The Ascent to the Vow to Dedicate Yourself to God

It would seem that everything is already accomplished if you have decided to abandon sin and it only remains to act. And truly, one can act; but what kind of activity will it be and what spirit will be in it? Man has stopped only at himself. If he begins to act from this point, he will act from himself and for himself, though in a moral order. This will be moral egoism, pagan morality. There are people who say they do good as good, they do it because human dignity requires it, or because to act otherwise would be ignoble or unwise. All such doers show that the education of the inner, moral man in them has not been brought to completion: they have turned to themselves but have not advanced from themselves to God and have not offered themselves to Him in sacrifice; they have stopped halfway. The goal of human freedom is not in itself and not in man but in God. God granted freedom to man as a part of His Divine power, but on the condition that man himself voluntarily offers it as a sacrifice to God as the most perfect offering. Therefore, if you have mastered yourself, go now and give yourself to God. When you sinned, you did not only lose yourself, but in losing yourself, you also drew away from God. Now, returning from sinful captivity, after you have mastered yourself, return yourself also to God. It might seem that the turning from yourself to God should also be a simple matter, one not difficult and not complex, like turning from west to east. But the sinner approaching God is not one independent of Him and does not approach Him in such a way that there is nothing against him. No, he is like a fugitive slave returning to his master, like one guilty appearing before the face of a king-judge. It is necessary to approach in such a way as to be received. In human affairs, a master receives a slave and a king returns mercy to a guilty man when, as they approach, each of them recognizes his fault, repents of it and gives a sincere promise to be completely reformed henceforth.

The same is true in a sinner’s return to God. He will be received by God if a) he recognizes his sins, b) repents of them and c) makes a vow not to sin. These are the necessary acts in the heart’s reunion with God, upon which depend firmness in the new life, perfection in it and confidence in unchanging fulfillment of its demands. The prodigal son, returning to his father, said: “I have sinned”—recognition of sin; “I am no longer worthy”—condemning himself; “receive me as one of your hired servants”—the vow to labor. Therefore, returning to God:

Know your sins. In your awakening determination to abandon sin, you already knew you were sinful, for otherwise why resolve to change your life? But this sinfulness seemed indistinct then. Now you must precisely learn what exactly is sinful and to what degree—clearly, distinctly, as if numerically know your sins, with all circumstances that diminish or increase the sinfulness of your actions: critically review your entire life with a strict, impartial judgment.

For this, place on one side God’s law and on the other your own life, and see where they agree and where they disagree. Take your action and measure it against the law to see if it is lawful; or take the law and see if it is fulfilled in your life. To omit nothing in this important matter, follow some order. Sit down and recall all your duties in relation to God, to your neighbor, and to yourself, and then review your life according to all these relations. Or analyze the Ten Commandments and the beatitudes one by one, with all their applications, and see if your life is such. Or read the chapters of the holy Gospel of Matthew where the Savior sets forth the Christian law, and also the epistle of the holy Apostle James, and the final chapters of the epistles of the holy Apostle Paul, in which are briefly set forth the works required of a Christian, for example: from Rom. 12, from Eph. 4, and so forth. The latter are especially important because they explain the spirit of Christian life. This spirit is clearly and powerfully expressed also in the First Epistle of the holy John the Theologian. Read all this and verify your life—is it so? Or finally, take the order of confession and by it examine your behavior. Regard your life and deeds not merely as deeds of a man but as deeds of a Christian man, and moreover in a definite station and condition.

As a result of such a review of your life, an innumerable multitude of deeds, words, thoughts, feelings, desires contrary to the law will become evident—things that ought not to have been but were allowed, countless things that ought to have been done but were not done, and a considerable number of things that were done according to the law will be found defiled by the impurity of their motives. The sum total of all this will be innumerable, and it is possible that your entire life will turn out to be composed of nothing but evil deeds. The chief thing to keep in view at this first level of knowing your sinfulness is precise definiteness of deeds. As a service record is written with numerical exactness, so also each must picture in his mind the list of his deeds with such exactness—with all circumstances of time, place, persons, obstacles and so forth. If self-examination remains unfruitful for us, it is because we make only general overviews.

