Forgiveness Sunday Vespers 2023

There's really hardly anything left now that

needs to be said because we've now entered the

ship on the great sea of the fast, the ship that

Father Nicholas mentioned last night in his homily

and the ship that the hymns spoke about today.

We're going somewhere. We're not fasting and

praying and keeping vigil. and asking forgiveness

just because. You don't go to the gym just to

lift some weights. You go for a reason. And so

this reason here is because we're on a journey

to Pascha, to the kingdom, to the judgment day,

to our own resurrection and restoration. It's

important we remember when we're struggling that

this day is also called not only Forgiveness

Sunday, but the commemoration, the remembrance

of the casting out of Adam and Eve from paradise.

That sounds so distant and so kind of lovely

and, you know, I don't know, far. But it's pretty

easy to tell. We don't live in paradise. But

God has given us signs and tokens and gifts so

that we can restore with his grace paradise in

ourself. We've been fed today. We share the Master's

hospitality at the Divine Liturgy. This is a

gift from paradise. And we prepare ourselves

to enter into paradise every time we walk into

the church. We receive forgiveness and absolution

at confession. This is a gift of paradise. The

whole life of the church. What did Jesus say?

Take, eat. Drink of this, all of you, for the

remission of sins, for forgiveness. So as Christians

who carry Christ within ourselves as temples,

the best thing, the most holy thing, the divine

thing that we can do is to continually offer

our love. And in this broken world, the sign

of love, really, the sign of love is forgiveness.

So I ask now, your forgiveness as your pastor

for all my failings, for forgetting and neglecting

to thank all of you, to honor all of you, to

pray for all of you more frequently than I do,

to tell you all that I love you, that I know

God has brought us together. And so often...

You know, because of my selfishness and egotism,

I let that become a burden. But it's not a burden.

It's a gift. It's a blessing. And I'm sorry to

each one of you. I say I'm sorry for those failures.

And I ask for your prayers so that we can be

together and struggling together throughout this

Lent with one mind, one faith, one body, worshiping

the one Lord. Brothers and sisters, what we'll

do, Father Nicholas will come up, we'll ask forgiveness

of one another, say God forgives, he'll say God

forgives, and we move on. I will ask you to try,

I know it's hard in this congregation, I'll ask

you to try to be quiet when you do this. It's

a joyful thing, but it's not a time for laughing.

Let's be sober, and let's be focused. in how

we do this so that we retain the grace and the

contrition and the compunction that God will

grant to us each through one another.