On Repentance

“Repent, and believe in the Gospel! Repent: for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand” (Mk 1:15, Mt 4:17). Such were the first words of the God-man’s preaching. These same words He continues to speak to us through the Gospel to this day.

When sin had greatly increased in the world, the all-powerful Physician descended into the world. He descended into the land of our exile, the land of our torments and sufferings that precede the eternal torment of hell, and proclaims deliverance, consolation, and healing to all human beings without exception. “Repent!”

The power of repentance is founded upon the power of God: the Physician is almighty—and the remedy He offers is almighty as well.

Then—during the time of His preaching on earth—the Lord called all who were sick with sin to be healed, and declared no sin to be beyond healing. And now He continues to call everyone, promising and granting forgiveness of every sin, healing of every sinful malady.

O pilgrims of earth! O all of you who are striding or being borne along the broad way, amid the incessant noise of earthly cares, diversions, and amusements, through flowers intermingled with sharp thorns, hastening along this way toward an end known to all and forgotten by all—toward the gloomy grave, toward an eternity still more gloomy and fearsome—stop! Shake off the enchantment of the world, which holds you perpetually in captivity! Give ear to what the Saviour announces to you; give proper attention to His words! “Repent, and believe in the Gospel”, He says to you; “repent: for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”

It is urgently necessary for you, earthly pilgrims, to give full attention to this essentially useful and saving exhortation: otherwise you will reach the grave, you will reach the threshold and the gates of eternity, without having acquired any right understanding either of eternity or of the duties of one who enters it—having prepared for yourselves nothing there but the just punishments for your sins. The gravest of sins is inattention to the words of the Saviour, contempt for the Saviour. “Repent!”

The path of earthly life is deceptive, full of illusions: to those who are beginning it, it appears an endless expanse filled with substance; to those who have traversed it, it seems a very brief path bordered by empty dreams. “Repent!”

Both glory and riches and all other corruptible acquisitions and advantages, on the gaining of which the blinded sinner spends his whole earthly life and all the powers of soul and body—all these he must leave at the moment when the garment of the soul—the body—is forcibly stripped away, when the soul is led by the pitiless angels before the judgment of the righteous God, a God unknown to it and disregarded by it. “Repent!”

People labor and hasten to enrich themselves with knowledge—but only with knowledge of little importance, suited merely for this present time, serving the satisfaction of the needs, comforts, and whims of earthly life. The knowledge and the work that are truly necessary—the only purpose for which earthly life has been granted us—namely, the knowledge of God and reconciliation with Him through the Redeemer—these we utterly despise. “Repent!”

Brothers! Let us look impartially, in the light of the Gospel, at our earthly life. It is insignificant! All its goods are taken away by death—and often much sooner than death, by various unforeseen circumstances. These corruptible, so quickly vanishing goods are not worthy to be called goods! They are, more accurately, deceptions and snares. Those who become entangled in these snares and bound by them are deprived of the true, eternal, heavenly, spiritual goods bestowed by faith in Christ and by following Him along the mysterious path of life according to the Gospel. “Repent!”

What terrible blindness is ours! How clearly does this blindness prove our fall! We see the deaths of our brothers; we know that death inevitably awaits us as well, and perhaps very soon, since no human being has ever remained on earth forever; we see that for many, even before death, earthly well-being fails them, and is often transformed into misfortune resembling a daily tasting of death. In spite of all this—the most vivid testimony of experience itself—we pursue only temporal goods as though they were permanent, as though they were eternal. On them alone is all our attention fixed! God is forgotten! The majestic and at the same time terrible eternity is forgotten! “Repent!”

