Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh. Learn to repent. Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh: What sins does God forgive?

Above I spoke about repentance and only touched on the issue of confession. But confession is so important question, that I want to dwell on it in more detail. Confession is twofold: there is personal, private confession, when a person approaches a priest and opens his soul to God in his presence; There is a general confession, when people come together in a large or small crowd and the priest pronounces a confession for everyone, including himself.

I want to dwell on private confession and draw your attention to the following: a person confesses to God. The teaching that the priest pronounces before each person’s confession says: “Behold, child, Christ stands invisibly before you, accepting your confession. I'm just a witness.". And we must remember this, because we are not confessing to a priest and he is not our judge. I would say more: even Christ is not our Judge at this moment, but is our compassionate Savior. This is very, very important.

When we come to confession, we are in the presence of a witness. But what kind of witness is this? What is his role? There are different types of witnesses. There was an accident on the road. Some man was standing by the road and saw what happened. They ask him: “What happened?” He doesn't care at all who is right and who is wrong. He simply says what he saw with his own eyes. There is another kind of witness. At trial, one testifies against the defendant, and the other testifies in his favor. So is the priest. He stands before Christ and says:

There is a third kind of witness. During the marriage itself loved one are invited to be a witness. He is the one who in the Gospel is called the friend of the groom. One could say that in our practice he is also the bride's friend. A person close to the bride and groom can share with them in the fullest way the joy of a transformative meeting that unites a miracle. The priest occupies precisely this position. He is the groom's friend. He is a friend of Christ who leads the repentant to the groom - Christ. He is the one who is so deeply connected by love with the repentant that he is ready to share his tragedy with him and lead him to salvation. By tragedy I mean something very, very serious. I remember one ascetic who was once asked:

How does it happen that every person who comes to you and talks about his life, even without a feeling of repentance and regret, suddenly becomes overwhelmed with horror at what a sinner he is? He begins to repent, confess, cry and change.

This ascetic said a wonderful thing:

When a person comes to me with his sin, I perceive this sin as mine, because this person and I are one. And those sins that he committed by action, I certainly committed by thought, or desire, or inclination. And so I experience his confession as if it were my own. I go step by step into the depths of his darkness. When I reach the very depths, I connect his soul with mine and repent with all the strength of my soul for the sins that he confesses and which I recognize as mine. He then becomes overwhelmed by my repentance and cannot help but repent. He comes out freed, and I repent of my sins in a new way, because we are united with compassionate love.

This is the ultimate example of how a priest can approach the repentance of any person, how he can be a friend of the Bridegroom, how he can be the one who leads a penitent to salvation. For this, the priest must learn to be compassionate, learn to feel and be aware of himself united with the penitent. When pronouncing the words of the prayer of permission, he precedes them with a teaching, which also requires honesty and attention.

Sometimes it happens that during confession the priest clearly, as if from God, from the Holy Spirit, reveals what he must say to the penitent. It may seem to him that this is not relevant, but he must obey this voice of God and say these words, say what God has put on his soul, heart and mind. If he does this even at a moment when it does not seem to relate to the confession that the penitent brought, he will say what the penitent needs. Sometimes the priest does not have the feeling that his words are from God. The Apostle Paul had this too. In his messages he talks about this more than once: “I tell you this in the name of God, the name of Christ, and this I tell you on my own behalf. This is not a gag, this is what I learned from my personal experience, and I will share this experience with you, the experience of my sinfulness, my repentance and what other people who are purer and more worthy than me taught me.” And it happens that the priest cannot say this either. Then he can say what he read from the holy fathers or read in Holy Scripture. He can offer this to you, take it into account, think about it, and maybe through these words of Divine Scripture God will tell you what he could not say.

And sometimes an honest priest should say the following:

I was with you with all my heart during your confession, but I can’t tell you anything about it.

We have an example of this in the person of St. Ambrose of Optina, to whom people came twice and opened their souls, their needs, and who kept them for three days without an answer. When on the third day in both cases (these were different cases, they did not come together) they came to him for advice, he said:

What can I say? For three days I prayed to the Mother of God to enlighten me and give me an answer. She is silent. How can I speak without Her grace?

In private, personal confession, a person must come and his soul pour out. Do not look at a book and do not repeat the words of others. He must ask himself the question: if I stood in the face of Christ the Savior and in the face of all the people who know me, What would it be a matter of shame for me that I could not readily reveal in front of everyone, because it would be too scary for me to be seen the way I see myself? This is what you need to confess. Ask yourself a question: if my wife, my children, my closest friend, my colleagues knew this or that about me, would I be ashamed or not? If you are ashamed, confess. If I were ashamed to reveal this or that to God, Who already knows it, but from Whom I try to hide it, would I be afraid? It would be scary. Reveal it to God, because the moment you reveal it, everything that is put into light becomes light. Then you can confess and pronounce your own confession, and not a stereotyped, alien, empty, meaningless one.

