Romans 13:11-14:4
Troparion, Kontakion, etc.
Matthew 6:14-21



"I Will Un-remember
All Your Sins"


"I, I am He
    who blots out your transgressions for My Own sake,
    and I will not remember your sins.   (Isa 43:30)

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Today is a very personal and private day. It is the day, including Vespers yesterday, when we seek forgiveness from God. Why should forgiveness be personal or private? Well, among all the things we might say to another human being, our most intimate secrets will inevitably include our most grievous sins, the sins we would wish to confide to no one. On the other hand, we must confess them. We must, if we wish ever to be whole. This is why the Lord Jesus founds His One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church emphasizing one sacrament, which is Confession and its follow-on Absolution. We might think of this as — we must be baptized in order to enter the Church and then must be re-baptized and re-baptized whenever we fall away from the Church through our most foolish choices. When Jesus founds the Church, one sacrament is emphasized:

On the evening of ... the first day of the week, the doors being shut
where the disciples were, ... Jesus said to them ... "Peace be with you.
As the Father has sent Me, even so I send you." And when He had said this
He breathed on them, and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit.
If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven;
if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."
Now, He could have announced to the world, "Go into your closet in secret, and confess your sins to your Father Who is in secret." He could have said this, but He does not. As He founds the Church, He singles out a very special kind of prayer — a prayer seeking forgiveness, not directly to God but to an Apostle, who today we would call a bishop. Nearly from the beginnings of the Church, the bishop is present in the form of his special representatives, really fragments of himself, called priests. (The Holy Scriptures specify two major orders of sacred ministers, bishops and deacons; the priest is a special representative of the bishop.)

The Lord insists that forgiveness be sought from God through another human being. Why is this? Because only by looking directly in the eyes of another person, admitting every detail of what we have done will the enormity of our sins and the betrayals we have committed against God and to others be fully felt. Humans have a bad habit of casually mentioning to God, "Oh, you remember when I did this. Or you remember when I did that. Oh, what a bad boy I've been!" But all of that childishness ceases when we must give an account of ourselves to a third party. It is then that the tears will fall and the heart will break. All is done in love. For only love is capable of embracing such a scene and tender condition of the heart.

Let us consider an example. Imagine, if you will, two people falling in love. Nothing like this has ever happened. Neither of them believed that anything like this does happen ... to anyone. When she speaks, that is what he was about to say. When he offers an insight or a holy reflection, that is the very thing that had been on her heart. Each of them, they soon realize, is the other one's "other self." Being together, even in complete silence, imparts ineffable peace, a feeling of well-being and safety to the very core of their beings.

When each sees the other approach from afar, the heart skips a beat. When an email or text arrives, the pulse quickens. What is that musical of Rogers and Hammerstein? "I know how it feels to to have wings on my heels / And to go down the street in a trance." She is the most beautiful woman in the world in his eyes. And he is the man of her dreams. They experience a transcendent love, an incommensurable love, above them and beyond them, and soon it feels that their hearts will burst if this continues, this prodigious love continues to expand within them.

Soon, each one realizes that an old life has ended and that a new life has begun. In fact, life itself, without the other, would be no life at all. They do not care if they have to burn down their whole worlds and lose everything. The only thing that matters is being near to each other. Looking back, each says "I did not realize how empty and desolate my life had been." But this new life is so full, so rich, so .... whole. They had never really known what life was until now. You see, the doors of Eden have re-opened for them, and their first instinct is that no spot of evil must ever touch this most holy place. They have been called to religious vocation. And each knows to a certainty that God has done this, for only God could have done this: a true and honest call to religious life in the form of a vocation called marriage — the first religious vocation God had created, the first Church (two in communion with each and with God), and the every essence of Eden.

They know the profound holiness of this experience. And instinctively they realize that they must confess their sins to each other. Two persons becoming one bone, one flesh ... they must prepare to join the other in spotless unity, a new life, perfect and fresh as Eden's morning. There must be nothing of the past hanging about them.