Yet despite all this, you should not stop at these particulars but must go further along the path of sin, or penetrate more deeply into the sinful heart. Underlying deeds, words, particular thoughts, desires and feelings are constant dispositions of the heart, which constitute our characteristic traits. Some of our deeds broke through by chance; others flowed from the heart with such force that we could not stop them, and still others were done constantly, becoming, as it were, our law. Such consideration will reveal to us what producers of deeds hide in the heart and give birth to a constant impulse from there toward them. These are sinful inclinations. Uncovering them, we lay bare the structure of our heart, the number and mutual connection of its inclinations.

When this is done, the chief, all-governing passion cannot remain hidden. It is known that the root of all sins is self-love. From self-love come pride, avarice, sensuality, and from these—all other passions, of which eight are considered chief, and there is no count of the derived ones. Every sinner has all the passions—some in actuality, others in their seeds—because everyone who sins is governed by self-love, the seed of all passions and sinful inclinations. But not everyone manifests all of them to the same degree: in one, pride predominates; in another, sensuality; in a third, avarice. And the proud man is not free from sensual pleasures—but it does not matter if he sometimes does without them. And the grasping man thinks highly of himself—but it does not matter if sometimes for profit he acts humbly. And the sensualist loves gain—but it is nothing to him to forgo gain if pleasures can be bought with it. Thus each man has one chief passion. All others stand in the shadow, subordinate to it, and are governed by it, not daring to act powerfully against it. All inclinations and vicious habits already discovered by a man in himself are tinged by one particular passion and animated by it. It is that in which the root of all evils—self-love—most actively dwells and is embodied in his person. The knowledge of this passion must complete the consciousness of one’s sinfulness.

So at last you will know both the root of your sinfulness and its immediate offspring—the inclinations—and its further offspring, the countless deeds; you will picture the entire history of your sinfulness and depict it as if in a painting.

Having known your sinfulness, do not be a cold observer of it, but strive to awaken and cultivate the corresponding saving feelings of heartfelt repentance. It would seem that these feelings should be born in you as soon as you recognize sin, but in reality it does not always happen so. The heart hardens from sin. As a laborer hardens from his work, so does the sinner harden, having sold himself into the black work of sin—to dig roots and eat them. Therefore here too you must work on yourself to stir up the feelings of repentance.

You pass to these feelings through the feeling of guilt in your sins and your defenselessness in them. The feeling of guilt stands between knowing your sins and repentant feelings and is itself mediated by self-accusation.

Begin then to accuse yourself—and accuse yourself thoroughly. Remove everything from your attention and leave yourself alone with your conscience before the face of God—the all-seeing Judge. Lay bare what you knew you ought not to do, and yet desired it; you were able and desired to refrain from it but did not use your self-mastery for your own good: reason and conscience were against it, and external obstacles were present, but you despised all these admonitions. Do the same for each sin. You will see that every sin was committed willingly, with awareness of its sinfulness and with effort in overcoming obstacles—and conscience will force you to acknowledge your guilt unquestioningly. The cunning of the sinful heart may begin to invent excuses—now in the weakness of nature, now in the force of temperament, now in the concourse of circumstances, now in the pressure of life’s relations—do not listen. All this could intensify the draw toward sin, but no one can force agreement to sin—it is always an act of the will. Say: “I do not wish,” and all temptations end! Contrary to such “thinking to excuse yourself from guilt for sins” (Ps. 140:4), lay bare more fully your personal circumstances: who you are, where, when and how you sinned, that you may see how guilty is your sin precisely in your person and in your circumstances—and in all this you will see not reasons for excuses but factors that increase your guilt. The limit to which self-accusation must be brought is the feeling of defenseless guilt—the state in which the heart will say: “I have nothing in my defense—I am guilty.”

