How Does Christian Life Begin in the Mystery of Repentance?

The beginning of graceful Christian life is established in baptism. But few preserve this grace; most Christians lose it. We see that some show themselves in actual life as more or less corrupted, with wicked tendencies that are allowed to develop and take root in them. In some, perhaps, good tendencies were laid, but in the youth’s early years, whether by their own inclination or by temptation from others, they forget them, begin to grow accustomed to what is evil and do grow accustomed. All such people no longer possess truly Christian life in themselves; they must begin it again. Our Holy Faith offers the Mystery of Repentance for this purpose. “If anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous” (1 Jn 2:1). If you have sinned, know your sin and repent. God will forgive your sin and give you again “a new heart and a new spirit” (Ezek 36:26). There is no other path: either do not sin, or repent. Indeed, judging by the multitude of those who fall after baptism, one must say that repentance has become for us the sole source of truly Christian life.

It must be known that in the Mystery of Repentance, for some the gift of graceful life already received and active in them is only cleansed and rekindled; for others only the beginning of this life is established, or this life is given again and received anew. We shall consider it from this latter perspective.

In the sense just mentioned, it is a decisive change for the better, a breaking of the will, a turning away from sin and turning to God, or the kindling of the fire of zeal for pleasing God exclusively, with self-renunciation and rejection of everything else. Most characteristically it involves the painful breaking of the will. A person has grown accustomed to what is evil; now one must, as it were, tear oneself apart. One has offended God; now one must burn in the fire of impartial judgment. The penitent experiences the pangs of childbirth and in the heart’s feelings somehow touches the torments of hell. To the weeping Jeremiah the Lord commanded: “to tear down” “and again” “to build and to plant” (Jer 1:10). And the sorrowful spirit of repentance was sent by the Lord to earth so that, passing through those who receive it “to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow” (Heb 4:12), it might tear down the old self and lay foundations for building the new. In the penitent—now fear, now faint hope, now sorrow, now light consolation, now terrors of near despair, now the breath of mercy’s joy—these alternate with one another and place or keep him in a state of dissolving, or parting with life, yet in expectation of receiving new life.

This is painful, but salutary, and so inevitable that whoever has not felt such painful breaking has not yet begun to live through repentance. There is no hope that a person can cleanse himself in everything without passing through this ordeal. Decisive and living opposition to sin comes only from hatred of it; hatred of sin comes from a sense of the evil it brings; this sense of its evil is experienced in all its force in this painful breaking in repentance. Only here does a person feel with all his heart how great an evil sin is; then afterwards he will flee from it as from the fire of hell. Without this painful trial, though another may cleanse himself, he will cleanse himself only superficially—more externally than internally, more in deeds than in dispositions; and so his heart will remain wholly unclean, like ore that has not been melted.

Such a change is produced in the human heart by Divine grace. Only it can inspire a person to raise a hand against himself, to slay himself and offer himself to God as a sacrifice. “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him” (Jn 6:44). “A new heart and a new spirit” God Himself gives (Ezek 36:26). The person himself pities himself. Having merged with the flesh and sin, he became one with them. Only an outside, higher power can divide him and arm him against himself.

Thus the change of a sinner is produced by grace, yet not without free will. In baptism grace is given to us at the moment the Mystery is performed over us; and free will comes afterwards and takes what has been given. But in repentance free will must participate in the very act of change.

The change for the better, the turning to God, must be instantaneous or momentary, as it indeed is. But preparatorily it passes through several stages, showing the union of freedom with grace, where grace masters freedom and freedom submits to grace—stages necessary for everyone. Some pass through them quickly; for others this continues for whole years. Who can investigate all that happens here, especially when the ways of grace are very diverse and the states of people on whom it begins to work are countless? Yet one must expect that for all the diversity, there is here one common order of change which no one can escape. Every penitent is one living in sin—and grace transforms every such person. Therefore, on the basis of understanding the state of a sinner in general and the relation of freedom to grace, we can now depict this order and define it by rules.