Video Transcript
Emily: Do you remember getting in trouble as a kid and saying, “Well, he started it!”
Edmund: Yeah, and it’s a bit of an Old Testament way of treating people. You hit me, I hit you back. You call me a name, I call you a name back.
Emily: “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” That’s a phrase that might sound familiar. But what most people don’t know is that this phrase from the book of Exodus was meant to limit—not encourage—vengeance toward another.
Edmund: In the time of Moses, this teaching was intended to set limits on punishments and retribution. The guideline “an eye for an eye” was seen as a fair way to avoid the escalation of violence. And it placed the concept of justice under a simple rule: no punishment should exceed the damage caused.
Emily: So when Jesus taught in the Lord’s Prayer that we should pray, “Forgive us..” it would have been seen as a significant cultural and religious shift.
Edmund: Jesus teaches us to treat people by a different standard than what we might be tempted to do. Instead of being guided by how others treat us, He teaches us to instead reflect the forgiveness of God. We should forgive others as we would want to be forgiven.
Emily: Jesus’ inclusion of this petition about forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer shifted the discussion of justice from what is fair to what would reflect God’s mercy.
Edmund: Jesus is asking His followers to forgive not because the other person deserves it, but because God’s own forgiveness of us calls for it.
Emily: But Jesus’ teaching in the Lord’s Prayer goes even deeper than this. The Catechism reminds us that Jesus is actually revealing a condition for God’s forgiveness.
Edmund: Most people might think that Christianity teaches that God’s forgiveness is unconditional. Not only is Jesus revealing a condition, but He’s also telling us that refusing to forgive harms us, in a way.
Emily: The language in the Catechism is remarkable. Paragraph 2838 says: “This petition is astonishing…. according to the second phrase, our petition will not be heard unless we have first met a strict requirement. Our petition looks to the future, but our response must come first, for the two parts are joined by the single word ‘as.’”
Edmund: The word “as” really does a lot of work at the center of this petition. The first part “forgive us our trespasses” means we begin this petition by praying a confession of our own sinfulness. We admit to God that we have sinned, and ask for forgiveness.
Emily: But we also prayerfully acknowledge that this forgiveness comes with a responsibility to extend the same forgiveness to others.
The Catechism goes even further in paragraph 2840, saying, “Now — and this is daunting — this outpouring of mercy cannot penetrate our hearts as long as we have not forgiven those who have trespassed against us. Love, like the Body of Christ, is indivisible; we cannot love the God we cannot see if we do not love the brother or sister we do see. In refusing to forgive our brothers and sisters, our hearts are closed and their hardness makes them impervious to the Father’s merciful love; but in confessing our sins, our hearts are opened to his grace.”
Edmund: This requirement of God’s mercy is impossible for us alone. But through prayer, we ask God to give us the strength to live this out.
Emily: Okay, but people might think this means we should just let people hurt us. It isn’t in our power not to feel or forget an offense against us. Remember, Jesus is teaching us a prayer, and through it we are offering our heart to God. God wants to help us forgive!
Edmund: So it is here; in the depths of our heart, that Jesus’ words of forgiveness and His love that never ends meets us. It’s in praying this petition from the heart that we experience the love that loves to the end.
Emily: The opposite of forgiveness is bitterness, holding a grudge, and actively refusing to treat others with charity because they’ve wronged us. But we have all wronged God and each other. We have all wanted and needed forgiveness at some point in our lives.
Edmund: There’s a saying that refusing to forgive others is like drinking poison to try to hurt someone else. By hanging on to these debts and grudges, we only hurt ourselves and cut ourselves off from God’s forgiveness. Jesus is calling us to something greater. He’s calling us to bear witness to the fact that love is stronger than sin.
Emily: And there is no limit to God’s forgiveness and mercy, except our own willingness to receive it fully. And this means to extend this divine gift of forgiveness to others in our lives. To God, “an eye for an eye” is not enough to stop sin and evil.
Edmund: We must go further, and strive to imitate Jesus. In teaching us the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus teaches us to ask for forgiveness to the extent that we would forgive one another. And in this way, true Christian prayer allows mercy to penetrate our hearts so we can forgive and be forgiven.
