My mother is elderly, sick, lived her whole life in Soviet times, worked honestly. When I went to school (and she lived in the village), the teacher checked if there were any icons in the house. And the parents were scolded if they found the icon. Now my mother is sick. Of course, she had never received communion or confessed in her life. I do what I can for her soul. During confession, I told the priest that I was bringing up topics with my mother, that “Mom, well, you need to repent, take communion,” but she just got irritated, the priest told me: “These people grew up in a different time and there is no need to irritate her, you will only harm her and to yourself." I have a question. So many people’s relatives died without repentance, and my father and other relatives also died. What fate can await our parents and relatives who died without repentance?
You asked a question that, in my opinion, worries a lot of people. I'll tell you this: you see, you are worried, and hundreds and thousands, maybe millions of people are worried. Worried about what? How can it be that people didn’t know, they grew up in different conditions, brought up with different ideas, and suddenly now, because they didn’t know and were brought up that way, they will die!
You are worried. Doesn't God care?
God, it turns out [we express this thought with our anxiety. - Ed.], loves less than us. We preach in Christianity: God is love, he sees the movement of every human soul. He will never condemn for what a person did not know and did not do. We will suffer for only one thing: that we acted against our conscience. This is why we will suffer. It is not for nothing that we find amazing words that God loves everyone who does the truth, everyone who lives according to their conscience, and will demand from everyone in accordance with the measure of knowledge about God, about conscience, about the moral law that he has.
So I'll tell you this. If we are worried, then God is even more so!
And that He desires and will do everything possible for every person, as St. Theophan the Recluse writes about this, for example, is testified to us not by anyone or anything, but by the cross of Christ itself. Find a greater expression of love for the person.
Remember for whom Christ prayed from the cross. Do you remember? For the crucifiers: Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.
Do you hear? There are such words in the Gospel. They will ask more from those who know more. And who knows less, “will be less.” What wonderful words!
And if you turn to the works of the patrists, turn to our services, then you will find much that is gratifying there. The Holy Scripture itself says that Christ is the savior of all people, and especially (that is, especially) of the faithful, that is, Christians.
Christ suffered for all people, and not for some narrow circle of people. What do you think, only a small handful will be saved, an insignificant percentage of humanity who have converted to Christianity (and how will they be accepted - they were baptized in childhood, and it is not known how he believes)?
And Easter will soon be... Christ is the conqueror of death. Death, where is your sting?! Hell, where is your victory?! We will hear this in the Word of John Chrysostom on the first day of Easter, at the Easter service, when this confession of the Christian faith will be declared.
So keep in mind that if we love and we suffer, then even more so does God. If we are ready to forgive very many crimes against us and forgive, all the more will God forgive.
Therefore, let us believe that the Lord will save everyone who strives for truth, who strives for truth, who tries to live according to their conscience. So don't worry about it. Don't worry, but as much as possible (if possible), try to talk, try. You see that he doesn’t accept it, well, there’s no need to irritate him. That means she's not ready yet. Nothing - he will see everything soon. And she will only lament: how was I so cruelly mistaken?
Don't think that the soul doesn't see anything there. The soul will see everything after death. And the soul will grieve. But there will be a general resurrection, when the soul finds a body, when a person becomes a full-fledged person, and here these posthumous experiences - “how I was mistaken” - they will enable the soul to fall before God and say: Lord, I believe in You, save me. And thus he will receive salvation.
So our Christianity is a religion of optimism. And not the religion of saving a small group. Christ came for the sake of only a small handful of people... Christianity is not a sect, but a religion of salvation. I say again: Christ is the savior of all people, and especially, of course, of believers. But, it’s true: those who could not accept Christianity here, they, of course, will have to endure these contritions of heart: how we were mistaken, how we were wrong, how we acted wrongly. Yes, the soul will be contrite, but we believe in the general resurrection and, therefore, in the possibility of a person’s conversion to God, and the final conversion is salvation.
True repentance in Orthodoxy is a necessary condition, preceding the Sacrament of Confession and Communion. Jesus Christ warned all people that without true repentance they would perish. (Luke 13:5)
Repentance and confession have a beginning, but there can be no end while we are alive. John the Baptist began his ministry with a call to repent, for the Kingdom of God is already at hand. (Matthew 4:17)
Every Orthodox believer is obliged to understand the difference between repentance and confession, and why the second is impossible without the first.
Repentance and confession - what's the difference?
Having committed a bad act, be it shouting, deception, envy or hypocrisy, a true believer will feel a reproach of conscience through the Holy Spirit. Having realized sinfulness, a person, at the same moment or at home during prayer, asks God and man for forgiveness, sincerely repenting of the deeds committed.
How to pray for repentance:
Repentance for sins
Repentance does not involve repeatedly returning to a perfect sin; it is a true renunciation of sin and a decision not to do it again.
The smartest of books, the Bible, gives a very harsh definition in this case, comparing a person who repents and returns to his bad deeds to a dog who returns to his vomit. (Proverbs 26:11)
An Orthodox Christian does not need a priest to repent; he himself consciously condemns the wrongdoing and decides never to do that again. The Sacrament of Confession takes place directly before God, but in the presence of a priest, for it is said in Holy Scripture that Jesus is where several people gather. (Matthew 18:20)
Important! Confession is the final act of repentance. Confessed sins no longer have spiritual power in the life of a Christian; it is forbidden to even remember them. After confession, a person is clean before God and is allowed to receive the Sacrament of Communion.
