Prayer that matters most and frailty of human will
How do we forgive when our hearts are aching and God asks us to release someone else's debt?
There are moments in prayer when the words seem to catch in our throats. It happens whenever we reach that one line of the Lord’s Prayer that strips away every excuse we have made for ourselves: “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”
Suddenly, a face rises before us – the face of someone who has wronged us. Perhaps that person betrayed us, slandered us, or simply shattered our trust. And something deep inside tightens into a painful knot.
We realize that, with those very words, we are pronouncing a terrible sentence upon ourselves. If we have not forgiven the wrong done to us, we are effectively asking God to withhold forgiveness for our own sins.
A thought begins to whisper: Wouldn't it be easier to skip that line, to pretend it was never there? But there is no deceiving the Creator. He sees straight through the soul.
When we set the terms of our own judgment
The ancient shepherds of the Church knew this inward struggle well. St. Cyril of Jerusalem taught the newly baptized that, in the Lord’s Prayer, we enter into a covenant with God. We ourselves establish the standard by which we ask Him to judge us. St. John Chrysostom went even further: the sentence we receive, he taught, lies in our own hands.
The Philokalia preserves an account of a monk who had been deeply wronged by an acquaintance. Burning with resentment, he decided to take the matter before a city magistrate and demand punishment.
Before setting out, however, he visited an elder to ask for a blessing and pray together. The venerable Abba Silouan stood before an icon and said aloud: “And forgive us not our debts, as we forgive not our debtors.”
The monk immediately interrupted him.
“Father, that isn't what the prayer says!”
“Isn't it, my child?” Abba Silouan replied. “If you have decided to go to court and seek revenge, then the Creator will deal with you in precisely the same way.”
Those words pierced the monk's hardened heart. He abandoned his plan.
When the will must lead the heart
The Gospel command to pray for those who hurt us comes with no grace period. In the Gospel of Mark, Christ speaks plainly: whenever you stand praying, forgive anyone against whom you hold something.
He does not say, “Wait six months until the pain subsides,” or “Wait until the person who hurt you comes crawling back to apologize.”
Forgiveness is asked of us now, in the very eye of the storm raging within our souls.
But what are we to do when our feelings rebel? When the mere memory of an injury makes our breath catch with anger?
In August 2025, during a sermon at the Church of St. Agapitus in the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry reflected on the parable of the unforgiving servant. He spoke of those moments when the human heart seems to turn to stone.
The Primate explained that when our feelings refuse to obey us, we must take the first step toward forgiveness with our minds, even if our hearts are not yet ready. A person can stand before the icons and say with complete honesty: “Yes, Lord, I cannot yet bring my heart to peace, but in my mind I forgive my neighbor.”
This is an act of the Christian will – a deliberate choice to place God's authority above the demands of wounded feelings.
The poison we secretly keep alive
The reason we cling to resentment lies in its strange, bittersweet nature. St. John Climacus described the remembrance of wrongs as “the disgrace of prayer, the cessation of supplication, the alienation of love, a nail driven into the soul.”
We carry that rusted nail within us, reopening the wound with every bitter recollection. Then we wonder why our spiritual life has become a barren wilderness.
The saint compared someone who tries to repent while nursing resentment to a person running in a dream. In the dream, we seem to be racing with all our strength, yet our body remains motionless in bed.
So it is with our spiritual efforts. As long as we secretly long to see our offender punished, our progress remains an illusion.
The abbot of Sinai also gave a remarkable test of whether the soul has truly recovered from this affliction. Freedom from resentment, he taught, does not mean merely saying the right words or giving the other person a gift. True healing comes when we learn that the person who wronged us has fallen into misfortune – and we weep for that person as we would for ourselves.
This was how the great ascetics lived.
When robbers attacked St. Seraphim of Sarov in the forests surrounding his monastery, he quietly laid his ax on the ground and surrendered himself to them. Later, when the attackers were captured, the elder insisted that they be released. He even threatened to leave the monastery if they were sentenced to hard labor.
The gift we must beg from God
If such heights of spiritual love still seem impossibly far beyond us, where should we begin?
St. John Climacus offers a simple first step: restrain the tongue.
When we feel the urge to hurl a poisonous remark after someone who has hurt us, or to rehearse that person's wrongdoing yet again, we must compel ourselves to remain silent. This outward discipline of speech gradually quiets the rebellion of our thoughts.
Another practical lesson comes from the venerable Abba Dorotheos. He recommended a prayer capable of bringing our pride to its knees: “O God, help my brother, and help me through his prayers.”
In speaking these words, we willingly place the person who has offended us above ourselves.
Yet the most important thing is to understand that love for our enemies cannot be manufactured by human effort.
The Venerable Silouan the Athonite wrote with heartfelt sorrow: “Lord, Thou hast commanded us to love our enemies, but it is hard for us sinners unless Thy grace is with us.”
Love for someone who has wounded us is always a gift of the Holy Spirit. No amount of willpower can produce it. We can only beg for it, as a starving beggar pleads for a piece of bread.
The ancient collections of the lives of the Fathers preserve a sobering story about two men from Antioch – the priest Sapricius and a layman named Nicephorus. The two had once been close friends, but bitterness eventually drove them apart. Nicephorus recognized his fault. He sent messengers asking for reconciliation and even fell to his knees before his former friend, pleading for forgiveness.
But Sapricius hardened his heart and refused to make peace.
Soon afterward, persecution broke out. Sapricius was arrested for his faith. He endured torture with remarkable courage and was already standing before the executioner. Yet at that decisive moment, the forgiveness he had refused seemed to consume him from within. Grace withdrew. Fear overcame him, and Sapricius denied Christ.
Nicephorus, who was standing among the crowd, then boldly confessed his faith and took the priest's place at the executioner's block.
Forgiveness is not merely a means of bringing someone who has wronged us to repentance. We need it for our own sake – so that, when the decisive hour of our lives arrives, we do not find ourselves standing spiritually naked before God.
And even if today we cannot bring ourselves to approach the person who hurt us, much less embrace them, we can at least make a firm beginning.
We can begin the work of reconciliation where it must always begin – in the hidden depths of our own hearts.
