgive." To a modern person these words grate on the ear. That is the fate of language. But I think our ancestors had no less spirituality than we do, and so let us think about this once more.

We do not value these words because we treat God's forgiveness too easily, as though it were something self-evident because of His great mercy. We say to ourselves: a person, yes, can forgive or can refuse to forgive, and so when we ask for forgiveness we want to hear not "God will forgive," but "I forgive you." And here precisely we must remember the words of today's Gospel reading: if you forgive people their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive people their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. In other words, the situation turns back on you yourself (and that is how it should always be in life!).

But what do we know about forgiveness? At times a person is guided by the common saying: I forgive everyone who owes me. But seriously, in reality the first true teacher of forgiveness is, of course, Joseph, who forgave his brothers. Let us learn from the great teachers.

And I would like to say one more thing. It is no accident at all that the words about forgiveness are joined here in the text with words about asceticism. These two aspects of life have the deepest connection, which can be pictured this way: fasting - humility, in the biblical sense and not the everyday one - the suppression of pride - forgiveness.

God Himself never forces His mercy on anyone. Even His coming into this world takes place simply as the birth of an earthly Child. If we are called to become like His perfection (Mt 5:48), then our mercy and piety too must be neither showy nor intrusive, but a joyful expression of our hidden relationship with the heavenly Father.

Great Lent begins today. The texts we read speak about what is most important at this time, yet how far all this is from our ideas of fasting. What the prophet Joel calls "tearing the heart" always means sadness and tears for us. But the Lord gives us His answer, paradoxical at first glance, that completely overturns the picture. Purification is joy; returning to Him can and should be a feast for us; fasting is a time of reunion between the Creator and creation. A "fasting face" is a human invention for justifying one's laziness and consoling one's vanity. But the Lord calls us to tear the crust of sin from the heart so that all the filth may come out. And then our faces will shine with the joy of Great Lent.

Three times in the first half of the sixth chapter of Matthew's Gospel these words of the Savior are quoted. Let us note that He says this about almsgiving, prayer, and fasting. There is a small book by Vladimir Solovyov, "The Spiritual Foundations of Life," in which he writes about prayer, almsgiving, and fasting as the basic components of a person's righteous life. Indeed, each person's "position" in the universe is determined by his relationships along three "coordinate axes": his connection with God, his connection with other people, and his connection with nature. Prayer, almsgiving, and fasting are expressions of right relationships along these "axes."

Thus Jesus' words refer to the whole fullness of human life. He says that this life is carried out not so much visibly as "in secret," not so much in deeds as in the intentions of the heart, not so much in actions as in relationships. Accordingly, the visible reward of this world is not what matters for us, because it passes away together with this world; what matters is the reward from the invisible God, because that reward is eternal life.

The Savior's words about treasure and the heart touch on one of the main questions of spiritual life. What is spiritual life? What determines a person's spiritual condition? Speaking in biblical language, it is the condition of his heart. What is this heart on which so much depends? Why, even before the coming of Christ, did the call sound to love God first of all with the heart, with the whole heart, and only then with the whole soul and all one's strength? In the language of the Bible, the heart is the center of the person, his spiritual center.

Creating man, God breathes into his nostrils the breath of life, and man comes alive, acquiring a soul. The soul is human nature, that specific thing that makes man human. Something similar also exists in animals: thanks to their souls, animals possess a certain biological identity.

But the human soul is special, because it appears as a result of the action on nature of God's breath, which, according to God's design, was to determine human life completely. Before the fall, that is exactly how it was. Later, after the fall, the situation changed: the human soul became connected with blood just as the souls of animals are.

The natural component in man prevailed over the spiritual. But even after the fall, the action of God's breath on human nature did not cease completely; otherwise man would simply have turned into an animal, becoming just another variety of ape. It is precisely this breath that gives us the possibility of becoming aware of ourselves, of knowing about our own existence.

Animals are not aware of themselves. For us humans, self-awareness is a psychological axiom: we know that we exist, and this knowledge is for us something self-evident and needing no proof. But this is only the beginning. One can go further, and then in the depth of one's "I" we discover that system of values and life priorities that determines the quality of our life. This spiritual "I" is what the Bible calls the heart. The spiritual "I" manifests itself first of all through the will.

An act of will is the beginning of every choice and every decision. And a choice is made, and a decision accepted, according to the system of values and priorities a person professes, in deeds of course and not in words. These values and priorities are the very "treasure" of which the Savior speaks, because our treasure becomes exactly what is absolutely and unconditionally important for us. Thus our heart turns out to be where its treasure is. And after the heart come the soul, the strength, and the whole life. In short, we ourselves.

