Resentment and Forgiveness -- Part 2

Note: this is a continuation of the previous post under the same title in which the malady of anger and resentment was outlined, and Part 2 offers the first step in the healing process.

Having looked at the malady of anger, judgment, and resentment, let's go on to look at the cure. What are we to do to be freed of this sickness?

Our Lord Jesus Christ tells us clearly: Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who spitefully use you. And to him who smites you on the one cheek, offer also the other (Luke 6:27–29).

Rather than resenting those who wrong us, we are to love them, and we express this love by blessing them and praying for them. We do this because we are commanded to do so by Christ [my emphasis]. He has commanded this for our own sake, for our own salvation, because He loves us; and we do it for His sake, because we love Him.

Our fallen nature rebels against this: "What? Bless and pray for that person who wronged me?" But for Christ's sake, we go against our fallen nature, and force ourselves to pray. [my emphasis] We ask God to bless and have mercy on the person who hurt us, we wish good things for him, we wish his salvation, just as our Lord wishes his salvation. In this way we begin to become like God Himself, Who, according to the words of Christ, is kind to the unthankful and the evil (Luke 6:35). In going against our fallen nature, we return to our original nature—the image of God in us—and we grow in the likeness of God. [my emphasis]

Abba Dorotheus, a Desert Father of the sixth century, says that we can be healed of the sickness of resentment "by prayer right from the heart for the one who has annoyed us. We can pray such words as, ‘O God, help my brother, and me through his prayers.'" "In this," says Abba Dorotheus, "we are interceding for our brother, which is a sure sign of sympathy and love, and we are humiliating ourselves by asking help through our brother's prayers. [7]

When we continually force ourselves to bless and pray for others in this way, we will find that our Lord Jesus Christ will change, renew, and refresh our hearts. It may take some time and persistence, but gradually, almost imperceptibly, we will be changed. The poison of resentment, by the Grace of Christ, will leave our system.

Again our Lord has told us: Judge not, and you shall not be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned. Forgive, and you shall be forgiven (Luke 6:37).

The cure for anger, judgment, and resentment is forgiveness, pure and simple. No matter what terrible afflictions and unspeakable injustices have befallen us, we can be free of their negative effects on us through forgiveness.

I once asked a Romanian Orthodox priest named Fr. George Calciu about this. For twenty-one years he had been locked in Communist prisons, where he had endured the most unimaginable horrors ever perpetrated by human beings. And yet when I met him here in America, he was happy, joyful, like a child, totally free of any negative effects of this torture on his soul. He had found the secret of forgiveness. I asked him, "How can people overcome judgment?" He looked at me, almost with astonishment, and answered, "It's simple. Just don't judge!"

It's truly simple. But we must keep in mind that we can't do it on our own: We need God's help [my emphasis] to heal our fallen, wounded nature, to humble our pride. Therefore, as we pray for those who have hurt us, we should pray that God will help us to forgive [my emphasis], that He will soften our hard hearts, warm our cold hearts, and grant us a loving, merciful, and forgiving spirit.

Elder Sampson (Seivers) of Russia, who reposed in 1979, was a man well-equipped to speak on the subject of forgiveness. As a young novice monk, he was arrested by the Communist authorities, shot in a mass execution, and thrown into a common grave. By Divine Providence he survived the shooting, and was pulled out of the grave still breathing by his brother monks and nursed back to health. Later he was arrested again and spent nearly twenty years in Communist concentration camps. But he never held onto bitterness and resentment: He completely forgave both his executioners and his torturers. In his later years, when he was serving as a spiritual father to many people, he was especially tough when his spiritual children refused to forgive someone, even for some petty annoyance. He said: "I've always concluded: this means that they still have not gotten the point, that the whole secret, that all the salt of Christianity lies in this: to forgive, to excuse, to justify, not to know, not to remember evil.

"The Holy Fathers are the children of the Grace of the Holy Spirit. The result of this action of Grace is when the heart excuses. It loves, it can speak well of someone and pray for him. It does not remember offense or evil.

"Therefore," said Elder Sampson, "it is impossible to forgive and not excuse. [my emphasis] This is a psychological fact. The heart is made this way. It was not the brain, not the nervous system—as science attempts to teach, and the psychiatrists especially—but it was the heart that was made this way by God. It is called a Christian heart. It excuses, it does everything possible in order to justify and excuse. Isn't that so?! That is a Christian quality!

"The pagan or the Moslem does not know about this ... the action of the Grace of the Holy Spirit.... Try telling a Moslem to justify and excuse, to love his enemy. He will kill you.

Once Elder Sampson was asked, "What can an angry person do?" He replied, "He must pray and pray for healing. For the sake of his faith, for the sake of his insistence, the Lord will change his heart."

