To the Repentant is Pronounced Complete Forgiveness in the Mystery of Repentance

After a sinner has come to the vow to serve God alone from now on, he must hasten to the Mystery of Repentance. Its necessity is so great that everything done up to now, without it, will not only remain incomplete but must come to nothing. It receives all its weight, all its significance and all its power only in this Mystery. Therefore, where there is no Mystery of Repentance, there are no living in the true Christian way.

The first thing that makes this Mystery necessary is a certain instability in inner work in general, a certain indefiniteness and shakiness in it. Our thoughts, as long as they are in the head, are changeable in their course, disordered in arrangement, unestablished in movement—and this not only when the subject is not yet clear but even when we have thought it through well. But as soon as we set them down on paper, they not only establish themselves in order but are finally clarified and confirmed. In precisely the same way, a change of life only conceived within is indecisive and unstable, and the forms of life outlined at this time are shaky and indefinite. They receive firm establishment in the Mystery of Repentance, when the sinner in the church opens his shortcomings and confirms his vow to be reformed. Melted wax flows indefinitely; but when it is poured into a mold or a seal is impressed upon it, something comes out of it. And a seal must be impressed on our inner man so that he takes a definite form. This is done to him in the Mystery of Repentance: here the Divine grace of the Spirit seals him.

Man receives spiritual life from the Spirit of God. The grace of the Spirit blends with us, begins to live and act in us and produces life by the spirit. In the repentant man up to this point it has acted from without: externally it stirred him, externally it oversaw all the corrective movements within and aided them; but it has not yet penetrated inward, not yet taken up dwelling. This is accomplished in the Mystery of Repentance (and in baptism for one returning to the Lord for the first time). Just as one tormented by thirst feels refreshment and restoration upon drinking cool water, so one burning in the fire of repentance receives in the Mystery of Repentance the ultimately soothing and strengthening power.

What especially makes the Mystery of Repentance necessary is, on one side, the nature of sin, and on the other the nature of our conscience. When we sin, we think that not only outside us but in us also no traces of sin remain. Meanwhile, it leaves deep traces both in us and outside us on everything that surrounds us, and especially in heaven, in the decrees of Divine justice. At the hour of sin it is decided there what the sinner has become: in the book of life he is entered in the list of the condemned—and he becomes bound in heaven. Divine grace will not descend into him until the list of the condemned in heaven is erased, until he receives there absolution. But God willed that the heavenly absolution—heavenly erasure from the list of the condemned—be made dependent on the absolution of those bound by sins on earth. Therefore, accept the Mystery of Repentance so that you may be worthy of complete absolution in all respects and open in yourself an entrance for the spirit of grace. Your conscience, now purified, having recovered sensitivity and feeling for the moral order, will give you no peace until you are firmly assured of forgiveness. Such is its nature in the ordinary course of our life: it will not allow us even to show ourselves before one we have offended until we are assured he has forgiven us. In relation to God it is still more discriminating. Although at the time when man rises to a decisive vow, a certain assurance descends on him that he is now not hateful to God; but this assurance is his own and cannot be firm; doubt will soon shake it: “Is it so, or is this perhaps self-deception?” and doubt will bring trouble within, and from trouble—weakness. In such a state life will have neither firmness nor order. Therefore man must hear forgiveness pronounced from the face of God so that, being finally assured of God’s mercy, he may act afterward with firmer decision and steadiness in this assurance. Therefore, confess—and receive from God the announcement of forgiveness.

You must prepare yourself worthily for a saving confession. Whoever has gone through all that has been said so far is prepared. Come then with reverent faith!

Having firmly convinced yourself of the necessity of this Mystery, go to it—not as to some appendage to your change of life or a mere custom, but with full faith that for you, as a sinner, this alone is the possible way of salvation; that, passing it by, you will remain among the condemned and, consequently, outside all mercy; that, not entering this hospital, you will not restore health to your spirit and will remain, as you were, sick and disordered; that you will not see the Kingdom unless you enter by the door of repentance.

With such convictions awaken in yourself the desire for this Mystery. Approach it not as to a place of slaughter but as to a fountain of blessings. Whoever vividly imagines the fruit that is born in us from confession cannot help but long for it. A man comes there all in wounds, from head to toe there is no wholeness, and he returns from there healthy in every part, alive, strong, with the feeling of safety from future infections. He comes there burdened—the sum of his past sins is upon him, it torments him and deprives him of all peace, and he returns relieved, gladdened, in a joyful state of spirit because he has received a charter of forgiveness.

Shame and fear may approach—let them! This Mystery is even more desirable because it awakens shame and fear; and the greater the shame and fear, the more saving it is. When you desire this Mystery, desire greater shame and greater trembling. Does not one who decides to be healed know that treatment is painful? He knows, but in deciding on treatment, he also determines himself to accept the sufferings connected with it in hope of recovery. And you, when you were tormented by the feelings of repentance that came upon you and yearned to draw near to God, did you not say: “I am ready to bear all things, only have pity and forgive me!” Here it has come to pass according to your desire. Let not shame and fear that approach disturb you—they are joined to this Mystery for your benefit. Once you have burned through them, you will be the stronger morally. You have already burned more than once in the fire of repentance—burn once more. Then you burned alone before God and conscience, but now burn in the presence of a witness appointed by God, to testify to the sincerity of that solitary burning, and perhaps to make up for its incompleteness. There will be judgment and there shame and fear of despair. Shame and fear in confession atone for shame and fear then. If you do not wish those, experience these. Besides, it is always the case that in proportion to the distress that the confessor passes through, there abound in him consolations after confession. Here the Savior truly shows Himself as the Comforter of those who labor and are heavy-laden! The one who has truly repented and confessed knows this truth in his heart by experience, not merely by faith.

