St. Volodymyr's Parish

"Should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?” (Matt. 18, 33).

By these words the king from the parable appeals to a servant who put in prison his fellow servant because he owed him money. As we heard, when the king decided to settle accounts with his servants, he called them one by one and then came this servant who was owed king 10 000 talents (what was 300 000 kilograms of gold or silver) which was a really huge amount. But because he couldn’t repay this debt the king forgave him the debt and let him go. Then this servant met his fellow servant who owed him 100 denarii (what was 600 grams of silver) who couldn’t repay his debt and the servant put his fellow into a prison. And friends who saw injustice, went to the king and let him know. Then the king called that servant and asked why he did that. He said: "Look, how I had mercy for you. I forgave you all your debt which you couldn’t return even if you spent your whole life. And you couldn’t forgive your fellow servant?”

By this parable Jesus reminds us about importance of forgiveness and mercy. Every day we pray "Our Father” and we ask God to "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”. We ask God to forgive us and say to do it in the manner how we do it.

So, listening to this parable let us think about one question: "how am I able to forgive another?”

When we look on this parable, we can see that the king forgave his servant a really huge debt. In our life we receive from God everything that is necessary. We receive so much, that we couldn’t return it to Him. He gives us life. He gave His own life to give us eternal life. He forgives us our trespasses, our sins when we ask about forgiveness. Look how the king forgave his servant because he asked for it. God also forgives us… He forgives us every sin when we come to Him looking for forgiveness. When we realise our guilt, our trespass… for when we say that we didn’t do nothing bad, didn’t commit any sins, we will never come to apologise, to ask for forgiveness, because we don’t know why. But is it true? Are we sinless?

We can see that God forgives us always and teaches us to forgive those people who are around us. Human relations are so complicated, because each of us have our own character, each of us have our own ambitions and aspirations. Very often all of these are crossed and we get disputes, quarrels, fights, insults and anger as a result. And then very often instead of making peace, apologising and forgiving each other, people live in this anger and insults which erode that from within. God says to forgive… He says: "forgive, if you have anything against any one; so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.” (Mark 11, 25). Because if we ask God about forgiveness and He forgives us, why can’t we forgive other? Why we cannot cast out this anger and insults from our heart and let God’s peace and love come inside us to unite us? Forgive to be together in peace… to spread this God’s peace around the all world…

So, I wish to each of us to look at our lives and see it as it is. I wish us to not condemn others, to not say are they good or bad, but to look into our hearts. To see how we are able to forgive, how we are able to love. How we are able to live with God every single moment of our lives that He gives us here on the Earth and to live with Him further in Heaven. Amen.

Fr. Andriy Mykytyuk