All corruptible goods will fail us, brothers, they will inevitably fail us: the rich man’s riches will fail him, the famous man’s fame, the young man’s youth, the wise man’s wisdom. Only one eternal, essential good can a human being acquire during his earthly pilgrimage: true knowledge of God, and reconciliation and union with God, bestowed by Christ. But in order to receive these highest of goods, one must abandon a sinful life, one must come to hate it. “Repent!” “Repent!” What does it mean to repent? It means: to confess, to be sorry for one’s sins, to abandon one’s sins—answered a certain great holy Father when asked such a question—and no longer to return to them.[1] In this way many sinners have been transformed into saints, many lawbreakers into righteous persons. “Repent!” Cast away from yourselves not only manifest sins—murder, robbery, fornication, slander, lying—but also ruinous distractions and fleshly pleasures, criminal fantasies and lawless thoughts—all, all that the Gospel forbids. Wash away your former sinful life with tears of sincere repentance.

Do not say to yourself in despondency and spiritual weakness: “I have fallen into grave sins; I have acquired through long years of sinful life sinful habits: with time they have become as it were natural qualities, making repentance impossible for me.” These gloomy thoughts are suggested to you by your enemy, who is still unnoticed and not understood by you:[2] he knows the power of repentance, he fears lest repentance should wrest you from his power—and so he strives to turn you away from repentance, attributing weakness to God’s almighty remedy.[2]

The Establisher of repentance is your Creator, who made you from nothing. All the more easily can He re-create you, transform your heart: make a heart that loves God out of a heart that loves sin; make a heart that is pure, spiritual, and holy out of a heart that is sensual, carnal, malicious, and lustful.

Brothers! Let us come to know the ineffable love of God for the fallen human race. The Lord took on human nature so that, through the Incarnation, He might make it possible for Himself to receive the punishments deserved by human beings, and through the execution of the All-holy to redeem the guilty from punishment. What drew Him to us here, to earth, to the land of our exile? Was it our righteousness? No! What drew Him to us was the wretched condition into which our sinfulness had cast us.

Sinners! Let us take courage. For us—precisely for us—the Lord accomplished the great work of His Incarnation; upon our sicknesses He looked with an incomprehensible mercy. Let us cease to waver! Let us cease to despond and doubt! Let us approach repentance filled with faith, zeal, and gratitude, and through it be reconciled with God. “If a lawless man turns from all his sins which he has committed, and keeps all My statutes and does justice and righteousness, he shall surely live; he shall not die. None of the transgressions which he has committed shall be remembered against him; in the righteousness which he has done he shall live” (Ezek 18:21–22). Such is the promise God gives to the sinner, through the lips of His great prophet.

Let us correspond, in our feeble measure, to the great love the Lord has shown us—as creatures can correspond to the love of their Creator, and fallen creatures at that: let us repent! Let us repent not with lips alone; let us attest our repentance not merely by a few brief tears, not merely by outward participation in the Church’s worship and the fulfilment of Church observances—things with which the Pharisees were satisfied. Let us bring together with tears and outward piety the fruit worthy of repentance: let us exchange a sinful life for a life lived according to the Gospel.

“Why will you die, O house of Israel?” (Ezek 18:31). Why do you perish, O Christians, by your sins to eternal death? Why is hell filled with you, as though the all-powerful repentance established in the Church of Christ did not exist? This infinitely gracious gift has been given to the house of Israel—to Christians—and at whatever moment of life, whatever the sins, it works with equal power: it cleanses every sin, saves everyone who turns to God, even in the last moments before death.

“Why will you die, O house of Israel?” Christians finally perish to eternal death because throughout the whole of their earthly life they occupy themselves solely with breaking the vows of baptism and solely with serving sin; they perish because they do not grant the slightest attention to the word of God, which proclaims repentance to them. In the very moments before death they are unable to avail themselves of the all-powerful force of repentance! They are unable to avail themselves of it because they have received no conception of Christianity, or have received a conception so inadequate and confused that it must be called rather complete ignorance than any form of knowledge.

“As I live, says the Lord”—as though compelled to reinforce His assurance before those who do not believe, and to rouse the attention of those who pay no heed—“As I live, says the Lord: I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live… Why will you die, O house of Israel?” (Ezek 33:11).