Then, recalling again all the sins you have committed and renewing the vow already ripened in you not to repeat them, revive living faith that you stand before the Lord Himself, who receives your confession, and tell all, concealing nothing of what burdens your conscience. If you have come with the desire to shame yourself, you will not hide yourself but will depict, as fully as you can, your degradation in your passions for sin. This will serve to satisfy your sorrowful heart. You must be assured that every sin confessed is expelled from the heart, while every sin concealed remains in it to all the greater condemnation, since the sinner was near the all-healing Physician with this wound. By concealing the sin, he covered the wound, not caring that it torments and disorders his soul. In the account of blessed Theodora passing the toll-houses, it is said that the evil accusers found no sins written in their records that she had confessed. The angels later explained to her that confession blots out sin from all places where it is recorded. Neither in the book of conscience nor in the book of life nor by these evil devourer is it reckoned to that person—confession has erased these records. Pour out without concealment everything that weighs upon you. The limit to which you should go in revealing your sins is such that your spiritual father will have a precise understanding of you, so that he sees you as you truly are, and in absolving you absolves precisely you and not another; so that when he says: “I forgive and absolve the repentant for the sins he has committed,” nothing in you remains that does not fall under these words. It is good that those preparing for confession for the first time after long living in sins find an opportunity to speak beforehand with their spiritual father and tell him the whole history of their sinful life. In this way they have no risk of forgetting or omitting anything in the confusion of confession itself. By all means one should take care to make a complete confession of sins. The Lord gave the authority to absolve not unconditionally but on condition of repentance and confession. If this is not fulfilled, it may happen that when the spiritual father says: “I forgive and absolve,” the Lord says: “But I condemn.”

Here the confession ends. The spiritual father raises his stole, covers with it the head of the penitent and, holding his hand upon it, pronounces absolution for all sins, sealing him with the sign of the cross upon his head. What happens at this moment in the soul is known to everyone who has truly repented. Streams of grace from the head flow into the heart and fill it with gladness. This is not from men—neither from the penitent nor from the one absolving: this is the mystery of the Lord the Healer and Comforter of souls… It sometimes happens that in the heart of some one can distinctly hear some Divine word in strengthening and encouragement for future work. It is, as it were, spiritual arms delivered by Christ the Savior to the man who now enters among those warring under His banner. Let whoever has been granted to hear such a word preserve it afterwards as consoling and encouraging; consoling because it is evident that the confession is received, when the Lord deigned to enter, as it were, into conversation with the penitent; encouraging because in the hour of temptation, one need only remember it and whence strength will come!.. Soldiers in battle encourage themselves with what word from their commander’s speech affected them most powerfully. So too here.

Thus all is completed… It remains to draw near to God in feelings of gratitude for His unspeakable mercies and to kiss the cross and Gospel as a sign of the vow—to walk unflinchingly the path shown in the Gospel with self-crucifixion, to follow Christ the Savior as described in the Gospel, under His gentle yoke, now newly taken upon yourself. Having done this, go in peace with the intention to act without fail according to what you have promised, remembering that judgment over you from this time will be from your own words. You have made a vow—keep it; you have sealed it with the Mystery—be all the more faithful to it, so as not to fall again into the rank of those who trample on grace.

Your spiritual father will impose a penance on you; receive it with joy. And if your spiritual father should not impose a penance, ask that one be imposed. This will not only be a blessing on you on the good path you are entering, but also a protection and defense against strange hostile attacks upon you in your new life order. This is what the Holy Patriarch of Constantinople writes about it in his “Answer to the Lutherans”: “We accompany forgiveness of sins with penances for many weighty reasons. First, so that through voluntary suffering here the sinner may be freed from the heavy involuntary punishment there, in the other life, for the Lord is moved to mercy by nothing so much as by suffering, and especially by voluntary suffering. Therefore holy Gregory says that for tears man is repaid with human kindness. Second, so that penance destroy in the sinner those passionate lusts of the flesh that generate sin, for we know that opposites are cured by opposites. Third, so that penance serves as a kind of chain or bridle for the soul and does not allow it again to take up the same vicious deeds from which it is just being cleansed. Fourth, so that it train one to labors and patience, for virtue is the work of labors. Fifth, so that we see and know whether the penitent has completely hated sin.”

Whoever passes through this entire course of spiritual healing as it should be, and especially without hiding, confesses his sins, returns from God’s house as guilty men return from the place of judgment who, instead of a sentence of death, heard there the announcement of pardon and forgetting of their crimes, returns with the deepest feeling of gratitude to the Savior of our souls, with firm resolve to devote Him and the fulfillment of His commandments the whole remainder of his life, with extreme aversion from all his former sins and uncontrollable desire to erase all the traces of his previous base life. The one who has received absolution feels within himself that he is not idle, that a special power has visited him. Divine grace, which until now has worked upon him from without to aid him in his victory over himself, now with the words “I forgive and absolve” has entered within, has blended with his spirit and has filled him with fire and swiftness, with which he now goes forth to work and to labor until the evening of his life.