About the Church and the Sacraments:
True repentance in Orthodoxy through the Sacrament of Confession allows one to partake of the Body and Blood of Jesus, to be filled with his power and grace, and to receive entry into the Kingdom of Heaven.
Priests about repentance
According to Isaac the Syrian, sincere repentance is a wide gate for God's grace, and there is no other way.
Silouan of Athos argued that to those who dislike their sinful deeds, God will forgive all sins.
In his “Letters to Spiritual Children,” Abbot Nikon begged the Orthodox believers remaining on earth to constantly repent, considering themselves sinful tax collectors, begging God for mercy.
Repentance
In the book “Paths to Salvation,” Theophan the Recluse writes that through repentance, a sinner learns to love his neighbor, because with forgiveness there is no longer pride and conceit, and if there is, then there is no repentance. Everyone checks themselves.
Hegumen Gury also attached great importance to repentance, claiming that only through repentance can the existing world be cleansed.
Saint Ephraim the Syrian compares repentance to a crucible in the fire of which one melts simple metals, but gold and silver come out.
Jesus left two main commandments on earth - love for God and man.
Three possible paths of repentance
Only angels do not fall, and demons cannot rise before the Creator, but man is given both to fall and to be understood. Human fall is not a lifelong sentence. Through sins, Jesus develops Christian character, which is characterized by:
- repentance;
- obedience;
- tolerance;
- worship of God;
- love for one's neighbor.
No man has yet been born on earth, except the Savior Jesus Christ, who would live his life in complete holiness, without sinning.
A striking example can be the life of the Apostle Peter, who in anger cut off a soldier’s ear, transgressing the commands of Jesus, whom he then denied three times. Christ, seeing the sincere repentance of His teaching, made it the cornerstone of the Christian church.
Why did Judas betray and hang himself, his conscience was tormented, but there was no repentance and faith; would the Lord really not have forgiven him for sincere repentance?
Important! Repentance before God in solitude can correct many sins, let go of any shame that holds and prevents one from coming to confession.
Only in dead hearts there is no shame, regret for what they have done, repentance and understanding of the gravity of the offense. As soon as a person repents, angels sing in Heaven. (Luke 15:7)
Unrepentant sin is like a disease if it is not immediately cured. bad habits, then over time the whole body will rot. That's why postponing repentance until later is very dangerous.
During the day, the Almighty many times gives a person the opportunity to repent of his offense:
- immediately after the sin has been committed;
- during confession.
When repenting, a prayer is read every time a Christian remembers some sin committed during the day.
Heavenly Father! I come to You in prayer, aware of all my sinfulness. I believe Your Word. I believe that You accept everyone who comes to You. Lord, forgive all my sins, be merciful to me. I don't want to live my old life. I want to belong to you, Jesus! Come into my heart, cleanse me. Be my Savior and Shepherd. Guide my life. I confess You, Jesus Christ, as my Lord. I thank You that You hear my prayer, and I accept Your salvation by faith. Thank You, my Savior, for accepting me as I am. Amen.
Does God forgive everyone?
The Apostle Paul emphasizes that an unrepentant heart heaps wrath on the head of the sinner. (Rom.2:5-6)
The devil will do his best to prevent repentance, showing that sin is not so terrible, there is nothing to be ashamed of and everything will pass by itself.
In repentance, Christians must not only mentally repent of the sin committed, but at the same time forgive the people who contributed to the wicked transgressions.
Repentance in the temple
Hardened sinners rob themselves, putting an end to their forgiveness due to many atrocities. Some of them fall into despair and despondency, which is a lack of trust in the Creator and a new sin.
Fallen people do not even realize how merciful the Father is in Heaven, who is ready to accept into His arms everyone who repents of their sins. The Lord forgives every sin for which a person sincerely repents.
Another segment of people who rarely repent are self-righteous Christians. They have already put crowns of holiness on their heads, forgetting the words of Jesus that everyone on earth is sinners.
In the social sphere there is no such word as “repentance”; a person who has committed a bad act repents and asks for forgiveness. But here there is no presence of the Holy Spirit and no awareness of one’s sin before God. From the point of view of Orthodoxy, repentance and repentance have the same meaning, when a sinner not only realizes his sin, he begins to hate it.
In the event of deception, theft, murder, a fallen Christian steps over pride, shame, cowardice and asks for forgiveness from those who suffered, tries to compensate for the losses, and only then goes to confession and brings his sin before the throne of the Creator.
Jesus knows the fallen nature of this world, but man, created in the image and likeness of the Creator, is called to live in the Kingdom of peace, peace, prosperity in love and health already on earth. The Kingdom of Heaven descends to earth by the will of God, by His grace, for those Orthodox believers who realize the power of repentance and confession.
For an unbaptized person there is no repentance in Orthodoxy, there is no God, the gates of grace do not open. Just as it is difficult for a sick person to recover from a terrible disease without the help of doctors, so it is impossible for an unbeliever to know the mercy and forgiveness of the Almighty without Orthodox baptism.
Those people to whom the grace of understanding Confession and Communion is not open, say that Orthodox Christians live well, repent and sin, and repent again.
Important! During repentance, which in Greek means change, the fear of God comes, and a feeling of one’s uncleanness before God comes. Any one causes self-loathing and a desire to quickly cleanse oneself in the face of the Creator.
Having sincerely repented, people will never return to their previous sin; they constantly control their words, emotions, and actions, conforming them with the commandments of the Lord.
Forgiveness in Christianity
There is no need to delude yourself, sometimes even the most faithful children of the Creator fall morally, mentally, physically, but they always have God’s hand nearby, blessed help that comes through repentance and confession.
