A Discourse for the Monday of the First Week of Great Lent: Preparation for the Mystery of Confession (Part 1)

Beloved brethren! We are now in the haven of the holy Fast. We now set apart a special time for special, careful, detailed examination of ourselves: the gates of repentance open more widely for us.

Inhabitants of the holy monastery! Nearest disciples of Christ! Close children of the Church, who remain constantly at her spiritual breasts! It should be that we have no need of special time for attention to ourselves, for cleansing our sinful stains through confession and repentance: our entire life should consist of constant attention, of constant repentance, if our life corresponded to our name. The model of purity, to which we ought to attain, is perfect. He is our Lord Jesus Christ. “But as he which has called you is holy, so be you holy in all manner of conversation; Because it is written, Be you holy; for I am holy” (1 Pet. 1:15, 16). According to the infinite perfection of the model of purity, the field of repentance and purification is infinite. Even if someone were to traverse this field with all possible zeal and diligence, he could not attain perfection in purification. Even if his life in constant repentance continued for thousands of years, he still would not achieve complete purification. The greatest of the holy monks, at the end of their lives, were aware that they had not only not completed, but had not even begun repentance. And we, according to our infirmities, which are constantly growing and multiplying, shall be at the day of our departure from earthly life very far from that holiness in which our venerable Fathers departed from their bodies, the chosen vessels of God, the dwellers of the desert—now dwellers of heaven for their careful abiding in repentance during their sojourn in the wilderness of this earthly life.

Indeed! Those who spend their lives in constant attentiveness, ceaselessly watching over their souls, observing the manifold workings of sin within themselves, continually healing themselves from this poison through repentance, do not attain the fullness of spiritual perfection. What then shall be said of those who live negligently, immersed in endless distraction, never thinking—or thinking but rarely and in passing—about what most needs to be pondered: their salvation? I shall speak of them what has already been spoken; I shall pronounce upon them a judgment already pronounced. I shall speak with a sorrowful heart, yet speak without error, for I shall only repeat the words of the Apostle, the words of God:(1 Tim. 5:5, 6). Do not suppose these words apply solely to widows in the flesh! Much more do they apply to you and me, who have renounced the world to serve Christ. The monk—he is the true widow, for whom the world ought to be dead. O monk, mystical widow! Hear my humble words. You have named yourself dead to the world and to this age of vanity, so that you might live for God and for blessed eternity? Consider Scripture, consider yourself, compare the state of your soul with the state prescribed for it in Scripture, and tell me—are you truly dead to the world? At least, have you begun to mortify yourself? Have you felt yourself coming to life through God? Have your thoughts and desires emigrated into the age to come? Few, very few, can answer yes to these questions; rather, each of us must acknowledge the justice of this terrible judgment that has been pronounced. This judgment weighs heavy upon the ear and heart of the carnal and world-loving, yet it is better to hear it here, while our earthly pilgrimage still continues, while the season of repentance and amendment has not yet ended. If my words produce in you fear and grief, blessed is this fear, this sorrow is to be desired! “For the sorrow that is according to God”, says the Apostle, “produces repentance without regret, leading to salvation” (2 Cor. 7:10). Working upon time, it shall direct toward flight from that sorrow and anguish—from sorrows that are truly terrible both for eternity and for the terrible torment they produce, inexpressible in words, incomprehensible to our mind and feeling.

Let each one examine himself; let each one test within himself the words that I shall speak for the salvation of your souls and of my own!

Paradise, heaven, eternal blessedness are appointed for us if we live here piously, fulfilling the vows we made at baptism, repeated at monastic tonsure, completed by vows of poverty and virginity. But we pay no attention to the blessedness prepared for us, as one who sleeps is unmoved by the pleasures and delights of this life that surround him and await his waking. We never think of the ineffable future goods; our thoughts are always fixed on earth, entirely consumed with earthly pleasures and earthly cares. Are we not dead in soul, though we seem alive to ourselves and to those who have carnal understanding, who look with merely fleshly eyes?

