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.