Why repent if God knows all man's sins?
The Creator created on earth not robots, but people who have feelings, emotions, spirit, soul and body. The Almighty sees all the sins of man, committed not according to His will, but with the complicity of demons.
Until a person repents, the devil has power over him; the Creator does not touch an unclean, sinful soul.
Only by the will of an Orthodox believer does the Savior grant him salvation and grace in earthly life, but for this a person needs to confess his sins, cleanse himself of them, like weeds, and repent. Sincere repentance is heard by God and the devil, in front of whom all doors are slammed and he is deprived of all rights to the once repentant sinner, and after repentance - to the righteous.
Is there repentance after death
In his message to people, Jesus Himself gives the answer to the question of whether a person can be freed from the consequences of fallen life after death. The answer is terrible and categorical for sinners: “No!”
Read carefully the letters to Hebrews, Galatians, and Corinthians! In each Gospel, the apostles convey the words of Christ that what a person sows, that he also reaps. The law of sowing and reaping says that the sinner will reap 30, 60 and 100 times more than he sows. (Galatians 6)
The Apostle Luke clearly writes that without repentance it is impossible to see the Kingdom of God. (Luke 3)
There, Matthew conveys the words of the Savior that only by bearing worthy fruit of repentance can one be saved. (Matthew 3:8)
A stubborn, unrepentant heart gathers the fruits of wrath on the day of Judgment, which no mortal born on earth will escape. This terrible truth is confirmed by John of Kronstadt, saying that, having died, leaving earthly life, the sinner is no longer given the opportunity to change something, he goes to hell.
Important! After death there is no repentance, confession and communion of the Holy Blood of Jesus, which is the entrance ticket to heaven for true believers, God-fearing Christians.
Fallen people living on earth without the grace of God do not even understand how they are robbing their souls. A person cannot help but understand that he is sinning, self-justification of his actions does not bring consolation, sin, like a splinter, will spoil the enjoyment of worldly pleasures.
Drowning in self-love and pride, sinners plunge deeper and deeper into the swamp of voluptuousness, not realizing that the hour of Judgment will come. It will be too late.
Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh on repentance
Heartfelt contrition for one’s sins and the determination not to repeat them are great fruits, and not at all the first steps of repentance. Ideally, our whole life should be repentance. Everyone remembers the apostolic commandment: “ Pray without ceasing"(Thess. 5:17). This means repentance. Jesus Prayer - " Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner" - prayer of repentance.We sin, due to our weakness, continuously, if not in deed, then in thought. And they must repent continuously. Therefore, I do not believe that parishioners should be forced to constantly list everyday sins in confession. A person feels that he needs the prayerful support of a priest - he can list them; confession in our church is performed every day in the morning and evening.
But strictly speaking, confession is a sacrament that reunites a person with the Church. Committing a grave sin, a person falls away from the Church, and at confession he returns to the Church through the sacrament and is accepted back into Eucharistic communion. Therefore, I do not insist that people who regularly receive communion go to confession before each communion and list their daily sins there.
The task of a Christian is not to follow the rules, but to constantly be in prayerful unity with God. For our weakness this means self-reproach. Not in despair and self-remorse, but in self-reproach, that is, awareness and recognition of one’s sinfulness and at the same time faith in the mercy of God. That is, in the state that is expressed both in the Jesus Prayer and in the publican’s prayer.
And the saints did not immediately feel this way. Abba Dorotheos confessed to his teachers Barsanuphius the Great and John the Prophet: I look at my life and understand that I am worthy of eternal torment, I know that I am worse than all people, but I don’t feel it in my heart. And the elders answered him that he was on the right track. We grow to a heartfelt understanding of what we really are all our lives - this is the spiritual path.
I believe that it is wrong to say “I am the sinner of all people” if you do not feel it. Unfortunately, I myself don’t feel this way, although I understand that it is necessary. But still, we believers are aware of our sins. Wait until a miracle happens and we feel them the way the saints felt? You can't wait. Therefore, we will pray now as best we can.
I say: “Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me,” but there is no contrition in my heart. Well, well... I will reproach myself with faith that if I work on my soul and adhere to church fellowship, the Lord will not leave me. I will pray with attention, according to the advice of St. John Climacus, keeping my mind in the words of prayer. If this is not possible, I will pray with my eyes and lips, albeit with a cold heart, absent-mindedly, but in the hope that even such small work will help me get closer to God. As the holy fathers said, it is better to eat bread with ashes than to eat nothing.
O. Konstantin Ostrovsky
There is no need to talk about how urgent it is. Without it, Christian life is unthinkable. It cannot even begin without repentance.That is why an Orthodox person always returns to repentance. And not only in thought, but also in actions - necessarily. Otherwise, it turns out that our faith without works is dead.
Repentance accompanies a Christian throughout his life, no matter how long, no matter how spiritual it may be. The loss of a repentant spirit simply means a person leaving the spiritual path, going onto the path of destruction.
This is why devotees strive for constant repentance(let's call it that, by analogy with unceasing prayer).
It goes without saying that the path to constant repentance for any person is long and difficult. Is it possible to outline any individual steps along this path? Is it possible to describe the ways in which a person is able to move along it? Without a doubt.
Let us turn to our vast pastoral experience Orthodox Church. The remarkable confessor of the first wave of Russian emigration, Archimandrite Sergius (Shevich), noted that we repent of sin three times: immediately upon realizing the sin, at the end of the day, at confession.