Have you ever, say, gone swimming while vacationing at the seaside and left a bag with money on the beach? You splash around in the water, but something spoils your pleasure: you keep looking back at your things... "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

Of course, this is a very primitive illustration of Jesus' words, but are you and I really such complicated beings? The same mechanism for distributing our attention operates in more "spiritual" situations too. Of course, earthly matters are important, and they must be given attention. Will we be able each time to keep within ourselves the right vertical order of what matters most, where God, the Spirit, and love are above all?

The following words of Christ about God and mammon, or wealth, speak about the same thing. Jesus is not against wealth or well-being. He says that they must not be placed at the center of our service and attention; that place must be reserved for God.

The recommendations for keeping the fast sound surprisingly current, as if two thousand years had not passed. Still, when rereading the Gospel, one often remembers the words that "Christianity is only beginning." Imitating piety by keeping a fasting diet with a "fasting face" has turned out to be much easier than growing spiritually by passing through the fast. But it is meaningless to act before the One Who sees the true motives of our actions.

There seems to be nothing to add to what has been said about storing up treasures. Every day we receive many opportunities to observe how what people tried to place their hopes in crumbles into dust. Nevertheless, every day we again and again try to increase those same unreliable earthly treasures. They are not necessarily treasures in the literal sense; their role can be played by everyday trifles and necessary household objects. But even what is necessary can be turned into an idol that blocks out God. And when a hard choice stands before us: God or mammon? - it becomes very easy to choose God in words while rejecting Him by our deeds.

If we are truly with Him, then His light dwells in us and lights our path, keeping us from losing our way on difficult roads. But when we leave Him, we turn away from His light too, though we do not admit it at once. Then with distorted spiritual vision we begin to take the darkness dwelling in us for light.

But if evil that pretends within us to be light, and is therefore "softened," is monstrous even in such a weakened form, then what must be the darkness of undisguised evil, toward which we risk heading when we turn away from the Source of Light?

The unfamiliar word "mammon" actually means a "stronghold," something one can rely on, a source of hope. Of course, the Lord understands that all of us need to eat, drink, dress, earn a living, and so on, but He says that in a person's life there cannot be two hopes, two treasures, two goals. He uses little birds and flowers of the field as examples to show that one can be free, happy, and beautiful while hoping not in "treasure on earth," but in God. Moreover, this beauty is purer, this freedom clearer, than anything the "trouble of the day" can offer us. And this is not about fleeing life, not about irresponsibility or getting something for nothing, but about turning to the most precious and most meaningful content of life - to God, who is absolutely more wondrous than any treasure.

"If the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness?" the Lord says to us today. How can this be - how can light be darkness? Here is one possible interpretation: the question is what serves as light for us, what we choose in that capacity. If we consider a cozy half-light, or even darkness, to be light, then what is darkness? If we do not step out into the light of Christ's commandments, but prefer to be satisfied with the local lighting of selected rules, what are our chances of seeing anything beyond our own nose? What, then, is light for us? The light of Christ, which enlightens all people and all things, or something else?

The Lord continues to speak about our need for complete concentration in our relationship with Him: when we pray, nothing should distract us—neither externally (see Matt 6:5-6) nor internally. Indeed, our many words in prayer are often a sign of our “absence” from what we are saying. But with God we must be fully present—with our whole being—and not let our thoughts wander, but be honest and simple—poor in spirit. God truly knows what is in our hearts and does not need our verbose attempts to explain it to Him. He wants us, after searching within ourselves, to find the main thing we have for Him: what truly concerns us, what we really need and genuinely desire, and what we sincerely thank Him for. And so, to help us, He offers this prayer—perhaps the best prayer in the world—for God Himself taught it to us. In it He has contained everything we might sometimes want to express when addressing God: praise, thanksgiving, repentance, and petitions. In fact, this prayer contains every possible direction our prayer may take. Of course, this does not mean that other prayers should be forgotten. We should simply remember that the Lord, sharing with us what is most important, most precious, and simplest, gives us the freedom to “create prayer” together with Him.

The first three verses of the "Our Father," the Lord's Prayer, in a sense speak about the same thing - the Kingdom. A kingdom is the King's domain. We ask that our world belong more fully to the King, that there be more of God in it. In the Kingdom the King is glorified, His name is hallowed, people pray to Him and call upon Him to judge. In the Kingdom people do the will of the King and obey Him...

