The Lord's Prayer...Week 6

"This, then, is how you should pray: 'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.' " —Matthew 6:9–15 (NIV)

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us:
No one who has completed his moral inventory can pass over this petition lightly.

First, what are trespasses? Any act contrary to the moral law, a neglect of duty, an injury or wrong to another person, is a trespass. "Moral" is used here in its proper sense as pertaining to action with reference to right and wrong and obligation of duty. It refers not only to things we have done but also to things we have neglected to do.

Some of our trespasses are easy to recognize. We have no difficulty in seeing our guilt in them. Others may be more difficult, partly because we have spent so much time in justifying and excusing our
acts or neglects that we have come to think of justification as answering the accusation. It is precisely at this point that our moral inventories must become fearless. Every excuse or justification must be challenged as being in itself evidence of guilt.

We should examine our conduct in detail and specify each trespass. This is important. The Lord's Prayer does not excuse us from responsibility for our acts. Nor is it a license for repetition of wrongful acts. We are bound to make reparation for harm that we have done, and we are bound to cease doing harm.

Our prayer is made daily. So should our inventories be made daily. In our prayer, we should keep in mind the things the inventories have revealed, so that we may make progress in correcting our faults.

"Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." This petition is conditional. No one who is not willing to forgive can expect to be forgiven. No one who harbors hatred, malice and resentment in his heart can expect to find peace.

This condition is of particular concern to us, since so many of us suffer through resentment, self pity, jealousy, self love. It has been the experiences of all of us who try to control resentment that most of the causes of our resentments are found to be either imaginary or petty, and that they actually have done us no real harm. When we can rid ourselves of these resentments, we shall make progress.

Honest inventory often will reveal that in those cases in which we have suffered in our dealings with others, some of the fault, much of the fault, or even most of the fault has been ours. But even in those few instances in which we have suffered genuine injury at the hands of others, we are bound to forgive. Certainly we gain nothing but harm to ourselves when we allow resentment to fill our minds and
consume our energies. When we forgive, we heal our minds.

[* Reprinted from a series of eight editorial articles written in 1944 and first published in the Cleveland Central Bulletin an Alcoholics Anonymous newsletter.]