Today marks the beginning of Great Lent in the Eastern Orthodox Church, and practically all Orthodox churches had a service last night called “Forgiveness Vespers” to get things started on the right foot. I’ve heard certain priests say that they notice a lot of people skip the service, and I’m sure they do. Basically, at the conclusion of the service, people line up, often in a circle, and each person goes to every other person in attendance there and asks for forgiveness. It’s beautiful and moving… and difficult, because it’s easy to be frustrated or upset with people whom we know and try to work with.
Mind you, no one should ever think of me as the person who gets Orthodoxy “right”. It was the first time in ages I managed to get kids to church in the morning, and it was a struggle. Maybe it’s just my own weakness, but I didn’t feel up to that struggle a second time in the same day. Besides this, I was just exhausted. I feel really bad we didn’t go to church in the evening, but some days (many day), after a certain point, I’m just done.
One of the ladies at church with whom I’m friendly stopped me as I was leaving the service and said “Forgive me…” Even though the priest had basically just gotten done with reminding everyone of the later service, this lady stopping me to say this surprised me. And then I figured that as I probably wasn’t going to make it to the evening service (and dinner), I should do the same with the people I was talking to at coffee hour before I left. Mind you, it’s not a substitution for the actual service, but there’s certainly a desire that if I have done anything this past year or so, that it can be forgiven, once and for all.
About twenty years ago, in the earlier stages of “online Orthodoxy”, I started noticing something similar virtually, that people writing on their blogs and such would post asking for forgiveness on forgiveness Sunday. Officially, I don’t know if the Orthodox Church has a position on this, but although I found it kind of odd at first, I’ve come around to actually kind of liking the practice.
My reasoning is more or less as follows; when people had a church in their village, their family, friends, and community were very much tied to these parishes, and the people one saw in church were the people one saw in other places in life. These days, not only is that not the case – the people most of us see in church are not the same people we see in day-to-day life – but there’s another group of people whom we encounter, and that is people online. And if there’s one space in particular that could use more of the spirit of forgiveness and goodwill toward one another, that would be online. It’s easy to get caught up in controversies and “reactions” and what-have-you. But for those of us who put significant time into an online presence, it seems right that we’re not just asking forgiveness from the people who happen to be at church on one night, but that we’re also asking it from people we interact with, even if it is virtually.
That being the case (or at least my opinion), even though I’m a day late with this, please forgive me for anything that I may have done here to hurt, frustrate, annoy, or otherwise need forgiveness. Even with this being a very small blog in terms of readership, I’m still very grateful for each of you.
Breath of Hallelujah 