The first time: I repent at the moment when I realized that I had committed a sin, even if the awareness of the sin came immediately after it was committed. There is no need to hesitate with a repentant prayer to God (and a request for forgiveness to a person if I have committed a sin against my neighbor). It’s a big mistake to put off repentance “for later,” under the pretext that “it’s somehow inconvenient now,” etc. Sin is like a disease—the sooner you start treatment, the more successful it will be. The sooner it starts, the less sin will have time to harm me. It is dangerous to be stuck in sin.
Shame for the sin I have committed should not stop me on the path of repentance. On the contrary, shame must be used to fight sin. I'm ashamed, that's why I repent. If I put off repentance until later, the illness will be driven to the depths, and it will be much more difficult to fight it.
The second time I repent: at the end of the day I mentally go through its events and again return to my sin. I think a little about it (what are its causes, what are its consequences, how to deal with it), I ask God for forgiveness.
This is a real daily spiritual exercise.
In Russian Orthodox tradition it is clearly spelled out in some prayer books after the evening rule: “Set a word with yourself, and test your conscience, passing and counting in detail all the hours of the day, beginning from the time when you rose from your bed... all your deeds, words and thoughts... If you have done anything evil... repent and pray to the Lover of Mankind.”
Like any regular spiritual exercise, nightly repentance requires volitional efforts from a Christian. Daily repentance will not take too much time if I don’t “drown in details,” if I repent during the day as soon as I notice that I am wrong before God and people.
Nightly repentance helps a person establish an attentive Christian life.
I repent for the third time: at the Sacrament of Confession before the invisibly present Savior, I ask for forgiveness, and the priest says a prayer of permission, testifying to God my repentance for sin, I kiss the Cross and the Gospel.
I repented of sin for the first time, overcoming false shame, I repented after evening prayers, overcoming laziness. All this helps me bring something to confession that is informal and not superficial.
The words of Archimandrite Sergius about repentance are worth a lot. They encourage us to repent more often. They come from a treasury of pastoral experience. They have a palpable ardent desire for penitential works to ennoble our lives and bring us closer to Christ.
Repentance is the beginning of a Christian new life, or Christian new being, being in Christ.
This is how the Gospel began with the words of St. : " Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand ". And Christ’s sermon after Baptism was: “ Repent and believe the Gospel «.
But in our time the question is raised: why is repentance necessary? From a social point of view, it is inappropriate to talk about repentance. There is, of course, some semblance of repentance, especially in the countries of eastern totalitarianism: when someone retreats from the party line, they demand from him “ repentance", or when the party leaders themselves retreat from their original plan - only this is not called repentance, but some kind of " reform" or " perestroika“... There is no real repentance here. How many of you have seen Abuladze's film ""? There it is precisely about false repentance, and only at the end of the film is it clear what true repentance is. The film exposes false repentance as a kind of change " ideal", or " style» power, which remains essentially the same. And indeed, such “ repentance"has nothing to do with true repentance.
In Scripture there are (in the Greek text) two different expressions for repentance. One expression - metanoia , and the other - metamelia . Sometimes this second expression is translated not by the word " repentance", and in the word " repentance". I decided, for example, to go to Frankfurt and “ repented“, that is, I changed my mind: I won’t go. This is what the Holy Scriptures call “ metamelia“, it’s just a change of intention. This has no spiritual meaning. There is also, in a social or psychological sense, something like “ remorse“, that is, change. In the field of psychology there is " perestroika"of your character, your neurosis... In depth psychology, Adler, or Freud, and even Jung have no concept of repentance.
Repentance is a religious concept
You need to repent to someone. This does not mean simply changing your lifestyle or your inner feeling or your experience, as is meant in, say, Eastern religions and cultures. These religions say that a person must get his own experience, must know himself, self-realize, so that the light of his consciousness awakens. But such a change does not require God. And Christian repentance is certainly before someone.
And here's an example. One of our Serbs - now he is already 60 years old - was a communist in his youth and, like all of them, did a lot of evil to the people. But then he turned to faith, to God, to the Church and said, when he was offered communion: “ No, I did a lot of evil «. — « Well, go and confess «. — « Not really , - speaks, - I will go to confess to the priest, but I have sinned before the people, I need to confess openly before the people «.
This is an expression of full consciousness of what repentance is. Here you see the church's perception, ancient Christian and truly biblical, that man is never alone in the world. He stands, first of all, before God, but also before people. Therefore, in the Bible, a person’s sin before God always relates to his neighbor, which means that it has a social, public dimension and consequences. And this is felt both among our people and among the great Russian writers. The Orthodox people have a feeling that a thief or a tyrant, or someone who does evil to his neighbor is the same as an atheist. Let him believe in God, but this is of no use; in fact, he will simply blaspheme God, since his life is at odds with his faith.
Hence - a holistic understanding of repentance as correct standing both before God and before people. Repentance cannot be measured only on social or psychological scales, but is always a revealed, biblical, Christian concept.
Christ begins his Gospel, his good news, his teaching to humanity with repentance. Saint Mark the Ascetic, a disciple of Saint John Chrysostom, who lived as a hermit in the 4th-5th centuries in Asia Minor, teaches that our Lord Jesus Christ, God's power and God's Wisdom, providing for the salvation of all, of all his various dogmas and commandments, left only one the law is the law of freedom, but that this law of freedom is reached only through repentance. Christ commanded the apostles: “ Preach repentance to all nations, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand ". And the Lord wanted to say by this that the power of repentance contains the power of the Kingdom of Heaven, just as leaven contains bread or grain contains the whole plant. So repentance is the beginning of the Kingdom of Heaven. Let us remember the Epistle of St. Apostle Paul to the Jews: those who repented felt the power of the Kingdom of Heaven, the power of the future age. But as soon as they turned to sin, they lost this power, and it was necessary to revive repentance again.
