Forgiveness isn’t just for others—it’s a powerful medicine for your own heart. In this inspiring video, Fr. Barnabas reveals why true spiritual strength begins with forgiveness.
Fr. Barnabas Powell is the parish priest at Sts. Raphael, Nicholas, and Irene Greek Orthodox Church in Cumming, GA. Follow his homilies on YouTube at Faith Encouraged TV. This sermon was delivered on March 17th, 2024, Forgivness Sunday.
Watch the full video here: https://youtu.be/EFOG-iAGm3c
Fr. Barnabas:
Forgiveness is a strange medicine, for when you give it to others, your heart is the one that’s healed. I want to say that again because I want this to be what you carry with you the rest of Great Lent: forgiveness is a strange medicine because when you give it to others, it’s your heart that’s healed.
It is not a mistake that the Church gives us forgiveness Sunday as the Sunday that leads us into the spiritual arena of Great Lent. It isn’t a mistake that the Church gives us these passages. The Apostle Paul says: “One man believes he can eat anything he wants, but the weak man only eats vegetables.” And isn’t it interesting that it is only vegetables that we will be eating during Great Lent? Thereby tactically confessing, my angels, what is true of you and me today: we are in need of God’s strength, we are in need of God’s mercy, we are in need of God’s grace, we are not standing on our own two feet and living as if I can pull myself up merely by my bootstraps… Oh, that might be good politics, but the reality is it’s bad theology, because you won’t be able to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.
You need to be forgiven, and you need to forgive. In fact, if you don’t forgive, you will not be forgiven, not because God withholds His forgiveness, but because the heart in your chest and your mind will be too hardened to allow the grace of God that is poured lavishly on this planet 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, without end and forever and ever. The mercy of God, the grace of God, the love of God that is constantly bathing His universe with His presence at all times. And what keeps you from being forgiven? The hardness of your own heart. Your inability to forgive proves your heart is too hard to receive forgiveness, and so you live your life small and weak and childish and self-centered.
Yet once again, the Church, in her love for us, led by the Holy Spirit, brings us to the doorway of the arena of the virtues and swings open the gate wide and says: “All who are courageous, come; all who are honest, come; all who are hungry, come and compete and struggle and fail miserably, and then get back up again so you can fail miserably again, knowing all the while that the King only counts, my angels, not your success, but your consistency.” You’re not called the successful, you’re not called the powerful, you’re not called the rich or the beautiful or the able. You are called, my angels, the faithful.
Come, walk through the gates into the arena of the virtues with us. Come with us, struggle, pay attention, live your life as Orthodox on purpose and not simply by the happy accident of your DNA, and forgive, so that you can be forgiven…
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