Father Help Us, Send Some Guidance from Above - Part VII

…and forgive us our trespasses…

Easy enough, right?  Well, easy enough when you think of “trespasses” as our “sins.”  We’re not only asking God to forgive the times we’ve wandered onto private property that we weren’t allowed on.  We hear all the time that “Jesus died for our sins,” and we touched a little on how that worked in Cause I Gotta Have Faith – Part V.  It makes sense, then, that when Jesus, who died so that our sins could be forgiven, would encourage us to ask God TO forgive our sins.  It kinda makes his whole “dying thing” worthwhile.  This petition (or really this “part” of a larger petition—don’t worry…we’ll get to that in a second) is made with the realization that we’re not perfect, and that we FIRST must recognize that we’re sinners and ADMIT that to God. 

The problem with asking for forgiveness, though, is that we as humans won’t let God’s mercy FULLY penetrate our hearts and grant us the forgiveness we ask for, unless we have first forgiven others who have done wrong to us.  As the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “In refusing to forgive our brothers and sisters, our hearts are closed and their hardness makes them impervious to the Father’s merciful love; but in confessing our sins, our hearts are opened to his grace.” (CCC 2840)  Remember, God IS powerful enough to penetrate even the hardest of hearts, but he has given us the gift of free will for us to freely choose whether or not to accept his love and forgiveness.  God CHOOSES not to “force” himself upon us, but asks that we let him into our hearts.  So while it seems like an easy enough request to make to ask God to forgive our sins, we have to first finish this particular petition:

…as we forgive those who trespass against us

The word “as” isn’t used here to indicate time, as in, “LSU punter Brad Wing taunted the Gators punt return team as he neared the goal line during the greatest fake punt in recent history (that unnecessarily got called back for “unsportsmanlike conduct”.  I mean, seriously…I heard the argument that he should “act like he’s been there before,” but he’s a PUNTER!!  He HASN’T been there before!!!  It was an unnecessary flag, in my opinion, but I digress…as usual…).”  It’s more of a comparison as in, “LSU Punter Brad Wing’s fake punt run for a would-be touchdown was as awesome as the Saints’ onside kick to start the second half of Super Bowl XLIV.”  (Ok, even I, the most rabid LSU fan/Florida Gator-Hater imaginable can admit that the onside kick was a way better play…I was just trying to prove a point.)  We’re asking God to forgive our sins, but we’re putting a condition on it that says that we want God to forgive our sins in the same way that we forgive others who do bad stuff to US.  We have to forgive others FIRST, and then we can really have a clear and open enough heart to fully accept the love and forgiveness of God.  (Told you this prayer was hardcore.)  We need to let go of things in the past so that we can always be looking forward toward eternity.  (Don’t feel bad, I need to listen to this as much as anyone else reading this blog.)

But how much should I forgive someone for something they did to me?  Jesus says to forgive someone 70 times 7 times.  So once you’ve already forgiven someone for something 490 times, and they do that same thing again, IT’S ON, right?  Well, not exactly.  Like many other things Jesus said, that whole “70 times 7 times” probably wasn’t a math riddle.  (By the way, this is just another reason you can’t take Jesus’ words literally all the time.  Do you really think Jesus would have told us to stop forgiving someone after forgiving them 490 times?  I didn’t think so.)  If we are to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48), we need to take our lessons in forgiveness from Him.  God forgives us over and over again (as long as we’re truly sorry and truly want to accept his forgiveness).  We should then do the same for others so that this petition in the Lord’s Prayer can be fulfilled to its fullest extent.