Archimandrite Nektarios Antonopoulos
There are many mistaken views about confession and repentance. For example, many think confession is something like a conversation in which our sins are to be discussed. But what then would it have in common with repentance? If we try to analyse for what purpose we go to confession, it will turn out that some seek it to ease their feeling of guilt, others are driven by fear of God's “punishment,” and some go to confession not for the sake of repentance itself but only in order to receive Communion afterwards. All this is very far from repentance and confession, or has nothing to do with them at all.
Confession, in other words, is the cleansing of the soul from poison. If poison gets into a person's body, the only hope of survival is to be rid of it at once. So too with confession: we must drive the poison of sin out of ourselves, or we shall be doomed to perish. Another example can be given: as a sick man shows his wounds to the doctor, describes his pains and hides nothing, so we must act at confession. We must lay our soul bare and make its wounds visible. If we do not, we shall go away from confession without receiving healing. The spiritual sores will grow, decay and rot will spread, and the sickness will shake our soul to its foundations and bring us to death. (This means the spiritual death of the sinner, which on the way of salvation may be irreversible.)
From this it is plain that it is not the Lord who needs our confession, but we ourselves who need it. We should not think that by confessing we are doing God some service. In reality it is not so. The Lord, as a caring Father, waits for our return with patience and boundless love. In this connection it should be noted that, whereas in the Western Christian confessions, which have a formal and canonical character, the confessor and the penitent are separated from each other by some screen, in the Orthodox Church confession takes place in direct personal contact with the spiritual father. It must be said that many people confess as circumstances dictate, that is, they confess to the first priest they come across, and so they always have to acknowledge their sins to different priests. Such a confession is not complete — just as, if we changed our doctor every time, the treatment of the body could not be complete. Our spiritual father is the only one who knows the “case history,” our former sins, the particular course of the “illness” — he alone can give effective help.
Some have adopted the so-called “two doors”: that is, they have one regular spiritual father, but when they commit some grave sin, out of shame they avoid confessing to their own spiritual father and go to another. This is childish behaviour and a mockery of the mystery, which shows how far we are from true repentance. It is necessary to have one spiritual father, for in this way the road to the Kingdom will be much safer. There are, of course, situations when we are forced to change our spiritual father. But this matter must be approached very carefully, after scrutinizing the inner reasons.
Many people come to confession completely unprepared and prefer the spiritual father himself to ask them about their sins, as though the Church were an investigating body and the priest a man who has to guess at our sins. There is also the other extreme — when people go to confession to announce that they have no sins at all, or to tell the spiritual father how good they are and how many good deeds they have done. This shows that in such a case no self-examination is taking place, and we are very far from the process of self-knowledge that is a necessity for every Christian. Some fear has nested in the soul: we are afraid to see our true “self”; we try to hide not only from God and people but from ourselves as well. It seems to us that if we admit our sins, God will surely punish us and those around us will turn their backs on us. So we pass ourselves off as virtuous Christians, while in reality we are quite different. What could be worse than such self-justification? If we read the Gospel attentively we shall see that Jesus judged not the sinner but the sin itself. With all the sinners who came to Him He spoke kindly and with compassion, even though they often showed no repentance at all (for example, Zacchaeus, the Samaritan woman, the harlot and so on). He judged only one kind of sinner, and quite severely too — the Pharisees, who wore the mask of the righteous. The Lord judged the sin that is so widespread among “good” people and “good” children.
God knows human weakness, our imperfection. The only thing required of us is to recognize our sinful state, so as to strive constantly along the path of repentance. Many Christians show a kind of neurotic striving that might be called a “passion for perfection.” In reality it has nothing to do with the true striving for perfection, which is undoubtedly a good desire. The “passion for perfection” does not in fact lead to perfection at all; it simply does not allow a person to accept his own imperfection. In other words, we must, of course, strive for perfection; but if we torment ourselves and lose our peace because it turns out that we are not yet perfect, then the dreadful sickness of pride has come over us, which especially torments so-called “virtuous people.”
So we must know ourselves, and not be afraid to examine our state. Let us take firmly to heart that we shall be punished not for what we have sinned, but for what we have not repented of. The more “good” we think ourselves, the further we move from the Lord. To go to confession and tell the spiritual father that we “have done nothing wrong” is the same as declaring “we are sinless.” And that is blasphemy. If we look into our own heart without partiality, we shall see that a multitude of passions and sins have nested there. Fear of acknowledging human sinfulness is utterly foreign to the love of mankind of our Church. In the Church, the family of God the Father, those people are united who, instead of judging sinners, acknowledge themselves more sinful than others.
If we look at the lives of the saints, we shall see that they ask the Lord to receive them not as saints but as sinners: “Receive me as a sinner, as the publican and as the harlot.” They do not justify themselves as we do, nor list their virtues and merits; the only thing they show the Lord is their own wounds, and they ask for God's mercy. St Andrew of Crete addresses the Lord thus: there is in this world no sin, no deed, no evil, that I have not committed in mind, deed or word.
The confession of the saints is often shattering. St Symeon the New Theologian confesses: Hear, all of you: I have become a murderer... Woe is me, I have become an adulterer in my heart, and have committed the sin of Sodom in my intention and desires. I have become an oath-breaker, an apostate and a lover of gain. A thief, a liar, shameless, a robber — woe is me! I have become one who wounds others, a hater of my brethren, and very envious. A lover of money and insolent, I have committed every evil at once. Believe me, I am telling the truth. This is neither the fruit of my fantasy nor an invention.
St Kosmas of Aetolia confesses: May the Lord forgive you your sins, if you have as many as I have; and if you have not, may He keep you from falling into these sins. I lived in a kind of lie, brothers, when I was still young; I used to say: “I will sin wherever I can and wherever there is the chance, and when I grow old I shall have time to do good and be saved.” Now I have grown old, and my sins have put down roots; I cannot do any good at all. When I began my studies, this thought came into my head: “Here where I am, I will try to make money,” for I was a lover of money and loved money and gold coins.”
Whatever liturgical text you read, you will find everywhere that they are written for publicans, adulterers and thieves. Not one of them was written for virtuous and holy people. On the other hand, real sinfulness is not only outward conduct but also the inner disposition and the inclination to sin. Of course, the outward manifestation of a person's state often does not coincide with his inner disposition. One person, for example, may have cancer and at a certain stage not feel it, while another suffers unbearable torment from toothache. So when the conscience stops tormenting us, we must examine thoroughly: perhaps the reason is not our holiness at all, but that our conscience, because of many sins, has grown tired, blunted and hardened.
Often we go to confession without knowing what to say. Here, for instance, is the most common case: “Father, perhaps it would be better if you asked me questions?” — “But confession is not an interrogation. Have you really nothing to say?”
— “What should I say? I haven't stolen, I haven't killed...” (Here the ten commandments are reduced to two!)
— “Sometimes not only an action but inaction too is a sin. Do you help your neighbour?”
— “I do what I can, Father...” — and there begins a list of our own “virtues,” to show how “good” we are and how much God is “obliged” to us. But the most dreadful thing is that we believe that a “warm” place in paradise is already assured us. That is, there is nothing to worry about: we are well set up here and in the life to come. But if we are honest with ourselves, we shall see the abyss of our sins. We shall realize that there is no sin we have not committed, at least in some degree. Does the fact that we were not caught in the act mean that we are not guilty before God? Does the fact that we are clever and can hide our uncleanness allow us to declare that we are on the right path? For Jesus Christ a person's conduct is not so important as his heart. For it is precisely there that a person commits sin! For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness (Matt. 15:19).
