Journey Through the Fast: Forgiveness Sunday

The beginning of a series of Lenten reflections from Fr. Deacon Daniel Dozier, a Greek Catholic Deacon in the Ukrainian Catholic Church.

SOUTHERN PINES, N.C. (Catholic Online) - The last Sunday of preparation before the Great Fast is known as Cheesefare Sunday.Each of the four Sundays of preparation within our Byzantine tradition have offered its own lesson to us on the meaning of the Great Fast and the spirit with which we should approach it.

The first Sunday, the Sunday of Zacchaeus (cf. Luke 19:1-10), emphasized our desire for God - to see Him and to know Him personally so that He might come and dwell in our hearts and homes.

The second Sunday, the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee (cf. Luke 18:10-14), focused on the necessity of humility before an all-Holy God. It showed us the way to rediscover the path of return back to Him - not through pride in our religious observances, but rather a heart full of repentance and love, asking for His Fatherly mercy.

The third Sunday, the Sunday of the Prodigal Son (cf. Luke 15:11-32), taught us that the return to the Father's House is always a welcome one - a cause of great rejoicing and the restoration of the grace of sonship. Our return from exile is eagerly awaited by the Father, who runs to us, even when we are far off, to restore a child who was lost - even the most rebellious of us.

The fourth Sunday, Meatfare Sunday, which marked the traditional beginning of abstaining from meat for the Great Fast, emphasized through the Gospel reading the Last Judgment that all of us must face. In the short time that is given to us, we have a decision to make: are we to be among the sheep who engage in works of mercy and minister to Christ even in His distressing disguises of the poor, the needy, the sinner...or are we to be among the goats, who neglect this call. Our eternal destiny - heaven or hell - depends upon our discernment of and ministry to Christ in Our Midst!

This fifth Sunday, also known as Cheesefare Sunday (cf. Matthew 6:14-21), marking the last day when we could traditionally use dairy products until after Pascha (Resurrection Sunday or Easter), invites us through the Gospel reading to reflect upon the grace of forgiveness. For this reason it is also called Forgiveness Sunday. With the additional ancient rite of the Service of Mutual Forgiveness which we will celebrate after liturgy, this day is a profound meditation on the need for each of us to extend to each other the forgiveness and mercy that God has extended to us.

In the Our Father - the Pater Noster - we pray an incredible and terrible prayer: "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us..." Jesus also tells us in the Gospel: that the path to freedom, to liberation from sin is to extend forgiveness to those who have trespassed against us.

But forgiveness is not forgetfulness. Forgiveness is not a form of spiritual lobotomy - the removal or extraction of memories. Rather it is the healing and transfiguration of those memories, and the healing of relations. Forgiveness removes the bitterness we may feel towards others who have offended us by their deeds, their misdeeds or even their failure to act. It is a personal Jubilee - a feast of the cancellation of debts owed to us by others and the restoration and renewal of our covenant relationship.

Forgiveness is, therefore, the very penetration of the Kingdom of God into our hearts and into our lives. Without this penetration, we are unable to enter fully into the kingdom of heaven both in this world and the next.

Forgiveness is also to see our wounds in the light of God's mercy. I have often reflected on the fact that Christ after His resurrection appeared in the Upper Room, with His wounds. The wounds that were inflicted upon Him by others to shame Him and to cause Him deadly harm were transformed in the light and power of the Resurrection. His wounds became His glory! To forgive others is to see our wounds in that Resurrecting light so that the forgiveness we share may also redound to our glory in the life to come.

We have all been wounded...we have all been injured. Some of us are bound by resentment. Some of us are bound by the bitterness of our memories. Lent is the time to bring such wounds into the light of the Resurrection: to experience the liberation - the freedom of the children of God. To know such deep healing that goes to the very level of our being.

I once heard a radio interview with Jim Jones, Jr., the son of the Rev. Jim Jones, the minister responsible for the Guyana massacre in the 1970's, where nearly 1000 people died in a mass suicide. I remember that event well as a boy with the images in the newspapers and magazines of whole families who had died together. Such was the cult-like control of the Rev. Jim Jones over his followers.

His son had been one of the few to escape the terrible massacre. He along with a few others had left Jonestown to try and negotiate with the U.S. Embassy in order to avert the tragedy that his father was about to initiate. Some 30 years later, he was being interviewed on the radio and was asked a very penetrating question: "Have you forgiven your father?" His answer, which I am paraphrasing here, was striking: "Yes I have," he said. "For years I struggled with bitterness towards him. But then I learned that once I had forgiven him, he had no power over me."

For Jim Jones, Jr., now a devout Catholic, the power of his father's sin had been broken by the greater power of forgiveness. Forgiveness is thus the true path to freedom. It is to see our memories in the healing light of Christ's love. It is to overcome evil with good, to remove its powerful toxin from our lives.

Another title for the Sunday of preparation is "The Expulsion of Adam from the Paradise of Bliss," offers a further insight into the Great Fast. This tragic inheritance of exile from paradise because of sin is also our own by choice. We too have often fallen and offended the charity due to God and neighbor. We too have lost the paradise of bliss and access to the fruit of the garden. Mankind fell through eating, and so we must fast. We give up the satisfaction of our appetites in order to prepare ourselves to reenter paradise and partake of the fruit of the Tree of Life. We turn from our own sin and we ask forgiveness from God and our neighbor, which accelerates our return to bliss.

Such is the meaning of Forgiveness Sunday. It is the beginning of our fast - first from sin and then from food, so that God the Merciful Father may invite us through the New Adam and with the New Eve to enjoy in all its fullness the Paschal Feast of His Eternal Kingdom. May we, throughout the Great Fast, be prepared at all times to share the fruits of this paradise - once lost, but now found - with those around us.

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Fr. Deacon Daniel Dozier is a Greek Catholic Deacon in the Ukrainian Catholic Church. He serves several missions in North Carolina, including Saint Michael the Archangel Ukrainian Greek Catholic Mission in Southern Pines, NC. www.saintmichaelschapel.org . He is the author or "The Twelve Great Feasts of the Messiah and the Mother of God: A Handbook for the Domestic Church" published by Eastern Christian Publications www.ecpubs.com .

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