I very much agree that a legalistic and punitive approach to fasting is counterproductive and misses the point. We don't fast for God's sake, we fast for our own sake and benfit. The model that has shaped my family's lives has been a positive approach that lays out the guidelines of the Church for fasting -- both the outward acts and the inward struggles that must accompany the outward acts. And there is the encouragement to "do one's best" -- with the constant striving to improve, with the eventual goal of completely following the guidance of the Church with regard to both the inner and outward struggle.

I really don't think that most of us are able to look on fasting as a result of theosis, since we haven't come anywhere near to achieving it. For most of us average folks, fasting according to the guidance of the Church is a discipline that leads us to and down that path. We have to walk before we can run. The guidance of the Church is clear that self-willed and self-directed fasting is ineffective at best, dangerous at worst.

Very few of us are going to fast consistently at all, let alone to a degree adequate to accomplishing spiritual goals just out of our own volition and when we feel it in our heart. Very few of us would fast much at all under those conditions.

When we look at the lives of the great ascetic saints (who have travelled far down the path toward theosis) held up for our example, I can't say that I have heard of any saint that has come up with fasting practices different from that which the Church recommends. What we see in most of them is that they have left these guidelines far behind -- they keep them to the letter as a matter of course -- and do a whole lot beyond that.

The fasting guidelines of the Church are the product of thousands of years of experience with average folks like us, guidelines that are going to help us down that path in a way that we would only accomplish, if at all, with great difficulty and wasted effort. The Church's guidelines, have been (so to speak) "road-tested...", whereas something we might come up with on our is generally not.

Fasting is for us. I agree with Kosta that it can never be something we feel compelled to do out of fear or from legalistic, "etsi preppi" view of the Faith. On the other hand, century upon century of experience among our people teaches us that this is a good thing to do and those of us who keep the fast know that because we have seen the results in our own lives. The absolute best advice any of us, or any good spiritual father, will give is "do your best".

I must say I have noticed, and not been surprised, by the way, that so many of the recent converts and even the catechumens seem ready to jump into a strict monastic fast right now. From my point of view this is a mistake. I've been doing this for most of my life and I can't always succeed with a strict fast. Some years the best I can do is stay away from meat. But I keep trying.

We each work out our own theosis as best we can. Some people are higher up the ladder than others and then there are those of us stuck on the bottom rungs.

There is no point being myserable. We are not doing God a favor by fasting. We need to match our food with what's in our heart, our Chirstian heart.

I pretty much agree.

The longest I've fasted was for close to 24 hrs. I've done shorter periods that were more beneficial because the 24 hr. one was in the mind of atonement, and the shorter ones were precipitated by a sense of love for the Lord, and wanting to exhibit the love by the fast. I still suffered pangs of hunger, but I welcomed them, because I welcomed the fast. It was a full free-will fast.

I've often wondered why the Church (maybe it does, and I don't know it) doesn't advise one during Lent to give up things like talking, excepting when necessary. Or to give up all negative commenting on anything under the sun.

I often think I should leave FR alone for several weeks, and spend that time praying or reading Scripture, etc., and not discuss any of it with anyone, allowing the assimilation of the reading or prayer to be between just me and the Lord.

And yet here I sit prattling away...

This is also a reply to Kolo's #62, And LG's #63. Agrarian, as always, you say things in greater detail for the benefit of all of us.

Absolutely! We are not at liberty to "prescribe" our own fast. The Church is merely echoing the practices of the Holy Fathers whose theosis outshines us by leaps and bounds. If I came across as suggesting that we should tailor our own fast, I assure everyone that's not what I meant.

At the same time, a fast must be founded in the Christian heart and not be an act of obedience we hate but put up with because it "saves" us. That would be a minimalist approach to theosis and that is wrong! Going through the motions, as they say.

It is better to try and fail, but honestly fail and honestly try, then to cheat. Most of us are just crawling. However, if we feel that we are just following the rules and there is no honest wish we are fooling ourselves. Prayer and devotion to God must come out of love -- and when we do something out of love it's neither difficult nor an obligation.

"It is better to try and fail, but honestly fail and honestly try, than to cheat."

This is an excellent statement of a central tenet of the Orthodox approach to the spiritual life -- honesty with one's own self about one's failings and shortcomings. If we try to convince ourselves that we are farther along than we really are, we are only hurting ourselves.

Using "technicalities" to avoid spiritual labors, *and* then patting ourselves on the back at how well we are "keeping all the rules," simply isn't part of our tradition. I think I now understand your main point (I'm slow sometimes), and I couldn't agree more.

Most treatises on forgiveness do just what this one does.
Omits a very important step in forgivness..
In Luke 17:3 Christ lays out the formula for forgiveness, “If thy brother sin against you, CONFRONT him and IF he REPENTS, forgive him.” He then repeats this, for emphasis, in the next verse.
I have read elsewhere that it is a sin to forgive the unrepentant, as this will be a green light to keep doing what they did.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.