Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Congratulations with the feast of the Resurrection of the Lord, as well as the after-feast of the Transfiguration!

During today’s Divine Liturgy we heard the very familiar parable about the merciful king. In it we read that a certain king forgave an enormous debt owed by one of his servants. In his turn, the forgiven servant could not bring himself to forgive one of his associates who owed him a relatively small sum of money. When the king heard about this, he arrested the first servant, chastised him, and imprisoned him until he could return everything that was owed. It is clear that it was impossible to return such a sum and that the unmerciful servant spent the rest of his days imprisoned. Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself sums up the main idea of this parable with the closing words of today’s reading thus: “ So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.”

Today let’s remember the context in which this parable was delivered. Yesterday we celebrated the Transfiguration of our Saviour and last week we read in the Gospel about how Christ healed the lunatic and how He foretold His death on the Cross and Resurrection on the third day (all these events took place immediately after the Transfiguration). Soon after these events, Jesus Christ set out for Judea, and from there to the capital of the Jews, Jerusalem, where He suffered for the sake of our salvation.

Today’s parable was said by the Saviour not to the multitudes, but to His closest friends, the Holy Apostles, while they were still in Galilee (this took place right before they left for Judea, where Christ was crucified). These words were not just said by Christ out of the blue, but in the context of a longer, interesting, and deep conversation about who would enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, about the necessity to have child-like simplicity, about the unavoidability of temptations, about how awful a sin it is to tempt others, about how to find lost souls, about how to return these people to the fold, and finally, about how important it is to continually forgive those who trespass against us. (If you’re interested, you can read about this in the 18th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel.) We could say that this whole chapter, including today’s parable, are instructions from the Chief Pastor, Jesus Christ, to His new preachers, pastors, priests – the Holy Apostles, who, in a short several months after the death, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord, would become the leaders of the new Christian Church.

The pinnacle of these instructions is today’s parable. In it, Christ is as if saying that within the new Christian Church, amongst the flock, there will be debtors and sinners, and you, the apostles and priests, will have to instruct them, to correct them, but at the same time always forgive them. Sometimes it’s hard for us to forgive and therefore Christ reminds us that the Lord God did so much more for our salvation than what is expected from us.

We are all disciples of our Saviour and, to some extent, pastors of His Church. Priests shepherd their parishioners, parents – their children, managers at work – their workers. Each one of us is an ambassador or an apostle (‘one who is sent’) of our faith among a multitude of non-believers. Therefore, let’s remember that Christ has redeemed us through His precious blood, and let’s be merciful and understanding towards those who may have hurt us or sinned against us.

priest Alexis