I will briefly talk about general confession. General confession can be pronounced in different ways. It is usually pronounced like this: people gather, the priest gives some introductory sermon and then, as if in a book, he pronounces greatest number sins, which he expects to hear from those present. These sins can be formal, for example: failure to read the morning and evening prayers, failure to read the canons, failure to fast. This is all formal. This is informal in the sense that the sins listed may be real for some people - maybe even for a priest. But these are not necessarily the real sins of these people. Real sins are different.

I'll tell you how I conduct general confession. It happens here four times a year. Before general confession, I conduct two conversations, which are aimed at understanding what confession is, what sin is, what God’s truth is, what life in Christ is. Each of these conversations lasts three quarters of an hour. All those gathered first sit and listen, then there is a half-hour silence, during which everyone must think through what he heard; think over your sinfulness; look at your soul.

And then there is a general confession: we gather in the middle of the church, I put on the stole, the Gospel is in front of us, and usually I read penitential canon Lord Jesus Christ. Under the influence of this canon, I pronounce out loud my own confession, not about formalities, but about what my conscience reproaches me for and what the canon I read reveals to me. Each time confession is different, because the words of this canon convict me differently each time, in a different way. I repent before all people, calling things by their proper names, not so that they would then reproach me specifically for this or that sin, but so that every sin would be revealed to them as my own. If I do not feel, while pronouncing this confession, that I am a true repentant, then This I say it as a confession. “Forgive me, Lord. So I said these words, but they didn’t reach my soul.”.

This confession usually lasts three quarters of an hour, or half an hour, or forty minutes, depending on what I can confess to people. At the same time, people confess silently to me, and sometimes they seem to say out loud: “Yes, Lord. Forgive me, Lord. And I am to blame for this". This is my personal confession, and, unfortunately, I am so sinful and so similar to everyone under this action that my words reveal to people their own sinfulness. After this we pray; we read part of the penitential canon; we read prayers before Holy Communion: not all, but selected ones, which relate to what I spoke about and how I confessed. Then everyone kneels down, and I say a general prayer of permission, so that everyone who considers it necessary to come up and separately talk about this or that sin can do so freely. I know from experience that such a confession teaches people how to make a private confession. I know many people who told me that they do not know what to come to confession with, that they have sinned against many of Christ’s commandments, have done a lot of bad things, but cannot put it together into a repentant confession.

And after such a general confession, people come to me and say that they now know how to confess their own soul, that they learned this, relying on the prayers of the Church, on the canon of repentance, on how I myself confessed in their presence your soul and the feelings of other people who perceived this same confession as their own. Therefore, after a general prayer of permission, people who believe that they should confess something privately, separately, come up and confess. I think this is very important: general confession becomes a lesson on how to confess personally.

Sometimes people come to me and read to me long list sins that I already know, because I have the same lists. I stop them.

You are not confessing your own sins, I tell them, you are confessing sins that can be found in the Nomocanon or in prayer books. I need yours confession, or rather, Christ needs your personal repentance, and not a general stereotyped repentance. You do not feel that you are condemned by God to eternal torment because you did not read the evening prayers, or did not read the canon, or did not fast.

Sometimes it happens like this: a person tries to fast, then he breaks down and feels that he has desecrated his entire fast and nothing remains of his feat. In fact, everything is completely different; God looks at him with different eyes. I can explain this with one example from my own own life. When I was a doctor, I worked with a very poor Russian family. I didn’t take money from her because there was no money. But one day at the end of Lent, during which I fasted, so to speak, brutally, that is, without violating any statutory rules, I was invited to dinner. And it turned out that throughout Lent they collected pennies in order to buy a small chicken and treat me. I looked at this chicken and saw in it the end of my Lenten feat. Of course I ate a piece of chicken, I couldn't insult them. I went to my spiritual father and told him about the grief that had happened to me, that I had been fasting, one might say, completely, during the entire fast, but now, on Holy Week, I ate a piece of chicken. Father Afanasy looked at me and said:

You know? If God looked at you and saw that you have no sins and that a piece of chicken could defile you, He would protect you from it. But He looked at you and saw that there was so much sinfulness in you that no chicken could defile you even more.

I think that many of us can remember this example, so as not to adhere to the charter blindly, but to be, first of all, honest people. Yes, I ate a piece of this chicken, but I ate it so as not to upset people. I ate it not as some kind of filth, but as a gift human love. I remember the place in the books of Father Alexander Schmemann, where he says that everything in the world is nothing other than God’s love. And even the food that we eat is Divine love, which has become edible...

Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh
ABOUT CONFESSION

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I am often asked: how should one confess?.. And the most direct, most decisive answer to this can be this: confess as if it were your dying hour; confess as if it were last time when on earth you will be able to repent throughout your entire life before entering eternity and facing God's judgment as if it were -the last moment when you can throw off the burden of a long life of untruth and sin from your shoulders in order to enter free into the Kingdom of God. If we thought about confession this way, if we stood before it, knowing -not only imagining, but firmly knowing, -that we can die at any hour, at any moment, then we would not pose so many idle questions to ourselves; our confession would then be mercilessly sincere and truthful; she would be straight; we would not try to avoid heavy, offensive, humiliating words; we would pronounce them with all the harshness of the truth. We would not think about what to say or what not to say; we would say everything that in our minds seems untrue, sin: everything that makes me unworthy of my human title, my Christian name. There would be no feeling in our hearts that we need to protect ourselves from these or those harsh, merciless words!; we would not raise the question of whether it is necessary to say this or that, because we would know with what we can enter eternity, and with what we cannot enter eternity... This is how we should confess; and it’s simple, it’s terribly simple; but we don’t do this because we are afraid of this merciless, simple directness before God and before people.

We will now prepare for the Nativity of Christ; the pre-Christmas fast begins soon; this is a time that figuratively reminds us that Christ is coming, that He will soon be among us. Then, almost two thousand years ago, He came to earth, He lived among us, He was one of us; Savior, He came to seek us, to give us hope, to assure us of Divine love, to assure us that everything is possible if only we believe in Him and in ourselves... But now the time is coming when He will stand before us -either at the hour of our death, or at the hour of the final judgment. And then He will stand before us as the crucified Christ, with hands and feet pierced with nails, wounded in the forehead with thorns, and we will look at Him and see that He was crucified because we sinned; He died because we deserved the condemnation of death; because we were worthy of eternal condemnation from God. He came to us, became one of us, lived among us and died because of us. What will we say then? The judgment will not be that He condemns us; the judgment will be that we will see the One whom we killed with our sin and who stands before us with all His love... Behold -to avoid this horror, we need to stand at every confession as if it were our dying hour, the last moment of hope before we see it.

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I said that every confession should be as if this is the last one confession in our lives, and that this confession must be summed up, because every meeting with our Living God is a preliminary to the final, final judgment that decides our fate. Can't get upin the face of God and not leave there either justified or condemned. And so the question arises: how to prepare for confession? What sins should you bring to the Lord?

Firstly, each confession must be extremely personal, mine, not some general one, but my own, because my own fate is being decided. And therefore, no matter how imperfect my judgment of myself may be, I must begin with it; we need to start by asking ourselves the question: what am I ashamed of in my life? What do I want to hide from the face of God and what do I want to hide from the judgment of my own conscience, what am I afraid of? And this question is not always easy to resolve, because we are so often accustomed to hiding from our own fair judgment that when we look into ourselves with hope and the intention of finding the truth about ourselves, it is extremely difficult for us; but this is where we need to start. And if we had not brought anything else to confession, then it would already have been a truthful confession, mine, my own.

But besides this, there is much more. We need to look around and remember what people think about us, how they react to us, what happens when we find ourselves in their environment -and we will find a new field, a new basis for judging ourselves... We know that we do not always bring joy and peace, truth and goodness to the fate of people; It’s worth looking around at the row of our closest acquaintances, the people who meet us in one way or another, and it becomes clear what our life is like: how many I have hurt, how many I have bypassed, how many I have offended, how many I have seduced in one way or another. And so new trial stands before us, because the Lord warns us: what we did to one of these little ones, that is, to one of the people, the least of His brethren, we did to Him. And then let us remember how people judge us: often their judgment is caustic and fair; often we don't want to know what people think about us, because it -truth and condemnation are ours. But sometimes something else happens: people both hate us and love us unfairly. They hate unfairly, because sometimes it happens that we act according to God’s truth, but this truth does not fit into them. And they often love us unfairly, because they love us because we too easily fall into the untruths of life, and they love us not for virtue, but for our betrayal of God’s truth.

And here we must again pronounce judgment on ourselves and know that sometimes we have to repent of the fact that people treat us well, that people praise us; Christ again warned us: Woe to you when all people speak well of you...

And finally, we can turn to the gospel judgment and ask ourselves the question: how would the Savior judge us if He looked -as He actually does- for our lives?

Ask yourself these questions, and you will see that your confession will be serious and thoughtful, and that you will no longer have to bring to confession that emptiness, that childish, long-outdated babble that you often hear. And don't involve other people: you came to confess your sins, not the sins of others. The circumstances of sin matter only if they shade your sin and your responsibility; a story about what happened, why and how -has nothing to do with confession; this only weakens your consciousness of guilt and the spirit of repentance...

