What conquers the world?
“Who conquers the world?” the Holy Apostle John asks us. He replies, “He who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.” But, how do we conquer the world with this faith? We conquer through forgiveness and penance. In Christ, these two concepts are always together. The forgiveness of our sins is only possible, because we forgive others, and we forgive others, because God forgives us through penance. Just as His forgiveness is limitless, so also we learn that our forgiveness must be limitless.
Forgiveness is always joined with love. Where there is no love, there is no forgiveness, because not only sins and insults must be forgiven, but every difference. Our example of forgiveness is the Divine Life of the Most Holy Trinity. In our God, the Most Holy Trinity, the difference between the three Persons is fundamental. After all, the creed of St. Athanasius the Great tells us emphatically that the Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Father, and the Holy Spirit is not the Father or the Son. They are three different Persons, Who have the same Divine Nature, since they are One God. Just as they live in perfect love, so their forgiveness is perfect. Our God invites us to take part in this perfect Life.
Human life and forgiveness
When a child is born, it does not recognize immediately that it is distinct from others and from its surroundings. Later, it realizes that it is a individual person, and then he or she needs to learn forgive all of the various differences in his or her world. Nevertheless, we learn this skill imperfectly. Time and again, we try to form everything according to our ideas, and we become angry and bitter when our desire is not fulfilled.
Divine Life and forgiveness
In the city of my birth, near my home, there is a shrine that contains the miraculous Austrian Icon called “Maria Hilf—Mary, Help of Christians.” With fondness, I remember that our family would go every Sunday to pray there, together with many others. There, we laid our concerns and anxieties before the Mother of God. Naturally, miracles were rare, not because God is stingy, but because our faith was small. But, to my mind, the real miracle of that place was the great peace, which we gained from our afternoon visits. The universe did not change according to our deepest desires, but we learned that the Holy Will of God was better and more perfect than our desires. This was an incomprehensible miracle, since the intercession of the Most Holy Mother of God reconciled us not only one to another, but to all things.
How easily, freely, and naturally, forgiveness becomes our habit, when, everyday, we meditate on our own death and the sufferings of Christ. In the end, there will be only God and each of us, and the only important thing will be our relationship with Him. If we know this for certain, we will strengthen this relationship all the more carefully. When a human being recognizes that, in the end, there will be only God, and all other things will vanish, treasure in Heaven becomes the priority, together with the effort to acquire this treasure through forgiveness, mercy, prayer and good works. In preparation for our judgment, this treasure requires our exclusive love, since it is absolutely necessary for us to leave the things of this world, before they leave us.
A holistic understanding of forgiveness
Herein we have a comprehensive, holistic definition of forgiveness: to be reconciled to every difference between God’s Will and ours, between our will and others’ through resignation, which is born of love. We only reject and abominate one thing: rebellion against God either in us or in others. In this way, the Life of the Holy Trinity becomes present in our world, and then truly we conquer the world.
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