Bear with one another; forgive each other if one of you has a complaint against another. The Lord has forgiven you; now you must do the same. Colossians 3:13

Reconciliation: to re-establish a relationship such as in a friendship or a change of attitude from hostility to amity. In our faith this could be seen in a change of attitude of God towards humanity, humanity towards God, and one individual towards another. This is basically a relational term. It also implies that something was broken and needed to be fixed.

The word reconcile appears in several forms throughout the Book of Common Prayer.
One is in Eucharistic Prayer A in the phrase "In Your mercy (God) you sent you only and eternal Son, to live and die as one of us, to share our human nature, to reconcile us to you, the God and Father of all. Hence it is through God's love, God's action that we are brought back into relationship with God, ourselves and each other. And we are to "bear with" one another during that process.

Another place the word reconciliation appears is in the Rite of the Reconciliation of the Penitent (BCP, pp. 446-452). "The ministry of reconciliation ….is exercised through the care of each Christian has for others….." There is outlined a process that does not occur in a vacuum. The rite is private and its contents are kept in the strictest of confidences -in this day and age we need to be reminded of that. The ultimate goal is the re-establishment of a relationship.

The relationship is re-established through forgiveness- God's forgiveness of us, our forgiveness of ourselves and each other. This is a concept-forgiveness-that is also a process that can take a long time. It doesn't lend itself to quick and glib phrase. Forgiveness is both complex and so simple.

So let us "bear with one another" as we go through the days and months ahead.

The Rev. Jane Piver+