The Lord's Prayer
by
Bishop Hugo Lj. Odhner

    The prayer which the Lord taught His disciples contains all the laws of the regenerate life. It breathes the spirit of charity—the love of Him who began His public teaching by saying, "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy," and ended His life on earth by saying of His persecutors, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

    The Lord spoke His doctrine of charity and forgiveness to a race which knew no other law than that of retaliation—the law of "a tooth for a tooth, and an eye for an eye." We speaks still to a world which is tied up in endless chains of retaliation; a world which identifies justice with revenge; a world whose people are all prone to envies, hatreds, and bitter feuds, to carping fault finding and mutual intolerance, to self-seeking competition which is devoid of gratitude or mercy; a world where charity is mistaken for weakness, and weakness for charity.

    Therefore we must pray for forgiveness. There is no escape from the vicious cycle of evil, no breaking away from the cruel logic of retaliation, no raising of the mind above the brute passions of the proprium, except by forgiveness. And man can begin to forgive only when he comes to acknowledge that he himself needs to be forgiven. Our prayer is then a confession of sins, a pleading for mercy; but it is also an acknowledgment that we cannot ask to be forgiven except so far as we also will forgive. It is a prayer for the power to repent, for the ability to respond to the Lord's influx of love which may endow us with charity towards our fellowmen.

    It must be said, once and for all, that the Lord never ceases to forgive. The Divine love is beyond that human pride which is so often offended and seeks reprisals. Love only hungers to be received. It reckons not with the past, but continually excuses, intercedes, and abundantly pardons. When we ask the Lord to forgive the transgressions of the past, that prayer is immediately fulfilled, even before it is spoken.

    Yet this Divine forgiveness, a compassion which does not cease even towards the devils in hell—cannot always be effectively received by man. Therefore, in the language of appearances, we pray that He may forgive us in so far as we forgive our debtors—as if His wrath were more severe than ours. The appearance is that with the merciful He is merciful, with the pure He is pure, but that with the perverse He contendeth (Psalm 18:25-27). It is within the range of such appearances that human life is laid, for they are what condition our life and make it finite. We cannot see God as He is in His own essence, but we see Him and meet with Him as He comes to us in terms of human situations. Viewed from human life, the Lord appears as wise and loving only so far as our spirit apprehends the treasures of His wisdom and love. A stupid man sees no wisdom in the laws of creation, but sees only mistakes and haphazard events without purpose. An evil man feels no love in the dispensations of the Lord's providence, but only tyranny and antagonism and opposition.

    This is the reason why man must pray, "Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors." We pray that our minds may be so changed by repentance and regeneration that we can receive a heavenly delight in willing well and doing good towards our neighbor. For the influx of life is limited to what the vessel can hold; and the effect of the influx is according to the character of the vessel—pure with the pure and perverse with the impure. Our desire must be to become purified from the spirit of revenge which defiles our proprium, so that the water of life may be poured into our minds as into a clean vessel, and that our "daily bread"—the sustaining good and truth of heaven—may not breed evil things before the day of our life is done.

    The wording of the prayer in Luke's gospel is, "Forgive us our sins." Unless evils are shunned as sins against the Lord, they are only temporarily hidden. Genuine repentance is not begun merely from a personal love for others, but for the sake of something higher than all men that is, for the love of what is good and true, for the sake of the Divine law and the Divine end.

    Only by such repentance can we plead for the Divine forgiveness. The Lord will then forgive, pardon. Repentance means the renunciation of delight in the evil which we shun. So far as evils are thus renounced because they are in themselves wrong—so far the opposite goods can be instilled by the Lord: thefts are displaced by honesty, laziness by industry, obscenity of thought or act by chastity, conceit by humility.

    Simple as this truth is, it is often misunderstood. It is imagined that God forgives sinners by an act of immediate mercy—an acquittal that blots out iniquities in a moment. But such apparent mercy would mean doom for man! It would mean the forcible taking away of man's whole life—all his delights of love and will and thinking. Such a sudden change would mean his annihilation. Happily, the Lord leaves it for man to curb and disown his disorderly desires one by one—that as his evils are gradually removed they may also be forgiven and his delights gradually shift from evil into good.

    Repentance is the road to charity. But charity is the goal. And to forgive others is the great Christian virtue—the sign of charity. "If thou bring thy gift to the altar ... first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift." Yet such is the perversity of man's scruples that it may seem easier to offer peace-offerings to a God whom one cannot meet face to face than to do a simple act of restitution to a fellow-man against whom one has offended. It is easier to seek forgiveness of God than of man.

    Repentance must first take the form of seeking to become worthy of forgiveness by other men. And only then can it lead to charity—which is to forgive others.

    And in a world such as ours, we have all much to be forgiven and much to forgive. We are all bound up in the evils of heredity which differ but little among individuals. Our human contacts make inevitable a constant conflict of the "proprium"—the proprium of men and of nations and classes. Each man thinks not so much of his own faults but searches for those of others. He justifies himself, but finds little excuse for others. He is anxious to pull out the speck from his brother's eye, but sees not to remove the beam out of his own.

