Because we have received the grace of God’s forgiveness, we can forgive one another as ourselves. Because we have forgiven one another as our very life, we can truly receive the grace of God’s forgiveness as the timeless life of love’s ineffable glory. Gratuitous love manifests doxological circularity that takes the form of a co-inherence of grace and forgiveness, generating the co-inherence of forgiveness and grace. Co-inherence thereby regenerates healthy synergy whereby grace inspires forgiveness and forgiveness co-operates with grace. The glory of grace is revealed in the communion of love that expresses the mystery of grace as forgiveness. Love forgives and gives thanks, sustaining forgiveness by giving thanks. Gratitude gives thanks for gratuitous love received, inspiring the generous return of love, but when love falls short of glory and wounds cry out, to answer with love is truly costly. In a fallen world, love often falls short of glory, but grace descends to restore glory to glory through costly love, even love that lays down its life for the beloved. Indeed, it is this unselfish love that woos resistance to love and mends refusal of love, but it is gratitude for love that bears witness to the glory of love. Even when love falls by failing to love, forgiveness restores love and gratitude sustains love, so glory is painfully mended and healed by gratuitous costly love.
We are all born into a fallen world in which love so often fails to live from the love that wholly completes us, but when grace is revealed, we are reborn into a reign of grace whose glory generously restores all falls as it forgives all failures of love’s fallenness. So instead of accusing and blaming those who were probably doing their best, forgiveness lives from grace whose glory restores love’s original glory, welcoming home into glory all who suffer from failures to love, all who are wounded from love’s falls from glory. This does not mean that suffering ceases to wound but that wounds are transfigured by glory, opening lack of love to love’s uncreated abundance by grace. Love’s incompleteness does not cease to wound but wounds are healed by grace whose forgiving glory unveils wondrous completeness. Love’s falls are not, therefore, love’s last word, because love leaps over mountains of suffering to abide in the grace of glory, revealing the glory of grace. Pain cannot, moreover, extinguish love because love cuts through pain to the unceasing glory of love, easing the pain of love’s suffering as it is transfigured by glory. Forgiveness releases grace to manifest as glory, which restores glory to love’s ineffable glory even when long-suffering love endures excruciating pain.
Grace is actually the hidden glory of long-suffering love, generously completing the incompleteness of all falls from love by unveiling the glory of love’s ineffable completeness. Wounds remain even when healed, just as the wounded hands and side remained even when resurrecting glory glorified the slaughtered Lamb. But glory is decisive for the reign of uncreated glory, not gaping wounds. Desert elders give living witness to gratuitous glory so that saints may release their wounds into glory, hallowing the Name in the wounds by healing the wounds in the glory. Grace heals wounds in the glory by hallowing the Name in the pain, so that grace, with forgiveness, unveil wisdom and glory that complete love’s anguished incompleteness. By forgiveness, grace enables completeness to heal all the open wounds of love’s searing incompleteness. The great leap of faith, trusting in love’s saving Name, opens to great peace when wisdom abides in glory. The great severance opens to ineffable completeness when incompleteness is forgiven and grace unveils glory. Wounds restore glory to love’s infinite glory when grace overcomes crushing gravity with liberating gratitude. Suffering suffers love to restore love to love, when wisdom weds glory at the heart of excruciating suffering. Love loves because love loves, not because ulterior motives have intervened. The glory of grace is long-suffering love, communicating forgiving grace, receiving grace as it forgives and gives thanks. Doxological circulation of grace and forgiveness is a mystical union that unveils glory to wisdom as co-inherent communion. From grace to love’s completeness of grace, glory restores glory, through forgiveness, to love’s ineffable glory, generating inexhaustible mysteries of hallowing completeness.