Hell, eternal fire, the sleepless worm for our endless gnawing and torment are appointed for us if we pass our earthly life in sins and sinful pleasures. Yet it is precisely these pleasures we seek, these we pursue; our desires and thoughts are fixed upon them. We live as if there were no hell, as if we were immortal and eternal on earth, as if we had already attained infinite blessedness. In vain does the Word of God thunder with threats; in vain does it proclaim terrible infinite torments! We see the death of our brothers, we take part in their burial—this produces no effect upon us, as though death were the lot of other men, certainly not ours. We, like the dead, have no remembrance, no foreboding of death, no remembrance, no foreboding of the age to come. Truly we are dead. “You have a name that you are alive, but you are dead” (Rev. 3:1), testifies the infallible Word of God concerning every carnal man.

For our sake the Son of God came down to earth; He trampled our death by His death; He became for us life and at the same time the way to that life. He demands of us that we crucify our “flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal. 5:24), not because He Himself has need of it, but because we have need: only in a body mortified to sin can the manifestation of gracious life be revealed. But we hear only the sound of words; our soul neither understands nor receives the words themselves—they are spoken to us as though in a foreign, unknown tongue. And this is not surprising; it is the direct consequence of our spiritual condition. One dead in body is incapable of bodily sensation: whether he be praised, given boundless wealth, stripped naked, showered with abuse, he is unmoved by all. So too one dead in soul cannot understand spiritual words, cannot feel spiritual goods, cannot have the proper remembrance of death and eternal torment, the proper knowledge of the vanity of this world and age. Such knowledge that is nonetheless clear and tangible: he is poisoned, mortified by sin, from this point estranged from God and blessedness, from this point sealed as a victim for hell. The life of the body comes from the presence of the Holy Spirit within it.

Shall I be able to praise worthily the incomprehensible goodness of the all-good God, His ineffable longsuffering, His ineffable love for mankind! Shall I call forth with the Prophet for this praise the hosts of Angels, all tribes of men—nay, all beasts and cattle, birds of the sky, creeping things and reptiles, fish wandering in the vast expanses of water, with them the whole of inanimate creation! And then all creation, united in one mouth, one voice of praise, would not be able to hymn worthily the worshipful goodness of God, transcending all words, transcending all comprehension. Come, brothers, let us bow down and fall at the feet of His goodness: even now it bears long with our lawlessness, even now it awaits our turning, even now it stretches out its arms to us, calling those wandering in deserts and impassable thickets of sin, receiving repentant sinners, making them sons and daughters of God. Now, hearing His voice, the voice calling you to repentance, “do not harden your hearts” (Heb. 3:15); “having ears to hear” (Mt. 13:9), do not remain deaf. “Awake, you who sleep” in the deep slumber of negligence and utter heedlessness for salvation! “Rise from the dead” (Eph. 5:14), you who are dead in insensibility and hardness of heart, in a life wholly given as a sacrifice to flesh, sin, and corruption! May I see in you a movement of life, awakened by the word proclaiming repentance! May I hear your voice, the voice of sighs, the voice of your weeping, the voice of your repentance, that I might be assured there still remains in you a sign, a remnant of life! The Lord, seeing that you have spent all the days of your life fruitlessly, once more grants you a day for your effortless salvation, a day in which through sincere confession before your spiritual father you are able to cast off all the burden of your sins.

Part One.

