O Paradise, garden of delight
and beauty, dwelling place made perfect by God, unending gladness and
eternal joy, the hope of the prophets and the home of the saints, by the
music of your rustling leaves beseech the Creator of all to open to me
the gates which my sins have closed, that I may partake of the Tree of
Life and Grace which was given to me in the beginning (Vespers of Forgiveness Sunday)
There have been moments in our lives
when we have felt or had a vision or sense of heaven: the presence of
God, of grace, a certain wholeness and integrity, joy, peace, wonder,
gratitude. The sweetness of being forgiven, and of forgiving, is a kind
of paradise, a brief taste of heaven. We understand how desirable it is
to be in a right relationship with God and one another, to shed all that
is calculating and defensive and guilty and to savor a moment of
relief, of honesty and openness , to have a clear conscience, to regain -
even if briefly - an almost child-like innocence and purity.
In addition to today's theme of
forgiveness, we also directed to reflect on the expulsion of Adam
and Eve from paradise. The fall from grace of our first parents is said
to be the origin of our own sense of exile and alienation,
of the division and separation we experience in our relationships with
God and one another. We have only at times a passing glimpse of the
paradise for which we were created and which is our true spiritual home.
Mutual forgiveness is one of these critical moments. Our lenten journey
will be marked, God-willing, by several such moments when the veil is
lifted and the distance that seperates us from paradise is diminished,
moments of recognition and sweetness that point towards the true
homeland our heart's desire.
Over against these experiences we daily endure our fallen condition, a condition of exile. Charles Taylor writes in A Secular Age
about our experience of 'a distance, an absence, an exile, a seemingly
irremediable incapacity ever to reach this place; an absence of power, a
confusion.... What is terrible in this latter condition is that we lose
a sense of where the place of fullness is, even of what fullness could
consist in, we feel we've forgotten what it would look like, or cannot
believe in it anymore. But the misery of absence, of loss, is still
there, indeed, it is in some ways even more acute.'
We highlight forgiveness as we are
about to begin the lenten struggle to overcome this sense of absence and
loss because without the desire for - and expression of - mutual
forgiveness there can be be no return to paradise. In fact, without
striving to forgive and asking for forgiveness from God and one another
there can be no salvation. The Lord says that divine mercy will be shown
only to the merciful and forgiveness only to the forgiving.