Now the days are approaching when you will probably all fast; start preparing now to bring an adult, thoughtful, responsible confession and cleanse yourself.

I have already talked about how you can test your conscience, starting with what it reproaches us for and continuing with how people treat us. And now we will take one more, final step in this test of our conscience. The final judgment on our conscience does not belong to us, does not belong to people, but to God; both His word and His judgment are clear to us in the Gospel-Only rarely do we know how to treat it thoughtfully and simply. If we read the pages of the Gospels with simplicity of heart, without trying to extract from them more than we are able to accept, much less -more than we can accomplish with our lives, if we treat them honestly and simply, we see that what is said in the Gospel falls, as it were, into three categories.

There are things the truth of which is obvious to us, but which do not concern our soul -We will agree to them. With our minds we understand that this is so, with our hearts we do not rebel against them, but with our lives we do not touch these images. They are an obvious, simple truth, but they do not become life for us. These passages in the Gospels say that our mind, our ability to understand things, stands on the border of something that we cannot yet comprehend either by will or by heart. Such places condemn us in inertia and inactivity; these places demand that we, without waiting for our cold heart to warm up, begin to do the will of God with determination, just because we-The Lord's servants.

There are other places: if we treat them conscientiously, if we look truthfully into our souls, we will see that we turn away from them, that we do not agree with God's judgment and with the Lord's will, that if we had sad courage and power rebel, then we would rebel as we rebelled in our time and as everyone rebels from century to century to whom it suddenly becomes clear that we are afraid of the Lord’s commandment about love, which requires sacrifice from us, complete renunciation of all selfishness, from all selfishness, and often we wish it didn't exist. So, around Christ, there were probably many people who wanted a miracle from Him, in order to be sure that Christ’s commandment was true and that one could follow Him without danger to one’s personality, to one’s life; There were probably those who came to Christ’s terrible crucifixion with the thought that if He did not come down from the cross, if a miracle did not happen, then that would mean... He was wrong, which means He was not a man of God and you can forget His terrible word that a person must die to himself and live only for God and for others. And we so often surround the Lord's table, go to church -however, with caution: lest the truth of the Lord wound us to death and demand from us the last that we have, renunciation of ourselves... When in relation to the commandment of love or one or another specific commandment in which God explains to us the infinite variety of thoughtful, creative love, we find this feeling within ourselves, then we can measure how far we are from the Lord's spirit, from the Lord's will, and we can pronounce a reproachful judgment on ourselves.

And finally, there are places in the Gospel about which we can speak in the words of the travelers to Emmaus, when Christ talked to them along the way: Didn’t our hearts burn within us when He spoke to us on the way?..

These places, albeit few, should be precious to us, for they say that there is something in us, where we and Christ -one spirit, one heart, one will, one thought, that in some way we have already become akin to Him, in some way we have already become His own. And we must keep these places in memory as a treasure, because we can live by them, not always fighting against the bad in us, but trying to give space for life and victory to what is already divine in us, already alive, already ready to be transformed and become part of eternal life. If we so carefully note each of these groups of events, commandments, words of Christ, then our own image will quickly appear to us, it will become clear to us what we are like, and when we come to confession, not only the judgment of our conscience will be clear to us, not only human judgment, but also God’s judgment; but not only as horror, not only as condemnation, but as a manifestation of the whole path and all the possibilities that exist within us: the opportunity to become in every moment and to be all the time those enlightened, illuminated, exulting people in spirit that we sometimes are, and the opportunity to conquer in ourselves, for the sake of Christ, for the sake of God, for the sake of people, for the sake of our own salvation, that which is alien to God in us, that which is dead, that which has no way into the Kingdom of Heaven. Amen.

I have held so many fasts among you that I no longer know what else to say that would be beneficial. I'll try to say what's on my mind right now.

Firstly, the word fasting. Basically it means “attention” and gave us the word reverence in Russian, that is, such a consciousness and such a feeling in relation to God, or to the Motherland, or to some hero of the spirit, which makes us tremble, in some way. then with inner silent admiration to stand before this event or this creature.

And fasting is the moment when we can and must gather ourselves (ourselves), collect our thoughts and concentrate them on what can evoke in us precisely this feeling of reverent reverence before something very great, very holy, for which we can worship with love and with inner awe.

We often use the expression fear of God in our prayers. And we need to understand and remember quite clearly that the fear of God should have nothing in common with fear. We cannot bring God any joy if we simply fear Him and out of fear, out of fear, strive to fulfill His will.

There is an aphorism by a French writer: “You do good and avoid evil only because you are afraid of punishment. How I would like you to stop being afraid of punishment, and continue to do good and avoid evil.”