God knew the weakness of human beings, and knew that even after baptism they would fall into sins: for this reason He established in His Church the sacrament of repentance, by which sins committed after baptism are cleansed. Repentance must accompany faith in Christ and precede baptism into Christ; and after baptism it corrects the violations of the obligations of one who has believed in Christ and been baptized into Christ.

When many from Jerusalem and all Judea gathered to John, the preacher of repentance, at the Jordan for baptism, they confessed their sins to him—they confessed them not, notes a certain holy Writer, because the holy Forerunner had any need to know the sins of those who came to him, but because for the solidity of their repentance it was necessary to join to the feelings of sorrow over having fallen into sin the confession of those sins.[3]

The soul that knows it is obliged to confess its sins—says the same holy Father—is held back from repeating its former sins by that very thought, as though by a bridle; whereas sins that have not been confessed, as though committed in darkness, are readily repeated.

Through the confession of sins the friendship with them is dissolved. Hatred of sin is a sign of true repentance—of the resolve to lead a virtuous life.

If you have acquired a habit of sins, make confession of them more frequently—and you will soon be freed from your captivity to sin, and will follow the Lord Jesus Christ with lightness and joy.

He who constantly betrays his friends will find that his friends become his enemies and remove themselves from him as from a betrayer who seeks their certain ruin: he who confesses his sins will find that those sins depart from him, because sins are grounded and strengthened in the pride of fallen human nature, and cannot endure exposure and shame.

He who in hope of repentance allows himself to sin willfully and intentionally acts treacherously toward God. He who sins willfully and intentionally, relying on repentance, is struck by unexpected death, and the time he had planned to devote to virtue is not given to him.[4]

Through the sacrament of confession all sins committed in word, deed, and thought are definitively cleansed. In order to eradicate from the heart sinful habits that have taken deep root over a long period of time, time is needed, and a constant abiding in repentance. Constant repentance consists in constant contrition of spirit, in the struggle against the thoughts and feelings through which the sinful passion hidden in the heart manifests itself, in the restraining of the bodily senses and the belly, in humble prayer, and in frequent confession.

Brothers! Through willful sin we have lost the holy innocence that was untouched not only by sinful deeds but even by knowledge of evil—the innocence in whose spiritual radiance we appeared in being from the hands of our Creator. We have also lost that innocence which we received at our re-creation through baptism; we have stained our garments, whitened by the Redeemer, with various sins along life’s path. Only one water remains for our washing—the water of repentance. What will become of us if we neglect this washing as well? We shall be compelled to stand before God with souls disfigured by sin—and He will look with severity upon the defiled soul and condemn it to the fire of Gehenna.

“Wash yourselves”, God says to sinners, “make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before My eyes; cease from evil. Come now, and let us reason together.” How does this judgment of God—this judgment of repentance, to which God continually calls the sinner throughout the time of his earthly life—conclude? When a person acknowledges his sins and resolves on sincere repentance and amendment, God pronounces this verdict in His judgment with the sinner: “Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them white as snow; though they are red like crimson, I will make them white as wool” (Is 1:16, 18).

But if a Christian shows contempt for this last, most merciful calling of God, then final destruction is proclaimed to him by God. “The goodness of God”, says the Apostle, “leads you to repentance” (Rom 2:4). God sees your transgressions: He looks with long-suffering upon the sins committed by you beneath His gaze, upon the chain of sins of which your whole life is composed; He awaits your repentance, while at the same time leaving to your own free will the choice of your salvation or your ruin. You abuse both the goodness and the long-suffering of God! There is no amendment in you! Your negligence grows stronger! Growing stronger in you is your contempt both for God and for your own eternal fate! You concern yourself only with multiplying your sins, adding new and doubled transgressions to your former ones! “In accordance with your hardness and your impenitent heart you are storing up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God”, who will render “to each person according to his works: to those who by patient endurance in doing good seek glory and honor and immortality, eternal life; but to those who by contentiousness oppose the truth and obey unrighteousness, wrath and fury. Tribulation” eternal “and anguish” eternal “upon every human soul that does evil” (Rom 2:5–9). Amen.