Repentance is all-powerful as the ordinance of the all-powerful God. There is no sin that can stand against the face of repentance. It is a gift given to fallen human nature; it is the remainder of our primordial innocence, as the consciousness of that innocence and sorrow for its loss; it is the call of baptism; it is the bond of earth with heaven, the ladder to heaven. By it every sin is cleansed and blotted out. If you were burdened even with the gravest transgressions, do not hesitate to approach repentance. The immeasurable ocean swallows up with equal indifference the waters of a great river flowing majestically through many lands and the modest streams of a small brook, barely visible; so in the abyss of God’s goodness, grave falls disappear just as much as the least, the most insignificant offenses. Let five hundred and fifty denarii, all forgiven equally, convince you of this: the money-lender is infinitely rich, while the debtors are all insolvent (Lk. 7:41, 42). A small sin remains unblotted out if the one who committed it scorned to repent of it, as insignificant in his view; but a great sin is completely obliterated through the means of repentance by God’s unlimited goodness and omnipotence. Remember the holy David, who fell into fornication and murder. Negligence crept imperceptibly into the soul of the righteous man; from negligence was born the loss of guardianship of bodily senses; freed from guardianship, his eye unexpectedly met the object of temptation; the object of temptation aroused in the consecrated soul a sinful desire; after the desire followed sinful fulfillment; after the commission of adultery came shame—a shame in which human pride was ashamed of sin. Shame, in which pride was made ashamed of sin, gave birth to a new sinful desire: the desire to hide the sin, the desire to preserve the appearance of righteousness before men. To accomplish this, murder was committed. Long did David remain hardened, insensible, as though innocent of any transgression. It took an accusation from God Himself. The prophet Nathan, by God’s command, accused the one who had sinned, and as soon as David said: “I have sinned against the Lord”, an answer came forth from the Lord: “The Lord has taken away your sin” (2 Sam. 12:13). Almighty repentance has saved whole cities and kingdoms, has annulled sentences already pronounced by God. Thus the populous city of Nineveh, condemned by God’s prophet to destruction, averted it by sincere repentance—and in vain the prophet waited near Nineveh for its destruction, for the fulfillment of his prophecy! Thus to the wicked Israelite king Ahab, a worshiper of idols, persecutor and murderer of the worshipers of the true God, punishment was already appointed, already announced by the great Elijah; but Ahab was moved to compunction and shed tears, though remaining in his wickedness. This brief compunction, these small tears did not remain without effect: “Ahab has been moved to compunction before me”, the Lord said to the prophet Elijah, “therefore I will not bring evil in his days; but I will bring evil upon his house in the days of his son” (1 Kings 21:29). All Holy Scripture, all Church History are filled with countless examples that prove the mighty power of repentance. A certain robber, Palladius recounts in the Lausiac History, was caught in the very act of crime and brought to Arsanait, a city of the Thebaid. After many tortures, they condemned him to have his head cut off. As he went with the soldiers outside the city to the place where he had committed his crime, distant from the city six miles, an unknown monk followed him, desiring to see his execution. The robber, seeing the monk following him, said to him: “Father, do you not have a cell and manual labor?” The monk answered: “I have.” The robber said to this: “Why then do you not sit in your cell and weep for your sins?” The monk answered: “Brother, I am very lazy; my soul has no compunction, which is why I came to see how you will die. Perhaps with the help of this spectacle I shall come to compunction.” Then the robber said to him: “Father, sit for God’s sake in your cell, bless and praise the Savior Christ, from the time He became incarnate and died for us sinners, man no longer dies.” Here is another tale, equally moving and instructive. “Near a certain city there dwelt a recluse who had received from God the gift of foresight. In that city there was a harlot known to all the inhabitants. Once the recluse saw a bright path stretching from the women’s monastery situated in the city up to heaven, along which a soul traveled in great joy, guided by Angels, and drew near to the gates of heaven. He sent a disciple to the women’s monastery to learn who there had reposed. The disciple, returning, brought word that in the monastery no one had reposed, but the famous harlot had died suddenly before the gates of the monastery, having come there from the city. Brought into perplexity, the recluse began to pray to God that He would explain the vision to him.” “Indeed,” came God’s answer to the holy elder, “you saw the soul of the woman, formerly a harlot, ascending to heaven. She had made a firm intention to repent and amend, and went to the monastery with the resolve to enter it. That she died before the monastery gates, not having had time to fulfill her intention, was by God’s ordinance. But her intention God accepted as the very deed itself.” In these two tales we see in practice the fulfillment of the Gospel’s promises. And the Gospel itself presents how many such instances! A tax-collector, burdened with sins, came into God’s temple, and for his humility and repentance went out from the temple justified. Another tax-collector, Zacchaeus, as soon as he made the intention to amend, was called a son of Abraham: judgment went forth from God: “Today salvation has come to this house” (Lk. 19:9). A harlot, falling at the feet of the Saviour and exchanging her love of sin for love of God, heard: “Her sins, many as they are, are forgiven, for she has loved much” (Lk. 7:47). The robber crucified at the right hand of the God-man obtained salvation in the last moments of his tumultuous life. Only he humbled himself, only he acknowledged himself worthy of condemnation, and the eyes of his soul opened and he recognized in the God-man crucified near him; recognizing, he confessed; only he confessed and he obtained the promise of eternal blessedness. An event fully corresponding to evangelical teaching! “He who believes in me”, the Lord said, “though he die, shall live” (Jn. 11:25). He openly and clearly proclaimed of Himself: “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Mt. 9:13).