So repentance is not simply the social or psychological ability to get along with other people without conflict. Repentance is an ontological, that is, existential category of Christianity. When Christ began the Gospel with repentance, he had in mind the ontological reality of man. Let us say in the words of St. Gregory Palamas: the commandment of repentance and other commandments given by the Lord fully corresponds to human nature itself, for in the beginning He created this human nature. He knew that later He would come and give commandments, and therefore created nature according to the commandments that would be given. And vice versa, the Lord gave such commandments as were consistent with the nature that He created in the beginning. Thus, Christ’s word about repentance is not a slander against human nature, it is not “ imposition“to human nature is something alien to it, but the most natural, normal, corresponding to human nature. The only thing is that human nature is fallen, and therefore is now in an abnormal state for itself. But repentance is the lever with which a person can correct his nature and return it to a normal state. That’s why the Savior said: “ Metanoite " - that is " change your mind «.
The fact is that our thought has moved away from God, away from ourselves and others. And this is the sick, pathological state of a person, which in Slavic is called the word “ passion", and in Greek the word " pathos"(pathology). It is simply a disease, a perversion, but not yet destruction, just as a disease is not the destruction of the body, but simply damage. The sinful state of a person is a corruption of his nature, but a person can recover, accept correction, and therefore repentance comes like health to a sore spot, to the sick nature of a person. And since the Savior said that we must repent, even if we do not feel the need for repentance, then we must believe Him that we really need to repent. And in fact, the more the great saints approached God, the more they felt the need for repentance, because they sensed the depth of man’s fall.
Another example from modern times. A certain Peruvian writer Carlos Castaneda has already written 8 books about some Indian sage and magician, Don Juan in Mexico, who taught him to take drugs in order to obtain a state of a second, special reality, to enter the depths of the created world and feel its spirituality, to meet spiritual creatures. Castaneda is an anthropologist and has aroused great interest among young people. Unfortunately, 8 volumes have already been translated. The other day in Belgrade there was a discussion: what is Castaneda - accept him or reject him. One psychiatrist said that taking drugs for the purpose of hallucinations is a dangerous path from which one can hardly return. One writer praised Castaneda. I turned out to be the harshest critic.
There is nothing new in the diagnosis of Don Juan by the writer Castaneda. Humanity is in a tragic, abnormal state. But what does he suggest to get out of this state? To feel a different reality, to free ourselves a little from our limitations. What happens? Nothing! Man remains a tragic creature, unredeemed and not even redeemed. He, like Baron Munchausen, cannot lift himself out of the swamp by his hair. The Apostle Paul points out: neither other heavens, nor another creation, nor the otherworldly light, nor the seventh heaven can save a person, for a person is not an impersonal being who needs only peace and tranquility. He is a living person, and seeks living communication with God.
One Serbian communist peasant said rather rudely: “Well, where is God so that I can take Him by the throat?” Is he an atheist? No, he is not an atheist, but he vividly feels God, quarrels with God, like Jacob. Of course, it is disgraceful for this Serb to say so, but he feels living life... And to believe that salvation is in some kind of balanced bliss, in nirvana, in inner world concentration and meditation - does not take a person anywhere. This even closes the possibility of his salvation, because man is a being created from non-existence into being and invited to communicate...
In the Song of Songs or the Psalms we see an existential dialogue between God and man. They both suffer. God feels sorry for man, and man feels sorry for him. Dostoevsky showed especially clearly that when a person moves away from God, something most precious and great is lost. Such a mistake, failure to come to a meeting with God, is always a tragedy. Tragedy is the awareness of the loss of what we could comprehend. When a person loses love and moves away from God, he feels it tragically, because he was created for love. Repentance returns us to this normal state, or at least to the beginning of a normal path. Repentance, as Father Justin (Popovich) said, is like an earthquake that destroys everything that seemed stable, but turns out to be false, and then everything that was must be changed. Then the true, constant creation of a personality, a new person, begins.
Repentance is impossible without meeting God. Therefore, God comes to meet man halfway. If repentance were simply consideration, repentance, a different arrangement of one’s powers, it would be a restructuring, but not a change in essence. A sick person, as St. Cyril of Alexandria says, cannot heal himself, but he needs a healer - God. What is the disease? In the corruption of love. There shouldn't be one-sided love. Love must be at least two-sided. And for the fullness of love, in fact, three are needed: God, neighbor and me. Me, God and neighbor. Neighbor, God and me. This is rechorisis, the interpenetration of love, the circulation of love. This is eternal life. In repentance, a person feels that he is sick and seeks God. Therefore, repentance always has a regenerative power. Repentance is not just self-pity, or depression, or an inferiority complex, but always the consciousness and feeling that communication has been lost, and immediately the search for and even the beginning of restoring this communication. Then the prodigal son came to his senses and said: “ This is the state I'm in. But I have a father, and I will go to my father! “If he had simply realized that he was lost, this would not yet have been Christian repentance. And he went to his father! By Holy Scripture one can assume that the father had already come out to meet him, that the father seemed to have taken the first step, and this was reflected in the son’s motivation to return. There is no need, of course, to analyze which is first and second: there is a double meeting. Both God and man in repentance enter into the activity of love. Love seeks communication. Repentance is regret for lost love.