In the world these would be tricky waters to navigate, and worldly thoughts enter in. She might ponder, "He thinks I am pure and perfect. I will lose him if I admit my sins." Or he might think, "She sees me as a perfection. I am afraid to tear down this image and show her how low I have been." But these are worldly thoughts, and this woman and this man have left the world. They left left the world the moment they met.

To hold back one's sins now would be to lose all that God has given them, to be condemned to a double life forever — harboring dark secrets and fencing off parts of the soul and memory. To cling to the shameful past, clutching one's sins in secret when the doors of Eden are opening?! Not for this woman and man. With Saint Paul they say,

... the night is far gone, the day is at hand. Let us then cast off
the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us conduct
ourselves becomingly as in the [new] day.   (Rom 13:12-13).
God has given given them a new world: of complete trust of understanding and, yes, of holy love — a love so great that each would not hesitate to give his or her life for the other. Shameful mistakes from the past? What are they?! They will vaporize and be dispelled in the blinding, holy light they share. Past sins are nothing when set beside this incomparable gift from God. For God's love is about acceptance: being approved, cherished, loved. Here is our treasure, and here will be all of our hearts forever (Mt 6:21). Only when we admit every unspoken truth, which is a lie, can we join in purity and perfect unity. Only when they will formalize their confession to a priest can they enter this holy and new life. And only then will the Church consecrate this divine love in marriage, crowned with God's blessing and sealed forever unto eternal life.

They have become people after God's own heart. "What God hath joined let no man put asunder." Here is safety. Here is complete and inviolable trust. Here is peace, peace of mind and peace unto their very souls.

How did this man and this woman get here? Yes, God guided them to holy ground where miraculous works were be done. But they did not journey to this place. Experience will not lead you here. Practice will not do it. We would rather say that they were open to it. And this openness was expressed by their refusal of the world, their rejection of the world. To be in the world, one cannot be open to God.

How did they refuse the world? They refused it by not trying to substitute the special union God planned for them with lesser, unholy relationships. For if each had filled their lives with wrong relationships, he or she would not have been present for this one, this one, true love, which had awaited them from the foundations of the world. (Let us say in passing that serial long-term relationships do not train us for marriage; they teach us how to discard long-term commitments.)

They refused the world by not accepting the lie that sex leads to intimacy. Rather, sex is a vain attempt to substitute cheap "body stimulation" where real love and holy intimacy ought to be. We may attempt to fill this special place, reserved for God and God's kind of love, with low living, but the result is to make an enemy of God and to alienate ourselves even from ourselves.

They refused the world by rejecting the whole premise of worldly journey. We hear young people today say that they want to have experiences. Our two beloveds are open to God by rejecting the whole premise of journey and becoming experienced. Jesus' signature word is not journey but rather its opposite: metanoia. He enjoins us to make a U-turn, a complete turn-about in our lives, seeking not a distant horizon but rather a return to our own innocence. We must have the heart and soul of a child to enter the Kingdom of Heaven (Mt 18:3). A U-turn back to our innocence. And this is precisely what our couple-in-love have discovered. Through confession, through a rejection of their former lives, and through forgiveness, they have returned to innocent love. They love to hold hands. They want to go steady forever. And for such as these — whether to be united with another person or to be united with God Who is Love — for such as these, the doors of Eden have re-opened. Is this not what the Man of Eden, St. John the Forerunner, meant when he cried out in the wilderness? The word swept over the entire Jewish lifeworld again and again:

Metanoiete! Metanoiete!
It is a shame that the Latin Bible translation decided on the word repent or do a life of penance. That is not what the verb form of metanoia means. It means "Go back! Go back!"  And a huge wave of going back, of confession, and of forgiveness swept over the eastern Mediterranean like a second Noah's flood following the Baptist's cry.

There can be no journey to the holy place, and there can be no planning or mastery of it. It is a now event. Open your heart to God! Open your heart to His kind of accepting, approving, forgiving love! Be ready for the miraculous! Reclaim your innocence! And return to the Garden, which is the hallmark place where we meet Him: blameless, spotless, forgiven. For this is His will for you and for everyone.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.