Even when we say these words thoughtfully, not mechanically, we perceive them abstractly because we apply them to the whole world and not to ourselves. But Christ says that His Kingdom is within us. And we can ask while thinking that this Kingdom is to be the Church: I, you, all of us saying these words together. For this, His name must be hallowed in me, in you, in us; I, you, we together must do His will. If after the Eucharist we say these words together in exactly this way, maybe the Kingdom of God will draw near, take up more room in our heart, and become more clearly visible in the Church.

Jesus, in essence, makes a revolution in the understanding and practice of prayer. It turns out that God has no need at all of our prayer requests. Moreover, the one who asks also does not need prayer. Someone may object: "Well, everything is clear with God, but people, when they pray, sometimes grasp their needs more clearly by putting them into words, and in a peaceful state become aware of their inner needs - as, generally speaking, their outer needs as well. In the end, prayer often serves precisely as a source of resolve to pursue conscious and clearly defined goals." All of this can be acknowledged as true to some degree, but such inner self-reflection can no longer really be called prayer - rather, meditation with elements of verbalization.

Still, meditation (in the sense of reflection or in the sense of silence) is not such a useless thing. But it too should have as its content not so much our isolated psychic life as the openness of heart and mind toward God and the circumstances of life. And the emphasis here should be placed precisely on God, who gives perspective and space to human life.

Jesus is speaking precisely of prayer as the striving of the whole human being toward God - the Source and Foundation of all. And the only real goal of prayer understood this way is to gain inner sensitivity to the movements of the Spirit, who alone makes people co-workers and like-minded friends of the God revealed in Christ. In that case every Christian man or woman receives the possibility of taking part in building His Kingdom and fulfilling His will, and therefore of realizing his or her calling and gifts, receiving His forgiveness and freedom, and giving them to those near us who are deprived of them.

Just as He rejects ostentatious almsgiving, Christ rejects demonstrative prayer and tells those who pray to shut themselves in their room. Does this mean that any prayer in the presence of other people falls under His disapproval?

Such a conclusion would be hasty, since He Himself prayed in the presence of many people and did not forbid His disciples to do so. Words of disapproval do not and cannot apply to genuine, sincere prayer that directs the soul toward meeting God. It is another matter when religious formalism turns into showy piety, when public prayer becomes an element of etiquette, deprived of inner fire. Prayer without faith becomes meaningless.

The same is true of many words in prayer. This does not mean that prayer has to be short, but its strength does not depend on its length. Someone compared standing in prayer to shooting a bow, which requires concentration. Prayer may be long, but purposeful; therefore unnecessary words can weaken it, or even destroy it.

From Christ's words that the Heavenly Father sees our needs even before we ask, people often conclude that there is no need to ask Him: He will give anyway. In fact, He does give us much regardless of our requests. But it is sad if we look at Him only as a supplier of gifts while avoiding entering into a relationship with Him that is filled with something greater.

To help us learn this better, Christ gave us the prayer "Our Father" as a model for our prayer. We can repeat its words and meditate on them every day.

The logic of the Sermon on the Mount continues here: the logic of interiorization, of moving spiritual life from the outside inward. True relationships with God do not consist in performing certain actions, but in the inner motivation for those actions. Best of all is when these actions become so inwardly natural to us that we ourselves no longer notice their motives. It is no accident that the words, "your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you openly," are repeated here like a refrain.

Almsgiving that is unnoticed from the outside, prayer without many words and without onlookers: these are elements of that naturalness. And Jesus Himself shows an example of such naturalness: the prayer "Our Father," born right here and now, which became the standard for Christians of every generation.

And it begins with the word most natural for the Son as He turns to the Father: "Abba," which would best be translated not as "Father" and not even as "Papa," but as "Daddy"; it is such a childlike and tender form of address.

Every action must have a definite goal, and more than that, this goal is reached: the one who loves for show, in order to earn respect and honor, easily reaches his goal - he "has already received his reward." But the one who loves in secret, even from himself, so much that his "left hand does not know" about it, that is, inwardly, in the depth of the heart where even a person's own consciousness does not always penetrate, all the more receives "repayment," that is, reaches his goal.

And it seems that the Gospel, the good news, consists precisely in this promise that the goal will be reached, even if our left hand never finds out about it. Christ promises that compassion, participation in another person's life, will reach that person's heart, that the one who seeks God will manage to be alone with Him in his closet, behind a closed door.