Archpriest Dimitry Smirnov
It is usually thought that the time for repentance, when a Christian ought to think about his sins, is a fast. But reflecting on this subject, and being aware of the problem in general, is always necessary for everyone — all the more so since the very notion of sin has practically been erased from the consciousness of twentieth-century man. This ignorance badly confuses people and often sets them on the wrong road, for seventy years of Bolshevik slavery brought not only the destruction of churches and the physical annihilation of the clergy, but also the forgetting of many notions that were perfectly clear to people a century ago. We must return to this question more than once, if only because there is little modern literature about it, while the difficult language of old books is incomprehensible to many, which prevents a deep grasp of the problem.
By sin people as a rule mean a bad deed. In reality, a bad deed is only a consequence of sin. That is, first a person falls into sin, and sin gives birth to a bad deed. In the modern mind, sin and its consequence are mixed up, which makes it hard to think the problem through deeply. Because of this, many people today have a kind of psychological problem, echoed in this approach: if a person is good, works conscientiously, is a good family man, not stingy, tries to see that his family lacks nothing, but does not go to church and does not pray because that is how he was brought up — will the Lord really not accept such a good, upright, generous and harmless person? If God will not accept such people, what then can be said of others, who do all sorts of foolish things?
When a person puts the question like this, it is clear that he understands nothing about sin. So let us explain what sin is: sin is any resistance of man to the will of God. And what is God's will with regard to man? Man and God are two persons, and God wants all people to be saved. Holy Scripture says that the Lord “will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.” And the truth is God Himself. So God wants every person to come to Him. If a person does not come to God, he sins, because salvation — in other words, eternal life, the Kingdom of Heaven — will be received only by those who want it.
Take a chair. Far from doing anyone any harm, it is even very useful: when I'm tired I can sit down and rest, and when I'm tired of sitting I can get up and lean on it. And although this chair may be beautiful, new and useful, it will still not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. Why? Because it is dead. So too with a good person who does no one any harm: he works or draws his pension, cooks, eats, sleeps, goes to the doctor — but he too is dead if he has no bond with God. A person's separation from God in any form means that this person is dead to God.
What does such death consist in? Let me explain. If a plant grows in a field, first it puts out leaves, then buds, a flower, and finally it bears fruit. But if we cut the plant and put it in a vase, the leaves and buds will live for a while, but the plant will never bear fruit and in the end it will wither. So it is with many of the billions of people: they live, eat, play volleyball, amuse themselves with, I don't know, a thousand other things, and do not know that in reality they are already dead, because they are cut off from the source of life. And the source of life is God.
Many people think that real life is the biological existence that every person has as a living creature. But this life is temporary. From the age of three any child knows that he will die. Yet the soul that is in each of us can in no way come to terms with death. It is a very interesting phenomenon: from childhood a person knows that people die, yet when someone close to him dies, he takes it as a sorrow. The question is, why? It is a perfectly ordinary event, after all. We do not count it a sorrow when it rains, or when a frost suddenly strikes in March. Why then do we feel the death of a father, mother or brother as a sorrow? That too is an ordinary event: sooner or later a person has to die, doesn't he? But no one will ever be reconciled to death. Why? For a simple reason: in human perception death contradicts the truth; it is a violation of the order of life, an anomaly.
Any person — whether he thinks about God or not, whether he goes to church or not — knows and feels inwardly that he is an eternal being. That is why even in deep old age people do not consider themselves old: the soul does not age. With the years a person no longer has the physical strength to do what he used to, but inwardly he remains the same as he was. So, whatever his age, were it not for his infirmity he would go on working and doing things as before. But infirmity and illness do not allow it. Nobody wants to die, old or young, except someone gravely ill, mentally ill, or in dire trouble. And that is not because they do not love life, but because life has become unbearable.
So why is death terrible and unacceptable to us? Because the Lord, who created everything — heaven, earth, animals and plants — also created man, but created him in a special way. In the visible world man is the highest creation. He has the ability to think, to speak, and above all to know God, and in this he stands above every creature. God conceived man as a being standing on the boundary between the earthly, material world and the spiritual, divine world.
But man became estranged from God, and this estrangement — which, according to Christian teaching, is what sin is — made him lose the sense of God. Man broke off his bond with God and began to live for himself. And this had catastrophic consequences. Wherever man is, terrible things happen. No animal can step outside the bounds of instinct. A cow, for example, will never eat what is not food for it. But man? Man has a priceless and wonderful gift — the gift of freedom. Here lies some object. A man walks past, glances around, picks it up and puts it in his pocket. Another says: “It's not mine. I didn't put it there — why should I take it?!” and goes on his way. A person can steal and can not steal. It depends on his inner outlook, on what matters more to him: keeping a clear conscience or getting hold of the thing. A person always has a choice. And since people more often choose evil, their life is hard and nightmarish. What does this depend on? It depends on the fact that, having become estranged from God, man no longer listens to God's voice. The hearing of God's voice, and God's voice itself in us, is “conscience.”