The Lord could have said this to us: I do not want you to do good because you want a reward, or to avoid evil because you are afraid of the consequences. I would like you to do good, because it captivates you, because there is beauty in it, because in goodness there is an abundance of life and joy; and so that you avoid evil, because evil is ugliness... Evil disfigures our very soul, but, in addition, through us it disfigures everything around us: human relationships, people, nature, and the entire structure of the universe.

Abba Dorotheos speaks about the fear of God this way: there is a slavish fear, when a person is afraid of punishment and therefore, groveling, tries to do the will of God only to avoid punishment.

There is another fear: the fear of a mercenary who tries to do the will of his master, the master, in the hope that he will receive some kind of reward.

And there is a third kind of fear that should be characteristic of us, believers: this is the fear of not upsetting the beloved and loving. We all know this fear to one degree or another in relation to each other. We try not to hurt our friends, not to upset those in whose love we are confident and whom we ourselves love, even if very imperfectly.

The fear that a slave feels towards a cruel master, a master, has no place in our human relations, if they are at least somewhat healthy. And the fear of a mercenary is also a low, base kind of fear.

Would any of us really want to earn the love, affection, attention, support of another person only by adapting to his will, adapting to his hopes and desires? We would feel it and experience it as a bribe. This is betrayal of a person, this is not even an attempt to please him, to help him.

And we need to especially apply these concepts to our relationship with God. We know - we know from Sacred history, from the entire content of our faith, that we are loved by God. Therefore, we could consider our entire inner life, all manifestations of our inner life, that is, our whole life as a whole, as a swift desire to please the One who knows how to love us so much - God.

The whole purpose Christian life, in essence, could come down to proving to God that it was not in vain that He loved us with all His life, with all His death, with all His Being. If we thought this way about the Christian life, it would become a victory march. Our Christian life would be built the way the life of two people who love each other is built - I almost said: two lovers. But that's how it is.

And we know that God loves us from the Holy Scriptures, we know even from that small, poor experience that we ourselves have about God. You probably remember in the Epistle to the Corinthians the place where the Apostle Paul speaks about love: love endures everything, love hopes for everything, love believes everything, love never ceases…(see 1 Cor. chapter 13).

Let's think about how God treats us and ask ourselves the question: is it really possible to love me, as I really am, like that? Is it really possible to love me so much that, despite all my betrayals, despite my infidelity, you can hope for everything? Has God’s hope for me, his faith in me, never wavered? Has His love always remained the same?..

Sometimes in life we ​​happen to come across something that can serve as a semblance, if you like, an icon of what I’m talking about now. When I was a boy of about ten years old, I knew nothing about God and didn’t want to know, He didn’t exist for me.

But at a children's summer camp I met a priest who struck me with something that I only understood many, many years later. He loved us boys, he always loved us. He did not love us as a reward for the fact that we were good children, he did not stop loving us when we turned out to be unworthy of his trust, his love, his instructions.

He loved us with an even, warm, affectionate love - with the only difference that when we were kind children, his love shone with joy, was jubilant for us, and when we fell away from goodness, his love turned into acute pain and compassion.

His pain was not only because he expected so much from us, hoped so much - and was disappointed. That wasn't the point; but in the fact that he saw us as we should have been, and with pain, with horror, precisely with compassion, he saw that we had fallen away from that beauty, that splendor that could have been ours.

This struck me very deeply, I became very attached to this priest, but I understood only many years later, when it suddenly struck me that this is exactly God’s love towards His creation. God created the whole world, He entrusted life to this world, that is, the ability to freely develop, expand, grow, deepen and enter into ever deeper communication with Himself, and through this become a shrine.

He created a man who was given not only this seemingly organic freedom, but also an understanding of the ways of God. And He created us, knowing that sooner or later we may stumble, we may fall, we may turn out to be unfaithful to Him and to ourselves.

And yet He created us - He created us with complete faith that His act was not in vain, He created us with full hope for us, He created us, knowing that His love will never cool down, that He will never turn away from us, even if we Let us turn away or renounce him. And this faith, this hope, this unshakable love turned out to be in the history of the universe not only a feeling, but something more.

I have given you several times an excerpt from the Life of Archpriest Avvakum, where he himself quotes an ancient writer who describes the Eternal Council, that is, the meeting within the Holy Trinity before the creation of the world: “And the Father said: My Son, let us create the world and man. - And the Son answered: Yes, Father. - And the Father continued: But a person will fall away from Us, betray his calling, and in order to return him to bliss, You will have to become a man and die for him... And the Son answered: So be it, Father!..”

And the world was created; and still in the bowels, in the depths of the Holy Trinity, outside of time and space, the Son turned out to be the One Whom the Apostle Paul calls the Lamb of God, slain before the foundation of the world. He will be sacrificed, die for love, to save those who will betray their calling and turn away from God and the Father, who will cease to be children of God and will no longer be able to call God their Father, who will be able to see in Him only the incomprehensible, majestic and terrible God , Whom we meet in some parts of the Old Testament.