In this action of accusation by conscience, a man will establish over himself one sin after another and will say: “In that I am guilty, and in another, and in a third, in all, in everything I am guilty,”—he will clothe himself in his sins and will begin to feel that they weigh upon him with all their weight. In knowing sins, one can still imagine them as external; in self-accusation they are seen within ourselves and they press upon us, and all the more they press because we are defenseless against them. Having come to this point, what remains for the sinner to say but: “Wretched man that I am! This is not good and that is evil; I myself am guilty that it is not good and that it is in me.”

As soon as a man speaks in his heart: “Wretched man that I am,” painfully sweet feelings of repentance for sins begin to arise in him, one after another. He feels shame that he gave himself over to such base deeds, and resentment that he indulged himself and yielded to his evil will, and sorrowful pain that he brought himself to such moral disorder, and fear that he has offended God and put himself in such a dangerous position both in time and in eternity. These feelings alternate with one another, and man burns in them as in a fire. He sees himself hanging over an abyss and in his feeling descends to the state of the rejected. Hopeless anguish gives way to a feeling of despair. And here is the point at which a demon sometimes seizes a sinner with despair, suggesting: “your guilt is too great for you to be forgiven” (Gen. 4:13).

Every sinner experiences these feelings in greater or lesser degree. There is no need to grieve that they exist; rather we should desire them and desire them intensely. The more a man burns in them and the more intense the burning, the more saving it is. In the strength of this burning lies the foundation of future reform. Here the heart learns how bitter is the fruit of sin, and from this learns the strength to turn away from its seductions.

The feelings of repentance obviously have a dissolving effect. A word goes forth that divides the soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and judges the thoughts and intents of the heart. But the purpose for which this is wrought in man by God’s grace is not merely to destroy but, through the destruction of the old, to create something new. This new is seeded by the breath of hope that it is possible to correct the incorrigible. There is a way to correct what is wrong and to restore what is lost, only take up the work. One might think there is a direct transition from repentant feelings to making a vow: “Therefore, I reject sin and promise to serve God alone in the fulfillment of His commandments.” But one who makes such a vow must be confident that, on one hand, his former sinfulness can be forgiven, and on the other that he can receive strength to help him keep the vow. It is for this reason that making the vow to serve the Lord is mediated by confidence in forgiveness and in receiving help from above; and this confidence is produced by faith in the Lord Savior, by whom on the cross the handwriting of our sins was torn up and, after His ascension, all “divine power for life and piety” (2 Pet. 1:3) were given to us. Without this faith and the confidence it produces, the one tormented by crushing feelings of repentance walks the way of Judas. Here is when the Cross of the Savior is truly an anchor for man! Hanging, as it were, over an abyss in painful sorrow for sins, he sees Him alone as his savior, grasps Him with all the strength of faith and hope and draws from Him strength to be inspired to make a vow. As a drowning man grips a log, so the repentant one grips the Cross of Christ and feels that he will not perish. Ordinarily we know the power of the Cross of the Lord, but one who has passed through this painful repentance for sins feels it, because it becomes an element of his life.

Therefore, tormented by feelings of repentance and already wavering before despair, as you move toward the desired vow:

First hurry to revive living faith in the power of the cross of Christ the Savior. All the sins of all men are nailed to the cross, and consequently your sins too. Quicken this assurance, and your heart will be refreshed with consolation, and it will rise to confidence immediately as it is warmed by this faith.

Add to this firm confidence that you will be given strength to fulfill your vow as soon as you approach the Mysteries. No one is denied them. They were indeed acquired by the Lord to be distributed. This confidence will stir your own powers into action and will give birth to readiness to work eagerly with such help. Can a vow be made without confidence in help from above? But on the other hand, will this confidence come if one does not think of making a vow? Here there is mutual action.

And so when within you this combination of confidence and readiness comes to pass, make the vow to serve God alone all the days of your life. This heartfelt vow, made in faith in our Lord Jesus Christ and spoken sincerely, will disperse all the darkness that enveloped your soul and will illuminate all the threads of your inner and all the arrangements of your outer life. Here is concluded a covenant of the heart with God in Christ Jesus. Therefore in this action the previous decision takes on a truly Christian character.