Forgive Us Our Debts

“And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” O unspeakable mercy of God! He has not only given us a form of prayer and taught us a way of life that pleases him, and, through what is required by the form he gave us and told us always to pray with, torn up the roots of both anger and sorrow. He also gives those who pray an opportunity, and shows them a way, by which they may move God to pronounce a merciful and kindly judgment over them. In a way he gives us a power by which we can soften the sentence of our Judge, drawing him to forgive our offenses by the example of our own forgiveness, when we say to him, “Forgive us as we also forgive.” So a person may ask for pardon of his own offenses through this prayer without anxiety and with confidence, if he has been forgiving toward his own debtors, and not toward those of his Lord. For some of us, and this is very bad, tend to show ourselves calm and most merciful about things done against God, however great the crimes may be, but we are found to be the hardest and most unrelenting collectors of debts owed to ourselves, even for the most trifling wrongs. [a]

So whoever does not forgive from his heart a brother who has offended him calls down on himself by this prayer not forgiveness but condemnation. By his own profession he asks to be judged more severely himself, when he says, “Forgive me as I also have forgiven.” And if he is repaid according to his own request, what else will follow but that he will be punished after his own example, with wrath that cannot be appeased and a sentence that cannot be lifted? So if we want to be judged mercifully, we ought also to be merciful toward those who have sinned against us. For only as much will be forgiven us as we have forgiven those who have injured us, however spitefully. Some, dreading this, silently leave out this clause when this prayer is chanted by all the people in church, for fear that by their own words they may seem to bind themselves rather than excuse themselves. They do not understand that it is useless to try to offer these evasions to the Judge of all, who has chosen to show us beforehand how he will judge those who come to him in prayer. For since he does not wish to be found harsh and unrelenting toward them, he has marked out the way he will judge: just as we want to be judged by him, so we should also judge our brothers if they have wronged us in anything. For “judgment without mercy will be shown to the one who has shown no mercy.”