How would you like to be forgiven? When you arrive at the face of the Creator of the Universe and you seek forgiveness for your sins, what do you want that to mean? Does it mean "mercy," or "leniency," or lesser punishment? Does it mean justice, or fairness, or an honest balancing of the good we have done against the wrongs we have comitted? I am guessing that we don't really want any of these things-- that we understand that even lenient punishment would far exceed anything we could tolerate, that even a merciful judge would find that we have sinned in serious ways. No, when we talk about forgiveness from God, we are talking about forgetfulness. We want God not to remember those things we have done that weren't our best moments, shall we say. In some sense we want the kind of forgiveness that is what a bank does when it forgives a loan-- the loan is taken off the books and, from the bank's perspective, there is no longer any debt. But, even more than that, we want no residual consequences, no impact on ouf "credit rating," as it were. We want God to treat our wrongdoing as if it never happened. It is worth thinking about how we want to be forgiven because in today's Gospel (Mt 6: 7-15) Jesus makes clear that how we forgive people is how God will forgive us. So, if what we want from God is the kind of "it never happened" sort of forgiveness, Jesus tell us we need to practice that same kind of forgiveness with others. I think the reality is that we almost never forgive that way. We do a lot of "I forgive you, but..." kinds of forgiveness (and we all know that when someone uses that sentance construction, saying something and then interposing the word "but," everything that went before "but" is just meaningless sound waves). It is very hard for us to forget. We even talk about forgiving as if it is something different from forgetting-- "forgive and forget" we say. But in reality if we haven't truly forgotten the thing we say we are forgiving, we've turned forgiveness into a kind of weapon, something we can use when it suits us and turn off when we want to draw power or righteous indignation from the incident we supposedly forgave. I don't mean that we fail to learn when a person or situation is dangerous, and keep putting ourselves at risk. When we are confronted with a bully or abuser or cheat, we can forget the incident in which we experienced the behavior and still know to avoid dangerous situations in the future. That's different from pulling up the old supposedly-forgiven incident from time to time and beating someone up with it. Forgetting takes practice, and self-discipline, so it could be a great Lenten exercise. In any event, we need to get good at it. We pray that God will forgive our sins "as we forgive those who sin against us." If we never truly forget those sins done against us, what make us think God will do so? If we're forgivers but not forgetters, it would truly be a shame if God granted the prayer we say every time we pray the Our Father.