Only when repentance begins does a person feel the need for it. It would seem that first a person needs to feel that he needs repentance, that it is salvation for him. But in fact, paradoxically, it turns out that only when a person already experiences repentance does he feel the need for it. This means that the unconscious of the heart is deeper than the consciousness that God gives to those who want it. Christ said: " Whoever can accommodate, let him accommodate ". Saint Gregory the Theologian asks, and who can accommodate ? And he answers: the one who wants . Of course, the will is not just a conscious decision, but much deeper. Dostoevsky also felt this, and Orthodox asceticism knows that the will is much deeper than the human mind, it is rooted in the core of a person, which is called the heart or spirit. As in Psalm 50: “ Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a right spirit in my womb ". This is parallelism: the heart is pure - the spirit is right; create - update; in me - in my womb, that is, only other words confirm what was already said in the first part. The heart or spirit is the essence of man, the depth of the god-like personality of man. You can even say that love and freedom are contained in the very center, in the core of a person. God's love called man out of oblivion. The call of God came true, and there was an answer. But this answer is personal! That is, man is the answer to the call of God.
St. Basil the Great says (and this was included in the service to the Holy Archangels) that all angelic powers strive with uncontrollable love towards Christ. Even if they are angels, even if they are great spiritual beings, almost gods, they are also empty without Christ, without God. Dostoevsky put it into Versilov’s mouth in “ Teenager “The image that humanity has realized social truth, love, solidarity, altruism, but by expelling the great idea of God and immortality from the earth. And when Christ appeared at His Second Coming, everyone suddenly felt - those happy ones who realized the kingdom of earth, “ heaven on earth “, - they felt that they had emptiness in their souls, the emptiness of the absence of God. This means there was no love. And Dostoevsky rightly said that love for man is impossible without love for God.
The two commandments of love are united. Love for God completely, with your own being, and love for your neighbor completely, as you love yourself. They cannot exist one without the other, and together they only create a Christian cross: vertical and horizontal. If you take away one, then there is no more cross, and there is no Christianity. Love for God is not enough, and love for neighbor is not enough.
Repentance and love
Repentance immediately awakens a person to both love for God and love for one’s neighbor.
Theophan the Recluse in " Paths to Salvation “says (but this is the experience of all the Fathers) that when a person awakens to repentance, he immediately feels that he loves his neighbor. He is no longer proud, does not consider himself big. He wishes everyone salvation. This is already a sign of genuine Christian life. This means that repentance opens for us in an abnormal state, in a sinful, alienated state, a path, a turn to a normal state, a turn to God and correction before God. It reveals the complete truth about the human condition. And repentance immediately turns into confession. Confession is the revelation of the true person. Sometimes even to us. Orthodox Christians think that repentance is a kind of “ duty"the person who gave us" should be fulfilled". But no, this is too low an understanding of confession. And the confession is similar to what one Russian old woman told me about, who was guarding her little grandson. For some tricks, she spanked his hands; he went into a corner and cried with resentment. She didn’t pay any more attention to him, but continued working. But finally, her grandson comes to her: “ Grandma, I was beaten here and it hurts here". Grandmother was so moved by this address that she began to cry. The childish approach won over the grandmother.
He opened up to her. So, confession-repentance is a kind of disclosure of oneself before God. Like those words from the psalm that went into the irmos: “ I will pour out a prayer to the Lord “...it seems like you have a jug dirty water and you just pour it out before God..." And to him I will tell my sorrows, for my soul is filled with evil and my life has reached the bottom of hell ". He simply feels that he has fallen to the depths of hell, like Jonah in the whale, and now he opens himself before God.
Confession as a continuation of repentance is a person’s true self-disclosure. Yes, we are sinners, that is why we reveal our wounds, illnesses, sins. A person sees himself in a desperate, hopeless situation. But what is truly true is that he looks not only at himself, but, as St. said. Anthony the Great: put your sin before yourself and look at God beyond sins. Look to God through your sins! But then sin will not be able to compete with meeting God. God conquers everything: what is sin? Nothing! Nonsense before God. But this is before God! And in itself he is for me an abyss, destruction, hell. As David the Psalmist says: “ From the depths I have cried out to You—raise my belly from the abyss! ". Our soul thirsts for God, like a deer in the desert thirsts for flowing water.
Like St. Augustine felt: nowhere can a person’s heart rest - only in God. Like when something happens to a child, he runs and looks for his mother, and no one else, and he wants nothing more than his mother, and when he falls into the arms of his mother, he calms down.
Therefore, the Gospel is precisely a book of basic relationships: it talks about a child, about a father, about a son, about a home, about a family. The Gospel is not a theory, not a philosophy, but an expression of existential relationships - ours among ourselves, and ours with God.
So, confession is the revelation of the truth about yourself. There is no need to slander yourself, that is, to scold more than you actually sinned, but you also don’t need to hide it. If we hide, we show by this what is not in us sincere love to God. is a recorded living experience taken from reality. The Bible shows a lot, there are many sins, apostasy and fighting against God, but in all of this you will not find one thing, and that is insincerity. There is no area in life where God is not present. We must know, Father Justin said, as the holy prophets knew, that there is a lot of evil in man, and the world is lost in evil, but that there is salvation for just such a world and just such a person. This is our joy! There is the possibility of salvation, and there is a real Savior.
