Father Vassilios Argyriadis
Three short paragraphs are today's gospel passage. Three small sections, with three separate topics. At a first reading they may seem unrelated to each other. In fact, not only are they not disjointed, but they suggestively express, like a rough panorama, the main points of the one and only spiritual path that the Church calls us to walk.
The first section talks about forgiveness. If we do not forgive others, then "our heavenly father" is not going to forgive us either. Throughout His earthly mission, Christ placed the forgiveness of sins at the center of His teaching. And the community of the Church that arose from this mission, cannot but live and practice forgiveness. It is an initial event for anyone who enters the Church. The beginning of the Christian life of all of us, in baptism, is marked by a remission of sins, our sins are forgiven. And forgiveness is now also our duty - since it is a condition of admission to the Church, it is also a condition of existence within the Church; the beginning of every Christian life and its custom, the opening gift and the daily duty from then on.
The movement of forgiveness is an outward movement: a movement addressed to others, to those outside of us. When Christ speaks again about forgiveness, later in the gospel of Matthew (18:26-35), he will use a parable with images of decision and external actions — the king who bestows words and deeds on a servant of his, and the servant who towards his servant, he fails to imitate the example of the king... Forgiveness cannot be just a thought for us either. Forgiveness means decision and action. Even deciding to say "good morning" to someone who has hurt you deeply or wronged you is a step of forgiveness: instead of turning your face away from him (even if he remains unrepentant), you include him in the space of your own day, you co-locate him. It's not that simple. You may be struggling inside, you may still feel wronged. But it is an irreplaceable condition of the Christian life. It is an exercise in decision and action, even if you are reluctant inside. It is an outward movement.
Instead, the second section of today's passage is about an inward movement. The Lord exhorts us to fast "in secret", that is, in a way that is not visible to others. And this has internal ramifications. It is an inward movement because its aim is to open up "space" within us: while at the center of every human being is the ego, the omnipotent self and its "wants", with fasting we make an effort to tame the ego and his wishes. A bunch of our most basic wants and needs are related to material things. And the most primary of these is food. If we rein in our desire for material things, if we somehow attempt to put even the need for matter in order, we have taken a first step in shrinking the ego. A beautiful admonition we heard in today's verse was "behold we fast, let us observe tears of sorrow and charity" — by fasting (fasting) we will harden our ego (tears) and crush our proud self (sour) so that we may open ourselves to the other man (ἐλειμοσύνην). Fasting is a small effort, very primitive, but it is a beginning to open up a little space inside us for the needs of the neighbor, to fit the other inside us. In this sense, fasting is directly related to forgiveness. And it also requires, like forgiveness, a decision and action. But it is an inward movement.
In the third section of today's passage we heard the admonition to treasure up treasures "ἐν οὐρανῷ". Earlier in the passage we had heard of our "heavenly" father being spoken of. So what kind of treasures are these? Since the place of our Father is represented as "heaven", then our Father is the depository of our treasures. And because "God is love", as the evangelist John tells us (1 John 4:16), the treasures "in heaven", which we are called to treasure on our behalf, are our personal shares of love, in the inexhaustible savings bank of our Father. How much love did we accumulate inside us, how much did we deserve to become partakers of the Trinitarian love? This is the goal of the Christian life.
But love, unlike fasting and forgiveness, is not a decision. We cannot decide one morning to have love within us. Love is bestowed by heaven, it is a gift of God within us. What we do is practice acts of charity, acts like the ones we heard last Sunday, in the Gospel of judgment. And we also practice with the acts of forgiveness and fasting that we are called to intensify from tomorrow. Outward actions and inward actions. So that the space inside us opens up, so that others can fit in and finally God can fit in. This is our way of sharing in the treasures that are stored up in the treasury of our Father in heaven.
So Lent begins. We will celebrate the vespers of forgiveness this afternoon. At the other end of Lent, at the corner of Easter day, in the afternoon, another vesper awaits us, the vesper of love. From forgiveness we start and for love we march. Throughout the interim we will intensify fasting and prayer. In a way, our whole life in the Church is like this: Forgiveness is the starting point of our inclusion in the Christian life (with our baptism) and we put love as its goal and end (if one can say that the Christian life has an "end" Zoe…). And all in between, we wrestle with decisions and actions to tame our cruel selves, to bring order to our rampant desires, to gather our overflowing egos, to make room for others to fit in, the gift of love , God. This is why we said at the beginning that today's Gospel passage suggestively gives us a panorama not only of the Lent that we are called to live from tomorrow, but also of our entire Christian life.
May God require us to see our life as a constant Lent, a journey from forgiveness to love, a narrowing of our selfish desires, so that our horizons widen and we can fit in as much heaven as possible. Because in heaven, in our Father, is our real treasure. And if our eyes are opened to see him, then we will move our heart there too - "where your treasure is, there will your heart be also".
