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Because it’s the beginning of Great Lent (for the Orthodox Church; I know, it’s strange to be beginning Lent when the West is already at Passion Sunday, but that’s the way it is), and with the experience of Forgiveness Vespers still fresh in my thoughts, I want to start with that. Especially after finding in my email box this article by Nicholas Denysenko: “Rituals and Prayers of Forgiveness in Byzantine Lent,” Worship 86 (2012): 140-60. Thank you, Dn. Nicholas!

Forgiveness Sunday is the last Sunday before the beginning of Great Lent, the season of fasting and repentance leading up to Great Week (Holy Week) and Easter or Pascha (as the Orthodox even in this country tend to call it). This Sunday is also called Cheesefare, because it’s the last day to eat dairy products before the fast, and the Expulsion of Adam from Paradise. 

Vespers is the service that marks the evening transition from light to darkness. In the Orthodox liturgical calendar it marks the end of one day and the beginning of the next.  Forgiveness Vespers concludes Forgiveness Sunday, thus beginning the first day of Lent.  The last ritual in this vespers, and therefore one of the first rites of Lent, is the ceremony of mutual forgiveness.

The Lenten Triodion, the book that prescribes the rituals for Lent, describes the rite this way:

The priest stand beside the analogion [icon stand], and the faithful come up one by one and venerate the ikon, after which each makes a prostration before the priest, saying: Forgive me a sinner. The priest also makes a prostration before each, saying the same words; and then the other receives his blessing and kisses his hand. Meanwhile the choir sings quietly the irmoi [first verses] of the Canon of Easter Matins or else the Easter aposticha.  After receiving the priest’s blessing, the faithful may also ask forgiveness of one another.

In many parishes in this country, the people form a kind of receiving line to ask for and receive forgiveness. The first person in line stands to the left of the priest in order to exchange forgiveness with the next person in line, who then stands to the first person’s left to exchange forgiveness with the next person, and so on until everyone has forgiven everyone else. The exchange is essentially as described in the Triodion: Each person makes a prostration (usually a semi-prostration, touching a hand to the floor) and asks the other for forgiveness. The usual response is “God forgives” or “May God forgive us.” In the parishes with Russian heritage that I’ve attended, they then kiss each other three times on the cheeks, as in this video from a Ukrainian Catholic parish.

The ceremony has never failed to move me. Even with half-hearted prostrations, mumbled petitions and responses, air kisses (favored by the young), shoulder kisses (favored by middle-aged men), and overly zealous kisses (favored by, well, I’ll let you guess), people are out of the pews and have a sense of belonging to something significant. Their energy is palpable.  The study Denysenko cites by Elizabeth Gassin and Timothy Sawchak (“Meaning, Performance, and Function of a Christian Forgiveness Ritual,” Journal of Ritual Studies 22 [2008]: 39-49) lends some scientific confirmation to this anecdotal evidence.

Denysenko focuses on the penitential import of the rite. The journey to Pascha begins with the expulsion from Paradise. With Adam, we find ourselves expelled from Paradise, needing to be reconciled with God and one another. Through the Prayer of St. Ephrem, recited with prostrations just before ceremony of forgiveness, we petition God for forgiveness. With the rite of forgiveness we petition our fellow Christians. I hear an echo (in meaning, if not historical) of the early Christian practice of canonical penance in which grave sinners, having been publicly expelled from the church, had to beg their fellow Christians for re-admittance.

What I was struck with this year is the forgiveness ceremony’s strong call to unity. It is, as Denysenko says, “a prolepsis of the Lenten journey to Pascha.” The end of the journey is the experience of the Resurrection, which brings union with God, but also the restoration of the unity of humanity, the fulfillment of God’s “plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph 1:10). That unity is the goal of salvation is frequently forgotten since in both East and West, for different reasons, salvation has become a highly individualized experience. (More on this at another time.)

The rite of forgiveness has this focus on unity whether or not a kiss is part of the rite. The Paschal hymns that accompany it include such lines as “let us embrace each other,” “let us call brothers and sisters even those who hate us,” and “let us forgive all by the Resurrection.” But the kiss reinforces the idea of unity. Denysenko sees a connection with the Kiss of Peace at the Eucharistic liturgy, the purpose of which is to show that we “love one another, that with one mind we may confess.”

Taking the rite of forgiveness as a symbol of unity give this rite and Prayer of St. Ephrem a slightly different complementarity than Denysenko suggests. It’s not simply that the one implores God and the other fellow humans for forgiveness. Also, and at the same time, the one prepares for the other. The Prayer of St. Ephrem has an inward focus on repentance for one’s own sins (here in its Greek recension):

O Lord and Master of my life, give me not the spirit of sloth, meddling, lust of power and idle talk.

But give me, your servant, the spirit of chastity, humility, patience and love.

Yea O Lord and King, grant me to see my own faults and not to judge my brother, for blessed are You unto ages of ages. Amen

But the sins it’s concerned with are those which prevent unity: meddling, lust of power, idle talk, judging others. The prayer, which is repeated constantly throughout Lent, is meant to soften our hearts to prepare us both to seek forgiveness from and to forgive the other so that we may obtain the unity of salvation through the Resurrection.

There are plenty of opportunities to focus on salvation from individual sins during Lent, beginning in the first week with the Canon of St. Andrew. Focus on the self is necessary in the practice of repentance. So it’s a good thing to have this reminder of the goal of unity at the beginning of Lent.