Most people have heard that there are commandments of God: honour thy father and thy mother, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness, thou shalt not swear, thou shalt not covet. Let us ask: how far must man have fallen for it to become necessary to give him such a commandment as “thou shalt not kill”? Is it not obvious anyway? Animals understand it; as the saying goes, “dog does not eat dog.” But man needed a commandment. Why? Because, having gone away from God, he completely lost his bearings as to what he may do and what he may not.
When a person is with God, God's voice always sounds in him, and he knows inwardly what he may do and what he may not, what is good and what is bad. Such a person, it would seem, has no need of God's commandments. Why then are the commandments needed? They are needed when a person begins to waver. Here goes a man, thinking: shall I take it or not? On the one hand, he's afraid to take it — what if he's caught; on the other, he wants it very much, because it's free. He won't have to work two weeks for it; he'll take it and have it for nothing. What a splendid saving! That is why the commandment orders categorically: thou shalt not steal. Thanks to the commandment, a person knows that this must on no account be done.
A fall into sin is always preceded by wavering. A person hesitates, is tormented, thinks it over, and then, if he does sin after all, runs away from God. That is what happened to Adam and Eve. After their fall they decided to hide from God, as if that were possible. And when the Lord began to question them, they put all the blame on Him Himself: Eve said, the serpent beguiled me; Adam, the woman whom Thou gavest me beguiled me. That is, a person always tries to blame someone else for his misfortune, even someone completely innocent.
What followed the fall in the garden of Eden? The expulsion of Adam from paradise. More precisely, Adam was not expelled; he left of himself, for sin — every departure from God's commandments — takes a person away from God. But what do we do when a son or grandson sins against us? It is very bitter for us, we are upset, it hurts; but he has only to show the slightest repentance, even to mutter under his breath, “Sorry, I won't do it again,” and we are ready to forgive, because we love him and grieve that a crack has appeared in our relationship. We try in every way to restore the relationship, and hope that the child will mend his ways. God treats us in the same way.
The Lord loves man. He wants, and tries in every way, to restore the relationship between man and God. This effort began in paradise itself, straight after man's fall. God called to Adam: where art thou? — and Adam hid in the bushes.
When the wall raised between God and man is broken down, they are united, and a person can no longer do anything against God; he is afraid even to think of something bad. And how could you give up what is dearest of all, what is of the highest value, more important even than life!
In this case everything is clear. Here lies a thing I very much want to take, because I don't have one like it. But I realise that as soon as I touch it, I will at once break my bond with God, because I will sin — I will do what God hates — I will steal. And I will never do it, because communion with God is far more important than any thing, even something vitally necessary. For I know that what I have I could never buy with any amount of money.
Many people do not understand why Christ came as a man, why He suffered and was tortured. What was the need of it? And in general, could man not have been saved some other way?
Imagine that a forty-metre archangel with fiery wings and a fiery sword appeared over a city and called out to the people in a loud voice: “Come on, you former Young Pioneers, Komsomol members, Communists, come out of your houses! If you don't come out, you'll be burned alive.” Wouldn't everyone come pouring out into the street? “Now then, everybody on your knees!” And everyone would kneel. “Now everybody shout together: ‘I repent of the sins I have committed!’” And the whole city would thunder: “I repent!” It would not be at all difficult for God to stage such a scene. But would it be repentance? In reality there would be no repentance for sins at all; it would be elementary coercion. But God, like any father, expects love and obedience from His children. With a birch you can make any child say “sorry,” or even “I love you,” but it will not be love. Love is voluntary. That is why God, having come into the world, forced no one: those who wanted to became His disciples, listened to Him and set about mending their lives.
Why, then, was the Incarnation of Christ necessary?
Imagine you are walking in a forest and see a dead tree leaning so far over that one windy day and it will fall. And at the foot of the tree ants have built an anthill, which will be destroyed if the tree falls. You feel very sorry for the ants and decide to help them. How can you do it? If you start persuading them to leave their home because danger threatens them, they will think: who is this little fellow who has dropped out of the sky? If you try to drive them out by force, they will come straight back. The only way is to become an ant yourself, stand among them and explain to them in their own language what danger awaits them. Whoever listens to you will be saved; whoever does not will perish. That is what the Lord did: the almighty God became a helpless man; the Immortal One Himself gave Himself up to death in order to save man. And only a foolish or utterly unscrupulous person will not want Christianity after he has learned about Christ, because this points to his indifference towards what matters most in the world.
It is essential to read the Gospel. This will help you to be convinced of the holiness of the Son of God, who came down from heaven for our salvation; it will help you think seriously about your own sins (and sin, as we have already said, is what takes a person away from God) and become a disciple of Christ. And in order truly to become disciples of Christ, we must go to “school.” And the most important thing Christ did in this world was to found precisely this school — the Church — which has miraculously survived every persecution and come down to our day. We have heard the phrase “a working church.” Yes, the church is working, but we are busy with other things, because we are not interested; we consider what happens in church secondary. And although we seem to do nothing bad — we don't rob, don't speculate, don't kill, don't play cards — our indifference is already a sin. Sin is a state of the human soul. As far as we can, we must overcome this sinful state.
