The Sunday before the Lent is called the Forgiveness Sunday.

Before entering the holy and saving time of repentance and purification, the time that brings us closer to the Easter on earth and in heaven, the Church calls us to forgiveness and reconciliation.

To be able to forgive and try to live in peace is a direct evangelic canon. Without such a simple and at the same time complex feat, one cannot achieve the salvation of the soul. Without forgiveness, it is impossible to peacefully go through life with the people around us. Without mutual forgiveness and reconciliation, we will never build a happy and prosperous society.

Any war, enmity, malice and hatred is a consequence of the fall of man, demoniacal pride, and spiritual blindness. This is the path leading to the abyss of hell, to self-destruction, and ultimately to death.

In order to break out of this captivity of hellfire, one must obviously move in the opposite direction, and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ showed this path to us.

This is the way to cultivating peace in our hearts. This is the path of humility before God and His laws of being, reconciliation with ourselves and with our neighbours. It is the way of repentance and forgiveness.

Saint Nicholas of Serbia wrote, “Victory in war is underpinned by repentance. Being called to war by God’s Providence, those people will win who will repent before others and, having appealed to God, will rectify their sins...”

To repent before God and to forgive does not mean to forget everything. Through repentance, we calibrate our spiritual compass and restore a sober look at ourselves and the world around.

And to forgive means, for the sake of the triumph of peace, to stop dragging along from the past a destructive arsenal of grievances, even if justified ones, into today’s day.

This means giving hope for beauty and happiness to the day of tomorrow and to everyone who will live in it.

To do this, we all really need to repent and take the path of forgiveness.

Let us forgive each other so that God will forgive us all.

Amen!