And so the whole meaning of our Christian life can be reduced to a very simple one: to convince God that He did not believe in us in vain, to convince God that He did not hope for everything in vain, to convince Him that His never dying love has found an answer in ours. hearts. The whole purpose of Christian life is to please God: yes, we understand all this and want to live accordingly.

I said “we want” because we do not live according to the highest, brightest aspirations of our soul. We live in impulses. There are bright moments when suddenly everything becomes clear in the soul, and there are moments of darkness.

But whether we are in the light or in the twilight, or even in what seems like pitch darkness, we can continue to believe and hope. We hope because we know: no matter what happens to us, God will never leave us, will never lose faith in us, His hope will never die.

There are times when the darkness becomes so thick that we can hardly keep our faith. There is a story from the life of St. Anthony the Great. Terrible temptations attacked him; he struggled, struggled, struggled, and finally fell to the ground and lay completely exhausted; and at that moment Christ appeared before him. And not even able to rise to worship his God and Savior, Anthony said to Him: “Lord, where were You when I was struggling, and when it was so scary?” And Christ answered him: “I stood invisibly next to you, ready to enter into battle, if only you yourself would hesitate.”

And we must remember that even in moments when it becomes so dark and so scary, when everything is impenetrable darkness, there is no light to be seen, there is no path in front of us, we must remember that the One who called Himself the Way is next to us , and that darkness itself is our path.

And when we gather for fasting, it is very important to pose the question exactly as I pose it: that the whole purpose of life is to give God at least a moment of joy that He is understood, that He is loved, that, although we do not know how to be faithful until end, but there are glimpses of fidelity; that we are straining all our strength to make Him understand that He did not live in vain, that He did not die in vain: we understand this and in response to His love we do everything in our power so that His love is justified, His hope is justified, His faith in us was justified.

If you think about our spiritual life this way, then it becomes something positive, not an attempt, as it were, to “justify” before God, not an attempt to “curry favor” with Him, not an attempt to “avoid eternal torment.” Torment is nothing compared to the fact that, suddenly standing before God, we would understand: the only thing we could bring to God was love - and we didn’t do it...

At this moment, it suddenly turns out that all the efforts to avoid torment, to “curry favor” with God, mean nothing if the heart is not invested. And the heart means strong love for Him and, most importantly, faith in His love.

And now ask yourself a question: how do you build your inner spiritual life? Is it a sincere desire - yes, I will say as if it is absurd - to console God that He had to give His Only Begotten Son to die because we turned out to be unfaithful, to console God also that we do not believe in His love and we build our lives as if we were slaves or mercenaries, and not sons and daughters.

If we ask the question whether this is accessible to us, whether it is possible, Saint Seraphim of Sarov clearly answers that there is only one difference between a perishing sinner and a saved saint: determination. The determination to fight is for the light; fight not against darkness, but for light.

Figuratively speaking, one can fight against darkness only by opening up to the light. If any closet or room is dark, the only way to drive out the darkness is to open the shutters, part the curtains, and let light pour through the window where darkness had previously reigned. The determination is to open the curtain, open the shutters, remove that which prevents God from entering.

In the book of Revelation there are words: I stand at the door and knock... God constantly knocks on our heart, on our consciousness, on our will, even on our fleshly being, knocking: do I have a place in your mind, in your heart, in your body, in your will, in all the powers of your soul and body? Open, let Me enter, and you will see that with My entrance light will spill, strength and life will enter, and what previously seemed completely impossible will become possible...

And again, let us ask ourselves the question: do we have the determination to give God joy, just as when, communicating with each other, especially with a loved one, we think about how to please him, how to console him, how I would like to help him. This is the entire content of our life.

Of course, at the same time we have to struggle with our imperfection, with our immaturity, half-blindness. But in order to win, we must strive towards what is God, what gives life, and not against what takes life. By this I want to say that we must constantly look in ourselves for that which already unites us with Christ. I've talked about this many, many times, but – my God! – this is the most important thing we can do!

How often do they tell me: “Here, I read the Gospel, and every line convicts me. I constantly find condemnation in it, and the more I read, the less hope, the less joy.”

What a savage reading of the Gospel this is! The Gospel is a book in which God’s love for us is revealed, a book in which God warns us what must go astray so that this path becomes smooth and straight, so that we can follow it to reach God, and God can reach us; so that at some point it would no longer be our path, but God Himself would unite with us in such a way that He would be our path...

