“We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it, if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass, the same hips and haws on the autumn hedgerows, the same redbreasts that we used to call ‘God’s birds’ because they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known and loved because it is known?”
Today we commemorate St. John Climacus, also known as St. John of the Ladder, because of his famous book, The Ladder.
“Stint your stomach and you will certainly lock your mouth, because the tongue is strengthened by an abundance of food. Struggle with all your might against the stomach and restrain it with all sobriety. If you labor a little, the Lord will also soon work with you.”
“We want to be safe. When we see that another person is sorry for what they have done to us, we begin to think that they will now become safe. We fear forgiving those who show no sorrow or who have not clearly repented of their actions towards us. And we do well to fear it. That is a completely rational, even “hard-wired,” instinctive response. But that tells us what forgiveness actually entails and what it is that Christ asks of us.”
The Orthodox Church starts Lent off with the Vespers of Forgiveness, which all are strongly encouraged to attend, and to participate in, by asking forgiveness of everyone else in the church, one by one.
Not everyone does this, and those who do likely go on struggling to forgive again and again as Lent continues*, and as we pray our daily Lenten prayer of St. Ephraim, in which one thing we ask God to give us is the spirit of “humility, patience, and love for mankind.” So I am posting a link to this short meditation from Fr. Stephen on why it is so hard to forgive: “The Danger and Shame of Forgiveness.”
More from the article:
“Forgiveness in the Christian sense is properly an act of self-emptying. It is a voluntary act of foolishness in which we act in a manner contrary to the shame that has been cast upon us. Understood in this manner, forgiveness is of a piece with bearing the Cross itself. It is of paramount importance that the one act of general forgiveness offered by Christ is found in words spoken from the Cross. They could have been spoken from nowhere else.”
Today we commemorate St. John Climacus, also known as 
The Orthodox Church starts Lent off with the Vespers of Forgiveness, which all are strongly encouraged to attend, and to participate in, by asking forgiveness of everyone else in the church, one by one.
Gladsome Lights 