God for the forgiveness of our own faults

[Mary Naeem]

The seventeenth step is to sincerely forgive them . This attitude makes us worthy to invoke God for the forgiveness of our own faults in the prayer the Lord taught us: “And forgive us for our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Mt 6:12), and shows that we take these words of Christ seriously: “For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you” (Mt 6:14). This forgiveness in its highest form does not even remember what one has suffered. St. Simeon the New Theologian notes that in this degree love of enemies consists in “covering with total oblivion what one has suffered, think of nothing that has happened, whether the persecutors are present or absent.”