I will repeat what I have said many times. While reading the Gospel, note those passages that strike you in the heart, that will make your heart tremble, that will suddenly shed some light into the mind, that will suddenly tighten (strengthen - editor's note), gather our will, gather our strength and bodily, and sincere. This is the moment when, it turns out, we have already matured to understand what Christ says, does, or what is happening around Him.

All this has already matured in us, we are one of the people in the crowd that surrounds Him; but not just a person in the crowd who does not understand what Christ says, but a person who can pose a question and receive an answer, or a person who listens to His speech and receives an answer to a question already matured in him, although he himself is the question I haven't even installed it yet.

And so, read the Gospel this way. Ask yourself the question: what do Christ and I have in common? If I can shudder with my whole being from what I read, from what I heard in the Gospel, this means that in this, perhaps very small something, Christ and I are already at one, we already have only one soul , one thought.

Oh, that doesn't mean that once I understand something I can live by it day after day and remain faithful. But I must know that this is already, as it were, a particle of the image of God in me, which is not desecrated, which is cleansed, and I need to protect this particle as a shrine, because in this Christ and I are similar to each other, we are in tune, we are unanimous , we are like-minded, we have a common will.

Ask yourself a question: here I am reading the Gospel, reading the Epistles. What places hit me in the heart? What places make sense to me? And when you find these places - let there be one, or two or three - again ask yourself the question: did I remain faithful to what suddenly revealed itself in me as truth, as life, as joy, as light?.. If not , then you need to repent of this. It is not necessary to repent of the countless other things that can be found in the Holy Scriptures, which convict us of imperfection, but to repent of the fact that I betrayed myself and Christ where we were already united.

Think about this and set yourself a goal in the future to build your life in such a way that you never violate what has already been revealed in you as Christ’s, to build your life so that it will be consolation and joy to God.

And not only to God, but also Mother of God. She gave us Her Son. She never, not once in the Gospel, tries to distract Him from the way of the cross that He followed. When He was still lying in the manger of Bethlehem, the wise wise men brought their gifts: incense - as to God, gold - as to the king, but even then the Baby in the manger was also brought myrrh - as a sign of mortality. He was just born - and already the sign of death was on Him.

In this Child we can see what God's love is all about. She was given to us, given to us defenselessly, without rights; it depends on how we respond to it. Let us again pose a question that we could pose in relation to a person. Man loves us with all his being; How do we respond to this love? You can pose this question in relation to people who love you, and to people whom you love either fits and starts, or with constant, faithful, deep love. And compare what your love is, your faithfulness towards your loved ones and towards those who love, and towards God.

Test your soul, your heart, your thoughts, as I tried to present it to you and as I try to do it. And then the path to salvation - yes, it will be a struggle, it will be a constant battle, but it will be a path of joy, an ascent to light, to life, to rejoicing. This is how it is worth living, this is how it is worth seeking God.

And by seeking God in this way, we find ourselves, because only insofar as we become like Christ, dear to Him, our true essence is revealed in us, which is expressed so amazingly by Saint Irenaeus of Lyons: he says that when the fullness of time is completed, then We all, in unity with Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, will no longer become adopted children in relation to God and the Father, but all together – His only begotten son.

Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh

a) carnal – a person entirely
indulges in pleasures and pleasures. State of delusion: passions, as it were
high walls separate man from God. People are brutalized and tied
mind to the visible, the struggle to achieve earthly goods;

b) spiritual - people do not have obvious sins
do, but do not labor in virtues and in fulfilling God’s commandments (spiritually
relaxed). There is no real love for God, neighbors, no humility, no compassion;

c) spiritual state - memory of
God, cleansing yourself from sin, keeping the commandments. Fasting, Prayer, Denial
bodily and spiritual sins. Love for God and neighbors.

Reverend Nikon
Optinsky

most damaged and constrained
sin is our will, as the ability to act and carry out intentions
person.

In particular, the person turns out to be
powerless in his will where it is necessary to realize true Christian good -
even if he wanted this good... About the powerlessness of will Ap. Paul says:

(Rom. VII, 19. “the good that I want,
I don’t do it, but I do the evil that I don’t want”...).

And that is why about the sinner man
Christ the Savior said: “He who commits sin is the slave of sin” (John VIII,
34),

although the sinner himself is serving sin
often seems like freedom, and the struggle against the networks of sin seems like slavery...

How does sin develop in the soul?
person?

differentiate next stages- degrees
sin:

first moment in sin- adverb when in
in the consciousness of a person, one or another temptation has just become apparent - sinful
impression, dirty thought etc.

If at this first moment a person
decisively and will immediately reject sin - he
will not sin, but will overcome sin, and for your soul it will be a plus, not a minus.

In the pretext it is easiest to overcome sin.

