About twenty years into ministry, it hit me. The lack of forgiveness may be the single-most compelling reason why people don’t experience the abundant life Jesus offers them. The number of people who hold grudges and feud over petty slights is incalculable. I’ve lost track of the people I’ve met whose family members are no longer on speaking terms with each other. Helping people receive God’s forgiveness and appropriate it to others is core to Jesus’ gospel.
Cyril of Jerusalem (315-386) had plenty of opportunities to exercise forgiveness with other people. He was exiled as bishop of the Jerusalem church three times. Nearly half his ministry was spent in exile. He was exiled a first time for adhering to the Nicene Creed, a second time for insubordination in selling church relics to help feed starving people in a famine and a third time for subscribing to Jesus’ full divinity. Seriously?!
Cyril’s twenty-three lectures for new believers that are still available to us display no ill-will toward those who opposed him. His warm-hearted teachings were intended to prepare candidates (called catechumens) for baptism at Easter. His counsel about God’s forgiving nature was central to his teaching. “It is God’s part to confer grace, but yours to accept it and guard it. Do not, therefore, spurn grace because it is freely given, but having received it, guard it religiously.”
A brief portion of his lecture on the Lord’s Prayer follows here. This ancient teaching on forgiveness has a prayerlike quality to it and can lead us into receiving and extending forgiveness: