Archdeacon John Chryssavgis: When healing can begin

 When I can confess my peculiarity, my brokenness to someone who does not shame me, who will stand as a representative of the community and as a witness before God, then my healing can begin. When I take off the mask and - together with at least one other person - clearly at my vulnerability, then my recovery an restoration has begun. This, of course, is not easy; it is much easier to continue to hide. Repentance is a risk. It can be a painful process, much like bearing a child. In this process the will is not mortified. Rather, it is "buried alive" in a tomb that becomes the womb for new life.

Archdeacon John Chryssavgis, from Soul Mending, Chapter 1, Repentance as Resurrection

Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom): Our state before God.

 In the prayer which we recite, or not, after meals, We say to God that we thank him for all his earthly gifts, and ask him to grant us also the gifts of the Kingdom. Doesn’t it mean that, at that moment, we realize that everything we have, our very being, our life, is of God, and yet that we treat it as part of a created material world, a world that, in our mind, in our imagination, in our illusion, we see as something God has made and then left adrift? And then we ask God: ‘Make it into thy Kingdom, all that is my life, all that is the world around me, make it, O Lord, into thy Kingdom.’

Is that not what we should do all the time, transform everything of this created and fallen world into God’s realm? But it isn’t what we do. We take what God makes, what God gives, and we take it away like the Prodigal Son, until one day we feel hungry. Why? Because these gifts, which we received, were stolen as it were from God when we snatched them from him by saying to him: ‘Die now, because I can’t Wait until you are dead to enjoy the fruits of your Work, of your sacrifice, of your love. Die now.’

We go away and we spend them. But what happens? As long as we are rich with what God gave us, we are surrounded with people who want to take from us what we possess, exactly on the same terms as we have behaved to God. As long as we are in possession of things, others are around us like parasites. The moment when We have nothing else to give, when we have spent What God has given us and are spent ourselves, deprived of everything, we are of no interest to people and they turn away from us. Is this the moment for which we must wait in order to realize what we have done? Alas, very often it is the

moment. It is a moment when we realize that we have condemned God to death, that he has actually died on the cross for us, and that we have accepted his sacrifice in order to be redeemed.

We are not, though, redeemed mechanically by the death of Christ. We are only redeemed if we integrate ourselves into his death and eternal life. We have rejected and lost what God gave us, perhaps not completely, because otherwise we could not even think of God and repent, but we have rejected so much, and, now, what can we do? We can remember that there was a time when we lived in the Father’s house, when there was love, when there was not this desperate loneliness of rejection. And we can start on our way back.

But we do not only sin against God in this direct way of renouncing him and taking his gifts. We sin against him also by discarding and despising his gifts, as when, from time to time, people say, ‘I wish I could die, because life is too heavy.' We also sin against God through the way in which we behave towards people and treat them. God has loved every one of us into existence, into life, and he has died so that every one of us can recapture the life We have discarded and lost. Every one is loved, and the measure of divine love is the death of Christ upon the cross, his descent into hell, to join for ever those who have been rejected. This is God’s measure of love of our neighbor. How do we treat our neighbor? Do we treat him as someone whom God has put in our charge? Do we treat him as someone for whom we care, who matters to us, who has been put in our path for us to do for him all, all we can

- or do we, on the contrary, treat him with cruelty, coldness and indifference?

Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom), from Coming Closer to Christ, Chapter 2, Confession as Encounter with God.

Fr. Alexander Elchaninov: A false spirituality

 There is a type of spirituality closely enmeshed with the emotions - aesthetic, sentimental, passionate - which can easily coexist with selfishness, vanity, and sensuality. Men of this type seek the praise and good opinion of their spiritual father; it is a very hard task for him to hear and accept their confession, for they come in order to complain of others, to whimper; they are full of themselves and readily accuse their neighbor. The poor quality of their religious devotion is best demonstrated by the ease with which they pass into a state of anger and irritation. They are further from the possibility of genuine contrition than the most inveterate sinners.

+Fr. Alexander Elchaninov, from The Diary of a Russian Priest, Fragments of a Diary

St. Nektarios of Aegina: On the value of Confession

Reverence toward the spiritual father is a fortress against sin because it restrains the sinful urges and severs the improper desires. The recollection that one is going to appear before his spiritual father and announce to him his improper deeds, while presenting himself as passionate, inclined toward sin, and unfaithful in his promises to God and his spiritual father, this recollection reminds one of the future shame and humbles the passions and urges.

The person who confesses develops spiritually because i) through instruction, his teacher’s knowledge is transferred little by little to him, as to a student; and ii) his mind becomes illumined as it is continually cleansed from the darkness of sin and deception. Thus he understands God’s Wonders and he grows [spiritually].

Confession is the life-saving medicine for society because it is capable of saving many souls from destruction - souls that are lost through deception, improper recollections, and evil thoughts. The spiritual father is the person desired by the soul, to whom the sinner desires to pour out his heart in order to expose his soul’s wounds, in order to ask for treatment, in order to be relieved. The spiritual father is the mediator who unites the souls and tightens the bonds of family, friendship, and love. The spiritual father alone is able to unite the souls of parents and children, couples, brothers, and relatives. The spiritual father is the internal teacher of society, the guard of a family’s morals, the consolation of the suffering, and the harbor for those who waver in life’s ocean. Confession from a moral standpoint is the greatest benefaction of the Church to society. The spiritual father is the moral physician of society. He alone is capable of intercepting all the bad things that afflict society today. He will teach those deluded; he Will raise up those who have fallen; he will support those who quiver; he Will enlighten those who are darkened; he will lead the weak; he will help the poor; he will subdue the urges; he will subdue the passions; he will reconcile those separated; he will make peace between enemies; he will tighten bonds among men, and he will grant peace to families. This is what confession is from a moral standpoint, which we unfortunately have not realized and have abandoned. This is why many bad things exist, which afflict society. Christians! Keep the commandments of the Church, because Within this keeping exists eternal life. Seek physicians for your souls and for your peace.

+St. Nektarios of Aegina, from Repentance and Confession, chapter 5 Confession is both morally and spiritually beneficial

Fr. John Chryssavgis: Repentance as a Pascha

 Repentance is not a self-contained act: it is a passing over, a Pascha from death to life, a continual renewal of that life. It consists of a reversal of what has become the normal pattern of development, which is the movement from life to death. To experience this reversal in repentance is to have tasted of the glory and beauty of God; it is the mark of man's presence before God in the abundance of His mercy and of God's presence before man in the abyss of his weakness: "Set Your compassion over against our iniquities, and the abyss of Your lovingkindness against our transgression."¹ It is the awareness of God's beauty that makes one realize the chasm that separates one from His gratuitous grace. The initiative belongs to God, but presupposes man's active acceptance, which is a way of perpetually receiving God within the heart, of God being embodied within man, of divine incarnation. Here God call man, and man responds to God and in doing so gains salvation and life abundant: "sorrow working repentance to salvation not to be repented of"(2 Cor 7:10). In repentance it is man's total limitation and insufficiency that is placed before God, not simply particular wrongdoings or transgressions.
+Fr. John Chryssavgis, from Repentance and Confession in the Orthodox Church, Introduction
¹from Vespers of Pentecost, first kneeling prayer

Archdeacon John Chryssavgis: The nature of repentance

Repentance is a way of on-going transfiguration for which one must struggle continually, in which one's heart and mind continuously receive illumination by the Holy Spirit. It is a continuous pathway, a perennial striving, and all-embracing motion, and not merely an occasional emotion. Though it is a mutual, cooperative endeavor between the human being and God, ultimately repentance, like faith, is a gift, a gift that a person either accepts or rejects. If a person is open to God and desires Him above all else, the Holy Trinity will come to dwell in that person and gradually transform the "heart of stone" into a "heart of flesh".
+Archdeacon John Chryssavgis, from Soul Mending: The Art of Spiritual Direction, Chapter II: Repentance and Confession, The forgotten Mystery.

Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky): Self-justification

The priest must warn [his flock] particularly persistently against the spirit of self-justification,  which is one of the principal enemies of our salvation. Some people accepted the preaching of our Savior and His Apostles, and others rejected it. Within both groups there were great sinners and people of righteous life. What were the spiritual qualities which caused them to accept of reject the Gospel of salvation? It was almost always this: whoever had the spirit of self-justification and considered himself a decent enough person rejected the preaching of repentance, the preaching of the Gospel; and whoever considered himself a guilty sinner before God and men accepted it and was saved, like Zacchaeus, like the Wise Robber on the cross.
It is the same with Christians who have come to believe. They difference between those who are being saved and those who are perishing, or are far from salvation, lies not so much in the number of their sins, but in the inclination, or lack of it, to admit that they are guilty and sinful.
+Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky), from Confession, A Series of Lectures on the Mystery of Repentance, chapter 7, Fear of Admitting a Sin