But then the man fell into
sin. Reproaches of conscience sound loud and clear, causing the unspoiled to
a person has only a sharp disgust for this sin. The old one disappears
self-confidence and the person humbles himself (cf. Apostle Peter before and after renunciation).

It is more difficult to fight sin then,
when, through frequent repetition, it becomes a habit in a person. After
acquisition of any habit in general, habitual actions are performed by a person
very easily, almost imperceptibly for him - by themselves.

And, therefore, the fight against sin,
which has become habitual for a person, is very difficult, because it is no longer difficult for him not to
only to overcome oneself, but also to keep track and notice the approach of sin.

An even more dangerous stage of sin
is a vice. In this case, sin controls a person so much that
binds his will as if with chains. Man here is almost powerless to fight
himself, and is a slave of sin, although he is aware of its harmfulness even in moments
enlightenment, perhaps, hates him with all his soul (such, for example, is the vice
drunkenness, drug addiction and the like).

It must be remembered that even
any minor sin, eg. chatter, love of clothes, empty entertainment, etc.
etc., can become a vice in a person if he completely masters it and fills
with his soul.

The highest degree of sin at which he
already completely enslaves a person to itself, is passion one or another sinful type.

In this state a person can no longer hate his sin, as in
vice(this is the difference between them), but obeys
sin in all my experiences, actions and moods (cf. Plyushkina
from " Dead Souls"or Feodor Karamazov from "The Brothers
Karamazov", also - the money-lover Judas Iscariot).

Three sources of sinMetropolitan Filaret (Voznesensky)

What you need to know about confession

Previously confessed sins in confession,
if they did not happen again, there is no need to confess.

Do not hide sins out of shame.

Make a decision not to sin again.

Naming a sin, each one especially.

When confessing your sins, do not touch
accomplices in sin (except in those cases when it is impossible to confess sin, not
clearly indicating the persons with whom he sinned).

Blame yourself for sins, do not apologize,
do not dodge, do not justify yourself and do not blame yourself on something or
on someone.

You should try to tell about
their sins.

Try to atone for sin with kindness
deeds, especially those opposite to sins.

Have a sincere heart
contrition, sadness and tears about the sins committed.

There is an instruction from St. Fathers and
Bishop Ignatius (Brianchaninov) that sinful habits and passions cannot be
healing without confession.

Any healing will be incomplete and
insufficient without confession, and with the help of confession they are conveniently eradicated.

I always tried slowly and
Confess all of you thoroughly, asking in detail about your sins, so that
there was nothing left on the conscience.

And if someone through foolishness does not all
confessed openly and sincerely, then let him confess, so that his conscience does not
remained defiled.

So try not to do anything
hide, try to confess purely.

______

Left by neglect
prescribed prayers.

Before starting a business, you need to ask God for blessings and
help, and at the end of the case you need
thank Him for help or success in business.

Prayer is the breath of our soul. How
body without air, so soul goes
prayers can't live life
pious.

The 6th commandment “thou shalt not kill” imposes
responsibilities

treat everyone politely
friendly,

make peace with those who are angry,

endure grievances patiently and forgive everyone, even enemies.

We repent, forgive us, Lord.

10 commandment: do not covet your neighbor's wife
yours...

Removes from the soul the root of sins - PRIDE - desire
of our spirit from the INFINITE to the finite, REMOVEMENT from GOD into ourselves.

PRIDE is opposed to pure love With
selflessness.

Carnal lust is opposed to abstinence, chastity, modesty in words
and actions, purity of heart.

Selfishness is opposed to UNSELFlessness, non-covetousness, generosity,
alms.

PRIDE is the opposite of HUMILITY -
THE BASIS of all virtues.

SELF-DENIAL from him, hence
different virtues occur.

Priest Ilya Shugaev. We are raising a son, raising a daughter. Children's confession

Children usually go to confession from the age of seven.

For a child from seven to twelve to thirteen years old (before
adolescence) you can use the following list of sins.

Sins towards elders . Didn't listen to parents or teachers.
He argued with them. He was rude to his elders. Took something without permission. Walked without
permissions. He deceived his elders. He was capricious. Behaved badly in class. Not
thanked my parents.

Sins towards the younger ones . He offended the younger ones. He was rude to them. mocked
over animals. Didn't care about pets. Sins towards God . I forgot to pray in the morning and evening, until
and after eating. He rarely confessed and received communion. Didn't thank God for His
good deeds.

The listed sins are quite enough to give a child
the right direction of thought, the rest will be prompted by the child’s conscience.

After the child enters adolescence, the list
Possible sins can be added several times:

Swearing obscenities. I tried smoking. I tried alcoholic drinks.
I looked at obscene pictures. There was free treatment of the opposite sex.

We can also limit ourselves to this list, again hoping that
the direction of thought is given, and conscience will not allow you to forget more serious sins.