Do not think that those sinners who lived during the time of the Saviour’s presence on earth were especially blessed: blessed were those who resorted to confession of sins and to repentance; on the contrary, those who rejected the all-powerful remedy of repentance, remained in sins, and perished from their impenitence, from their hardness of heart. Nothing and no one prevents us even now from enjoying the blessedness of sinners who repented before the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. He said of Himself to those who believe in Him: “Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Mt. 28:20). When you stand before your spiritual father, he will confirm to you the truth we proclaim: “Behold, my child,” he will say, “Christ stands invisibly, receiving your confession.” Standing before Christ Himself, ask of Him and receive from Him great and abundant mercy—the forgiveness of sins.

Why then do we delay? Why do we hesitate, fall into doubt and double-mindedness, in which the devil rejoices and is strengthened against us? You say that numerous, grave, and long-standing sins lead to doubt and double-mindedness; from constant falls the powers of the soul have come to exhaustion; I feel a weakening of my very will. It is true! Your sins are grave. For all physicians your condition is incurable, but not for the physician-Lord, all-powerful and infinitely merciful. Your distrustful fearfulness would be somewhat excusable if you could expect that the physician would turn his eyes from you, reject you with contempt and anger. But He does not reject you; on the contrary, He calls you to Himself, implores you to come to Him. He will not rebuke you; no harsh word will issue from His lips. He calls you to Himself for the sole purpose of granting you forgiveness and healing. “Come, let us reason together, says the Lord; though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool” (Is. 1:18). The purpose of Christ’s coming to earth was to set human souls free from the sin that possessed them and to restore in us the fallen Divine image. “Behold, the Lamb of God”, John the Forerunner testifies of Jesus, “who takes away the sin of the world” (Jn. 1:29). The healing of bodily diseases was merely a proof of the healing of the soul from sin. When they brought a paralyzed man before the Lord, He said to the sick man: “Be of good cheer, child; your sins are forgiven you” (Mt. 9:2). Some of the scribes present thought that blasphemy had been spoken. Jesus, seeing their thoughts, said: “Why do you think evil in your hearts? For which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins—He then said to the paralyzed man: Rise, take up your bed and go to your home” (Mt. 9:4–6). If you are so crippled by sin that you have lost even the will to do good, if you are leprous, deaf and blind in soul, if you have so obeyed the devil that you have fallen wholly into his power, and, driven by the force of the enemy, you are like one possessed—even then do not hesitate to approach repentance, and you will hear: “Your sins are forgiven you”. Your Creator is the Creator of your heart, your mind, and your will. You have disordered and corrupted them by sin? The Creator can recreate a pure heart from a defiled one, and can renew the darkened, damaged mind by His all-powerful Truth. He can strengthen your suffering and failing will, which is under the violence of sin, in the good, and in this way restore to your soul the joy of the hope of salvation, which appears in the victories of the will over sin.

