Reconcile to Re-establish

Today being the first Monday of the Great Lent is significant for the Syrian Orthodox Church as we celebrate ‘Shubkono’ which means The Service of Reconciliation. The service has its inception rooted in the Egyptian monasteries where the monks would go into the deserts all alone to spend 40 days of Lent in contemplation and fast. Since few of them never came back, prior to their leaving they would ask forgiveness from each other for all their offences. The Service of Reconciliation which is offered at Monday noon is a powerful liturgy of forgiveness where the chief celebrant (priest/bishop) genuflects before the congregation and asks forgiveness for his sins. The congregation in reciprocation prostrates and offers forgiveness. The liturgy comes to an end after each individual, irrespective of a child or an adult, exchanges the kiss of peace with one another as a gesture of reconciliation.

The ritual offers a profound theological understanding that sin distorts relationships. The Orthodox perceives sin in a cosmic sense and thus the sin of an individual reverberates in the community and universe. Each individual acknowledges the accountability in some way or the other. As Fyodor Dostoevsky remarked; “We are all responsible for everyone else but I am more responsible than all others.” Hence each one participates in the service of reconciliation even though s/he might not have overtly offended anyone present in the Church. Moreover since all are created in the image of God asking forgiveness to one another means asking forgiveness from God. 

The Lection set apart for the service of reconciliation is Matthew 18:18-35. Here Peter asks Jesus; “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” (18:21) Jesus replies; “I do not say to you up to seven times but up to seventy times seven.” (18:22). Seventy times seven is a symbolic representation of an unlimited amount. One could never afford to cease to forgive and seek forgiveness. This is an ever continuing process. The parable thereafter of the King and the servant demonstrates the need of unlimited forgiveness. Here the King forgives while the servant withholds. The debt owed by the servant to the King is Ten thousand talents (v. 24). This is an impossible sum; more than a labourer could ever earn in several life times. A hundred denarii (v. 28) is a significant amount from an earthly perspective (about the wages of three months). Drawing inspiration from this parable the Orthodox Church proposes an ontology of God; a God who not only forgives our sins but also forgets them. Certain Church Fathers put forward a spiritual interpretation of the parable where the man represents the soul, wife the body and children the person’s deeds (v. 25). Thus, the body and the deeds are given over to slavery i.e. to Satan (1Cor 5:5) in the hope that having experienced the difference between God’s rule and Satan’s, the offender may repent and ultimately be saved.        

Reconciliation is about re-establishing our relationships with ourselves, our fellow creations and God. We have had Church Fathers who went to great extents to assure this. Abba Agathon, was aflame with such love towards lepers that he wanted to find a leper and exchange his own body for that of the leper.[1] Reconciliation becomes pertinent to Orthodox spirituality because its basic framework is Trinitarian. The peaceful co-existence of the three persons of the Trinity prompts us to mends our ways which disrupt peace. Athanasios N. Papathanasiou comments on the theology that approaches the mystery of;

Holy Trinity by giving priority to the persons rather than to the essence. To speak of priority here does not, of course, mean that the one is temporally prior to the other. It means that the hypostasis is not defined individually, on the basis of the properties of its essence; it is defined on the basis of the fact that it exists in communion with the other hypostases. In this perspective, I have authentic existence when otherness is not something parallel or opposite to my own identity but an element of my identity. Truth and communion coincide.[2]

Moreover reconciliation is not just about passively accepting but about engaging in the redemptive process of asking questions. The ability to engage in debates is what makes us essentially humans. The task of theology is not to provide the right answer but to inspire to ask the right questions. Krista Tippet writes; “It’s hard to transcend a combative question. But it is hard to resist a generous question. We all have it in us to formulate questions that invite honesty, dignity and revelation. There is something redemptive and life-giving about asking better questions.” Athanasios N. Papathanasiou further elucidates;

What makes us human is our capacity to question whatever appears as given and self-evident and, consequently, to judge what is meaningful in life, what promotes life, and what distorts it. If man is not open to striving after this quest, he degenerates into a mere product of biological, cultural, and ethnic randomness. Unless it is accepted as part of our anthropology that the orientation of the human being in all its dimensions (personal, cultural, political, etc.) can change, repentance and reconciliation make no sense… One of the most generous gestures towards reconciliation may be the humble willingness to engage in dialogue and the pain of brotherly debate…Reconciliation needs to be understood as a continuous and open-ended process of self-criticism and repentance on every level (personal, theological, social, economic, etc.).[3]

Lent is a time to reconcile, to forgive. The Greek equivalent ‘to forgive’ is synchorein which means ‘to come together’ to ‘meet the others’. Forgiveness is realized in fellowship, in the coming together of persons, perceptions and perspectives for a mutually edifying dialogue. Forgiveness leading to reconciliation is a divine mandate prescribed in the Lord’s Prayer. Our existence on earth should be an extrapolation of the Trinitarian love exhibited by the three hypostases of the Trinity. I conclude with the words of advice of hieromonk Nikon;

“Never judge anybody. Greet each person with good feelings and the hope to find in him only good, seeing before yourself the image of God. Your salvation and your demise are in your neighbour.” Amen

Prayers

Dn. Basil Paul

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[1] Benedicta Ward trans. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection (London: Mowbrays, 1975), 20.

[2] Athanasios N. Papathanasiou, “Reconciliation: The Major Conflict in Postmodernity An Orthodox Contribution to a Missiological Dialogue”, in Greek Orthodox Theological Review, 58: 1-4, 2013, 33.

[3] Athanasios N. Papathanasiou, “Reconciliation”, 34-36.