Father Justin once showed this with such an example (he really loved the prophet Elijah and John the Baptist!). According to him, the Forerunner was the most unfortunate person in the world, because as a child he went with his mother into the desert, and when his mother died, he remained there, and God protected him with Angels. So, he lived in a clean desert, with a clean sky, clean stones, clean rain and knew no sin, lived like an Angel of God in the body. But when he turned 30 years old, God told him: go to the Jordan and baptize people. And then people come to him and begin to confess... they pour sins onto the Forerunner, which become a hill... a mountain... And the Forerunner cannot withstand these sins. Do you know what sins people have and carry within themselves! And the Forerunner begins to despair: “ Lord, is this the man you created? Is this the fruit of Your Hand? "The Forerunner began to drown. And the masses go to confession - how many more sins must be piled up? And when the Forerunner can no longer stand it, suddenly God says to him: “ Here is the Lamb of God, among these sinners One, take hold (taking) the sins of all these and the whole world ". And then the most unhappy person becomes the happiest. Glory to Thee, Lord! This means there is salvation from these sins and from all sins.
There is a Savior! This is Father Justin expressing, of course, from his own experience, what kind of repentance the Forerunner experienced there. And indeed, I will say from my little experience with Father Justin. He was a man who lived like the Forerunner: a pure, great ascetic, and he had compassion, like Metropolitan Atony (Khrapovitsky), he had compassion for sinners, he had compassion for every person, for all creation, and God gave him the great gift of tears for this compassion. And this was not something alien to us. Human tears are always close to each of us. Near a person who sincerely repents, you can feel that we need repentance, that tears are natural water, precious as blood, this is new Christian blood, this is new baptism, as the fathers said. Through tears we renew the baptismal water, which becomes warm and full of grace.
Fasting and repentance
And fasting is added to such repentance.
Saint John of Kronstadt in " My life in Christ ” writes that when a person hates, his gaze prevents another from even walking. Through sin, a person not only suffers himself, but everything around him suffers, even nature, and when a person begins to repent and fast, then this is reflected in everything around him.
Allow me to make this digression: if modern humanity fasted more, there would not be so many environmental problems. Man's attitude towards nature is not at all fasting, not ascetic. It is brutal, violent. Man is already an exploiter, or an occupier. Marx taught this: you just need to attack nature and use it, master the laws and reproduce. This will be " story" and so on. This attitude is different, but not human, not humane.
The holy ascetic fathers said that we are not carnivores, but passion-killers. Fasting is not a struggle against the flesh, as a creature of God. And Christ is flesh, and His Communion is also flesh. But the struggle must be with the perversity of the flesh. Each of us can realize and feel that if a person does not control himself, his body, then he becomes a slave to food, or drink, or other pleasures. The thing begins to own the person, and not the person the thing.
The fall of Adam was that he did not want to restrain himself: when he ate the fruit, he did not receive anything new. The commandment was not to forbid him to eat this fruit, as if there was something dangerous in it, but to teach him to discipline himself, to put him on the path of achievement. This is a feat of freedom and a feat of love. No one but man can do this, and therefore he is called to do it. To participate in the freedom and love of God, a person must be an ascetic.
For example, an athlete, a football player, must be an ascetic. He can't drink and eat and do what he wants and be a good athlete. Can not. It's clear as day, as clear as the sun.
A Christian must tame his body even more so that it serves (liturgisal in Greek), that is, so that it is in “ liturgy ". A " liturgy " means: complete, normal general function, general activity. When we talk about the Holy Liturgy, it is the service of people to God, but the general meaning of this word is the normal functioning of everything that is given to man.
Therefore, a Christian who goes to repent also fasts. We must fast for this, and not in order to simply fulfill a duty or even, as some people think, to earn a reward from God, a crown. No sacrifice that seeks reward is a sacrifice, but simply a job waiting to be paid. Mercenaries may think so, but not sons. Christ, when he made a sacrifice for us, did not seek reward from God the Father for this, but went out of love. As Metropolitan Philaret says, out of love for God the Father the Son was crucified; out of the Son’s love for us, He was crucified and out of the love of the Holy Spirit, He conquered death by His crucifixion. Only love can understand this.
This is the correct understanding of fasting.
In addition, fasting helps us correct the corrupted human nature, bring desired order which God gave. This is to feed first of all on the word of God, and then on bread. Bread is definitely necessary. We cannot live without bread. But bread comes second. How Christ answered the devil who tempted Him in the desert: “ Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God ". By the Word of God, this means communication with God.
I remember one Russian sufferer who was a librarian at our faculty.
He spent four years in Dachau. He adopted and raised a Serbian orphan, then married him. And this wife kicked the old man out of the house. The old man later died very poor. He said that in Dachau one could see by the face who had living communication with God. There was no hypocrisy there. He told me, among other things, that, in his opinion, Berdyaev never had live contact with God. Of course, Berdyaev is a tragic figure, a sufferer, a kind of martyr, and one cannot simply reject him. But he was too pretentious, he did not know humility, he even scolded humility.
Humility is not out of an inferiority complex
And you need to humble yourself before God, but not at all from “ inferiority complex". Job was sick and long-suffering, but he was not inferior"before God. He was humble, and this humility gave him boldness. " Come down from heaven “, Job spoke to God, and God came down. We do not need to accept psychological or social categories: humility is not powerlessness, but rather boldness. For example, I came to Vladyka Mark, I have no money, I would die here, but I trust that Vladyka will feed me and will not leave me. This is boldness. Otherwise, I will underestimate not only myself, but also the ruler.
And this is how the ancient Christians prayed. One Egyptian monk said: “ I, as a person, have sinned. You, like God, have mercy ". Humility and boldness go side by side, together.