Let no evil thought arise in anyone that “forgiveness is easily obtained through repentance, the ease of obtaining forgiveness allows one to be lenient with oneself, allows one to indulge in sinful pleasures. Moreover, it looks with tolerance upon the return to grave falls.” No! Forgiveness of sins through repentance is not granted on such a condition. It is granted on the condition that one who has fallen into mortal sins shall abandon them. This is evident from the very words of the Saviour: after forgiving the harlot brought before Him by the Pharisees, He said to her: “Go, and from now on do not sin again” (Jn. 8:11). The Lord commanded the same to him whom He healed in the porticoes of Bethesda, and commanded it with a threat of greater punishment for violation of what was commanded: “See, you are well”, He said, “do not sin any more, lest something worse befall you” (Jn. 5:14). The venerable desert Fathers understood and fulfilled the words of the God-man thus, and taught the brethren likewise. Abba Pimen, when asked “What does repentance for sin mean?” answered: “It means to repent of a sin and not to repeat it. Those who have done so are called blameless and righteous, because they have abandoned their sins and have become righteous.” The great teacher of monasticism, the holy Isaac the Syrian, speaks of those who repeat their falls: “He who a second time falls into sin in hope of repentance walks before God with deceit; to such a one sudden death is sent, and he does not receive the time on which he had counted for the improvement of virtue.” This is understood of mortal sins, not of those stumbles from weakness that are healed by daily repentance, which even the Saints were not wholly free from. But if, through an unfortunate habit and weakening, drawn as if by force by flesh and blood, you cannot refrain from mortal sins, especially called “falls”: even then do not abandon yourself to despair, to which an unbroken series of falls so fiercely draws a man. We have on this matter a wise instruction from Sisoes the Great. Once a brother said to him with a sorrowful heart: “Father, what am I to do? I have fallen.” The elder answered him: “Rise.” The brother said: “I have risen, and fallen again.” The elder answered: “Rise again.” The brother objected: “How long shall I rise and fall?” The elder said: “Until your death.” The true servant of God is preserved not only from sinful deeds and words, but from sinful thoughts and feelings themselves. For faithfulness to the Lord he is counted worthy of special spiritual gifts. The venerable Siluanos, a Scetic and later a Sinai ascetic, abounded in them; when asked by what means he had acquired grace, Siluanos answered: “I never allowed a thought that angers God to enter my heart.”

He who has kept himself from mortal sins should not think that he has little need of repentance. Your sins seem light to your own eyes, but you do not know how heavy they are on the scales of God’s justice. “Different is human judgment and different is God’s judgment”, said a certain venerable desert father, reflecting at the end of his life upon his monastic and ascetic labors. The lawgiver of the people of Israel, the God-seer, the holy Moses, who shone with the rays of prophecy, miracles, and rays of visible glory, spoke a word without due consideration before the people, being grieved by their stubbornness. He only “let his lips speak hastily” (Ps. 105:33), in the words of the holy Psalmist; he spoke a word of distrust with his lips, while his heart was filled with faith; he spoke this word with his lips, recognizing the wickedness and unbelief of the people as unworthy of a miracle and beneficence—as though supposing that God’s grace, weakened by the people’s wickedness, was not sufficiently strong and sufficient in itself to work a miracle. A sin that appeared to be of little importance and excusable, a sin in a holy man rich in good works and gracious gifts, is judged otherwise by God; not only does it deserve rebuke, not only is it recorded in the books of Holy Scripture for the notice of all the Israelite people and for the notice of all the world that will come to believe in the true God—it is punished by temporal punishment. Moses, who knew the power of prayer and the infinite mercy of God, vainly resorts to prayer and reconciliation of God; Moses, who has more than once turned away God’s wrath from all the people of Israel, prays for himself, that the decree pronounced against him might be annulled; he prays—and is not heard. “The Lord refused to hear me for your sake”, Moses said, relating to the people the consequences of his prayer, “and would not listen to me” (Deut. 3:26). Nothing is written in Scripture without a holy purpose. Guessing the purpose of Scripture in the present circumstance, we will not err at all if we recognize that it serves us as an instruction and a warning, so that we do not consider our small sins small, care with all diligence to avoid them and to purify ourselves from them by repentance. How much we sin from ignorance! How much we sin from weakness! How much we sin, carried away by distraction, by the example of others, by our condescension toward others! How much stumbling is permitted to us for judging our neighbor, for hardness of heart toward him! We remain in heedlessness, while the records of our sins multiply. The righteous Job knew this, and daily brought prayers and sacrifices to God for his children, saying: “Lest perhaps my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts. Thus Job did all the time” (Job 1:5). The mark of a righteous man is a firm distrust of his own righteousness and dwelling in continuous repentance.