    The Lord hurled His "woes" upon the hypocrites while showing His compassion on the multitudes, the publicans and outcasts. It is told how He rebuked the self-appointed judges of a harlot; how, when His verdict, silently written in the earth, had sent them away ashamed, Me turned to the woman and said, "Woman, where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee?" And when she replied, "No man, Lord", He said, "Neither do I condemn thee. Go, and sin no more."

    These Divine words and acts often stir us but for a moment, after which they leave our minds complacent, smug, and self-satisfied. And when forgiveness is needed, we are slow to grant it; or grant it in words, but not in spirit. It is our human tendency to nurse the wrongs we may have suffered until they grow out of all proportion; to conjure up imaginary motives and suspicions; until at last we may come to live in a world of fanciful fears.

    We may misread the intent of the Lord's words, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her," and turn this to mean that evil is so universal that it cannot be avoided and is no longer a sin! This is the false "broadmindedness" which springs from our own indifference. And it is not forgiveness of sin—but a partaking in the sin. Forgiveness does not mean approval of an evil. For what we hold allowable, and defend, that we do in our spirit and would do in act if opportunity offered.

    But although the duty of forgiveness is often twisted into an excuse for evil, the duty still stands. Forgive the sinning brother—not seven times but seventy times seven! Forgive the man who sins—but condemn the evil itself. We must aid the man, but abhor and oppose the evil which we think he has. Love your enemies, pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you. We cannot help a fellow-man to overcome his faults if we condemn him and withdraw from him that sympathetic encouragement to good which is the sustaining thing in the life of every human being. Yet we must guard against companionship with those who appear confirmed in the evils of life and in the falsities of such evil. We must indeed watch lest we hurt the souls of others by withdrawing our love from them when they need it the most when they are in states of temptation. But we must guard first of all the health of our own souls and our children's, lest we compromise with evil.

    All true freedom is rooted in charity and truth. The intolerance which condemns first and inquires afterwards strikes at all that is most precious in human society. The hells center their efforts in exciting men's minds to hate and envy his neighbor's person, but to love and applaud his evils so far as they do no harm to themselves. The angels love man as a brother while they strive to bend his affections away from evil and to encourage him leading him in freedom according to the reason and faith that he has; even, if necessary, excusing and defending his evils and falsities so far as these can be bent toward what is good.

    And the man who is in charity also is forgiving. He looks not for the evils of others but for their goods and truths, and inclines to put the best interpretation on their faults. He does not publish the errors of others unless this becomes imperative knowing that public accusation provokes a man to defend and confirm his evil. The man of charity allows for the fact that men's evils may be due to their being immersed in states of temptation; and may not be confirmed, but are excusable by ignorance, or by simplicity in which something of innocence may still abide.

    Yet even the regenerate man cannot deny to society and the State the right to protect itself by punishing evil-doers. For as long as men actually identify themselves with an open evil, no one, even the most forgiving, can show them the charity that is in his heart without harming the uses of others, to whom we also stand in debt.

    Thus we pray, "Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors." We owe so much. Life, freedom, possessions, knowledge, happiness—nothing is from ourselves, all is a debt to God and to our neighbor. And there are those who are debtors to us; who depend on us for the means of happiness. Love makes us debtors unto one another. What love gives is forever a bond of mutual debts. The greater the debts, the stronger is the love. But love does not clamor for payment. It forgives the debt cancels it. Love says, "No, you owe me nothing, nothing in return." And if there is a response, none the less, love regards it as a new debt, for which it asks—and receives—forgiveness.

    Thus the bonds of love multiply into a more and more complete reciprocal conjunction. And this can best be seen in the love called truly conjugial, which descends from the heaven of innocence. There the debts of the man to the woman and of the woman to the man balance into an eternal union, even as love and wisdom are balanced in their angelic minds.

    But we find an image of this conjunction in the whole Divine economy of creation. There is no charity, no true friendship, no love of use, no field of duty, which does not create its debts, which dawn but gradually upon us. At times we may feel overwhelmed with duties we can never accomplish, with needs which we are unable to fill, with increasing obligations beyond our ability to repay and debts we cannot return. We do not all rise to an equal purity of love or to an equal understanding. And so we ask forgiveness, relying on the love which others are willing to extend, and—supremely—on the love of God. And love—being love—will understand and pardon.

    Without such a frank trust in others, and such a mutual confession of constant failure, human life becomes a scene of morbid fears and repinings which would threaten our uses and our sanity. It must be taken for granted that in the performance of uses all have their limitations and all—men and angels—are debtors to each other. If men were conscious of this bond of indebtedness, how much easier it would be to approach the problems of the world's work. The Church is established as a more protected sphere where this law of love can be re-established, a more closely knit circle where loves and uses are spiritual and the Lord, not man, is acknowledged as their source. But the most perfect communion of all is found only in heaven, for there all regard themselves as debtors and servants.

    The giving and the return seem at times unequal. But the Lord knows otherwise. For the internal reception of love is only according to the return. Only when we return love for love can we really receive love. Only as we forgive can we be forgiven.