Forgiveness and Resentment: Foretaste of Heaven, Foretaste of Hell

SOME REFLECTIONS OF THE HANCEVILLE PILGRIMAGE

I have just returned from our Nativity Fast Pilgrimage to the Shrine of the Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville, Alabama.  The whole of the pilgrimage was a very moving experience, especially the opportunities that I had to offer the Holy Liturgy at our Greek Catholic parish in Conyers, Georgia. 

     On the way to the Shrine on Tuesday morning, we had the opportunity to discuss difficulties in the spiritual life.  We discussed especially the issues of resentment and forgiveness. 

     The issues of forgiveness and resentment are intimately connected with the concept of prolepsis (foretaste).  In the same way that the person, who practices forgetfulness of wrongs experiences the foretaste of the Kingdom of Heaven, the person who resides in resentment is, in a very real sense, already in Hell.  We observe, again and again, an unfortunate pattern from the communities of the Middle East, for example, that the population of a local area, who are followers of the Blasphemy (it is not right to call it “submission” since it is submission only to the Will of the Evil One, who is only a creature, equal to us), will attend prayers in their temples, and their passions will become inflamed by the preaching of their clerics.  They will pour out of their temples, taking to the streets to perform deeds of injustice and violence against those who reject the Blasphemy and scorn the Enemy of Mankind.  In this example, the Blasphemy, the entire complex of the teachings of the False Prophet, is a prison for human beings made not of stone, but of thought.  It is a pale parody not of the Faith as a whole, but of various parts of the Faith, stitched together in a haphazard way into a belief system which, though stretched this way and that, is not extensive enough, nor consistent enough to cover the intellectual and moral nakedness of mankind.

     In just the same way, every resentment is a prison made of thought –already a Hell on earth.  Sadly, the only possible escape from this prison is through prayer, and, more specifically, neptic mental prayer.  Only through the practice of watchfulness can we rise above the level of our thoughts, perceive our thoughts for what they are (passion-bearing missiles hurled at us by our enemies) and understand the higher mind (nous) as the victim of thought, whom the True God is anxious and willing to save.  Many, many human beings will never know freedom from the passions, and those same passions will drag them down.  Dying in the earthly Hell of the passions, there they will remain. 

     On Monday night, before our trip down to Alabama, we had an evening celebration of the Divine Liturgy in the church in Conyers.  The Gospel reading was St. Luke’s account of the cleansing of the temple.  During the homily, I recalled the teaching of St. Maximus the Confessor that our Christian temples are both models of the entire Creation, as well as models of the human being.  The Christian temple is a model of the whole Creation because the Creation, like the temple, is divided into a material and a spiritual world (represented by the nave and the Holy of Holies).  On the other hand, the temple is also an image of the human being, because he also is constructed of a material and a spiritual reality (the body and the soul).  In the very center of the “soul” of the temple is the altar.  The purpose of the altar is the offering of sacrifice.  In the same way, in the center of the human soul is the “altar of the soul”—the mind.  The true purpose of the mind, according to the Fathers, is the offering of prayer to God.  The altar is defiled by unworthy sacrifices, and the altar of the mind is similarly defiled by evil thoughts.  Thus, according to Maximus, it is necessary to keep the altar of the mind protected from the defilement of evil thoughts through the recollection of Christ.  This is represented by the indition (the topmost cloth on the altar, which is traditionally sewn in the form of a cross. It is the recollection of Christ in the mind, which maintains the mind as a “house of prayer” and prevents it from becoming a “den of thieves.” 

     Tuesday morning, before our departure to Alabama, once again we had the opportunity to offer the Holy Oblation.  On this occasion, Father Yaroslav preached a moving homily on the parable of the vinedressers in which he connected the text with its Old Testament antecedents, particularly the Prophet Isaiah’s well known pronouncement, “Now, the vineyard of the Lord is the House of Israel.” The vineyard is the Lord’s, and as such, it must please the Lord.  Herein is a solemn warning indeed for all of us, both as a nation and a church, as well as individuals.  The vinedressers fell, first and foremost, through what the Gospel refers to as “reasoning among themselves.” The morality of our deeds is in the interior of our souls.  It is our thoughts that defile us.  It makes no difference at all that most of the evil we contemplate we never actually put into practice.  We are still guilty of the evil we have contemplated, because we have contemplated it.  On account of the influence of passionate thoughts, we have “reasoned within ourselves,” and thus have withdrawn within ourselves.  Resentment is a form of “reasoning within ourselves.” Perhaps Hell is the state of “eternally reasoning within ourselves?” …