All together, starting with repentance - whether repentance presupposes faith or is born in faith - it doesn’t matter, they go together. Faith in God includes repentance immediately in my tragedy, in my problem, in my life. I don’t agree to solve my problem without God. I'm looking for communication. And God showed through Christ that He wants fellowship with us. He gave His Son! He loved us before we loved Him. This means that He is also looking for communication. This is a truly humane God, an active God, a God who is called by some fathers “ anticipatory eros". To enter into His omnipotence, He comes out to meet us, and by this He limits Himself to our extent in order to accept us. It is called " kenosis ". If He were coming straight towards us, then... as if the sun had burned us, we would simply disappear. But He humbled Himself out of love, seeking our communication not forcibly, but simply—He Himself wants it that way. And this immediately gives us dignity. Therefore, in our Orthodox Christian tradition there is great reason for boldness, for hope in God. Man is a sinner, but still: God is greater than sin! IN " Demons "Dostoevsky's Elder Tikhon said this to Stavrogin: " You're only one step away from the saints ". And indeed, a person can take this one step and meet God. Nothing is ever impossible. It is impossible for man, but possible for God. But God has entered into this connection with us and does not want us to solve our problems without Him. And we have no reason to doubt this, since He gave His Son.
Powerful Reasons for Repentance
These are the powerful reasons we have for repentance. This is not just some moral teaching of a person that one must be good, and therefore one must repent. No, repentance renews in us the very foundations of the Christian faith. God wants our salvation, seeks it and longs for it, and waits for it. On our part, it is only necessary that we want, and then we can, not by ourselves, but by God.
Repentance with all the Christian virtues that accompany it, such as confession, humility, boldness, hope, fasting, prayer... repentance is already a foretaste of resurrection, even the beginning of resurrection. This is the first resurrection of man. The second will be the result, the completion at the Second Coming of Christ.
Such an experience of repentance does not exist in any religion, in any spiritual experience, or in any mysticism. Even, unfortunately, in Western Christianity this feeling, this experience, this event has almost been lost.
Father Justin told us that he was from the beginning of 1917 to 1919. at Oxford, he studied there. And so one Anglican monk, after two years of friendship, said to him: “ You are all young, cheerful, like us, but you have one thing that we, as a church, do not have - repentance, we don’t know that... «. « The thing is , said Father Justin, that he and I once had a real fight. And then I could no longer stand it and went to him to ask for forgiveness, threw myself at his feet, cried, and the man accepted it... So he saw repentance «.
Fathers have instructions that there is no need to inflate passions, not even to anyone.” step on the shadow “... but in order for this to be real humility, it must be done with love, that is, it should not be simply indifference to the brother’s condition. Otherwise, this is not humility or dispassion, but simply some kind of conventional attitude, “ good tone“, that is, hypocrisy, officially established: there is no need to interfere in other people’s affairs. (Let people die in Vietnam, Yugoslavia or Cuba). It all comes down to external decency... As Father Justin liked to say: culture is very often a varnish, but inside it is a worm. Of course, there is no need to be aggressive. But God led us Orthodox Christians through history in such a way, we opened up to Him in such a way that we could never live without problems. But recognizing the status quo, recognizing the regime of the abnormal as normal is not Christianity. Repentance is precisely a protest against an abnormal state. There are difficulties in the family, in the parish, in the diocese, in the state, in the world - a Christian cannot deal with this “ to reconcile". He definitely fights. But he starts with himself, so repentance is self-condemnation, self-restraint, or, as Solzhenitsyn said, or what Tarkovsky said, shame, shame as a religious concept, in the sense that a person returns to himself and begins to be ashamed. At the end of Abuladze’s film, it is clear what true human repentance is. A person begins to be ashamed of his deeds and immediately becomes determined to change this. It can be said that only in Orthodox countries, in Russia, in Serbia, in Greece, does repentance exist as a theme (and even in literature). We recently published Lubardo's novel "" - about the relations between Serbs, Muslims and Catholics in Bosnia. And in his novel only the Serbs repent. And the Serbs not only speak, but also perform repentance.
Thank God, this means that we are sinners. And this is not pride, we do not praise ourselves, but precisely we cannot come to terms with this situation, neither ours nor others. Father Justin called this the true revolutionism of Christians against sin, against evil, against the devil, against death. This is a rebellion of a person against the false self, and a rebellion against the false in another person, and in religion - a rebellion against false gods and a fight for the true God. Repentance seeks a true vision of the world, God, man, seeks the right faith.
I am personally shocked that in Russia now young people in masses are returning to God, to Orthodoxy. This is the case with us too. This is not just finding faith in some god, throwing away atheism and finding some mysticism, but finding the living God, joining the true life of the Church. The other day I read a good article by Vladimir Zelinsky “ Church Time". It can be seen how man found God, found Christ, found the Church. If a person simply repented somehow and wants to live, no matter what church he belongs to, then I doubt the authenticity of even this initial repentance. This is some kind of metamelia", but not " throwing ". This is not true restoration of life. That is why the fathers stood so zealously for the faith.
But we must not forget behind this that love is the first dogma of our faith. Love is the true cross, but do not be afraid of love if it leads to the cross. Never forget that when love is on the cross, it still remains love. If Christ had not said: “ Father, forgive them! “, that was not Christ, believe me. He would be a hero, an ideal man, but not the true Christ the Savior. And Dostoevsky in “ Grand Inquisitor“Christ even kisses the inquisitor. This is not sentimentality, not romanticism, this is genuine love that is not afraid. Therefore, we Orthodox Christians always feel that our strength and invincibility is not in ourselves, but in the authenticity of what we seek, desire, what we believe in and what we live for.