Holy Scripture says: “Evil shall slay the wicked” — the death of sinners is cruel. Its cruelty lies not in what it will be like — whether we are run over by a car or die of cancer. No! But in what awaits us afterwards. Have you ever thought what you would do on Tuesday evening if you were going to die on Wednesday? Evidently not. We think about what we will do tomorrow or this evening, but we do not think about what awaits us in the other world. Let no one hope that after death he will vanish, grass will grow on his grave and that will be the end of it. No, it will not end — the soul is immortal. That is why we weep at funerals; that is why we do not believe that the soul has died. I remember being very surprised when, at Suslov's funeral, Brezhnev addressed the deceased like this: “Farewell, dear friend!” If you address a dead man like that, it means his soul is alive — or you are mad, because you are talking to someone who cannot hear you. That is, a person acknowledges the immortality of the soul, at least subconsciously.
As we know, Christ the Saviour began His preaching on earth with these words: “Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand; repent ye, and believe the gospel.”
It is not by chance that we have linked the words “sin” and “repentance,” for if sin is movement against God, repentance is movement towards God, that is, in the direction opposite to sin. So every person who wants to return to God must know well what repentance is and what he must do to attain it.
Every parish priest runs into this problem: people find it hard to repent because they do not know what it is. As we have already said, most people consider a bad deed to be sin. And anyone can recall some bad deed he has done. Repentance is perceived in the same way: a person thinks repentance means listing at confession what troubles his conscience. He goes to church, tells the priest what is troubling his conscience, and really does feel relief — but has union with God taken place? No, it has not. That is, a person runs to confession as to some therapeutic, psychotherapeutic session, as to a talk with a psychologist: I told them about myself, they explained things to me, I felt relief. In reality the essence of repentance lies in something quite different. Whoever does not enter into the element of repentance will not be able to know God. A person may think about God and say (as a great many do) that “God is in his soul, and that is enough.” This is a very widespread heresy. What does such a person have in his soul? His soul is gripped by a kind of daydream: he dreams that he believes in God, but does not understand why he should go to church, why pray, why help his neighbour. Why does this happen? Where does such blindness come from? From the fact that the person does not know what repentance is.
The holy fathers say that God is like the sun. The sun is the source of light and warmth. So a sinful person who turns his back on God is in darkness; he raises a wall between God and himself — or rather a cell, in which he shuts himself up. When someone says, “I don't believe in God,” for me, as someone professionally engaged in this work, the phrase means the same as if he had said: “I am an unrepentant sinner.” For the existence of God is clearer than clear to any mentally healthy person. It does not matter where you were born, whether you studied or not. Only a sick person — one whose apparatus of perception is out of order — cannot sense the existence of God.
Unbelief is always connected with sin; so everyone can learn faith, everyone can see this light, anyone's life can be warmed by the warmth that comes from God. For this a small window must be cut in the wall between God and man — or, if that is impossible, at least a hole. Very often God Himself helps us in this. He arranges a small earthquake for us, as a result of which the wall built of the stones of sin (which hides God from our eyes) is set moving, and a crack appears in it. People call such an earthquake a “misfortune.” A person does not understand why it has happened and tries to protect himself, looks for a way out, which is impossible. And then he turns his thoughts to God (though it does not always happen so), and help is not slow in coming.
Faith in God is not a body of knowledge by which one person passes some information on to another. No! The apostle Paul says: “Faith is… the evidence of things not seen.” In other words, it is the seeing of invisible things. That is why you can in no way persuade a believer that there is no God, because he sees Him; and conversely, you can in no way persuade an unbeliever that God exists, because he does not see Him. The sense of religion, the ability to see God, is in everyone. It is simply that in time any organ you do not use atrophies. For example, if a person does not walk for a long time, he has to learn to walk again; if from infancy he receives no divine food, the soul turns to stone, dies and sinks into the darkness of unbelief.
Repentance could also be called spiritual sight, for movement towards God is possible only when a person sees God — sees Him in his own life, in the people around him, sees Him in the historical process. And understands that the life of people, both personal and social, depends on God.
How are a person's spiritual eyes opened; how does he acquire faith? It does not happen that someone is told, “You know, God exists,” and he simply believes it. No, that is not at all how it happens. Anyone who came to believe in God as an adult can tell you how it happens. The opening of the spiritual eyes is an unusual, mysterious turning point. At a certain moment a person's mind is enlightened. He does not yet know a single prayer; perhaps he cannot even cross himself properly; but he already sees God.
In the seminary a young man named Nikolai studied with me. At the entrance examination he was asked, as usual, what applicants are asked: the Creed, the morning and evening prayers, Holy Scripture. He replied that he knew none of these. “Then what do you know?” they asked him again. Then Nikolai recited from memory a passage from the Gospel of John. “And where do you know that from?” the examiners asked. “One day I was standing at a bus stop. The wind blew a piece of paper to my feet. I picked it up and read it. It was from the Gospel of John. I liked those words so much that afterwards I read them again and again, until I knew them by heart. There is no working church in our town. But I found out that you teach such things here, so I decided to come.” Nikolai was accepted. He knew absolutely nothing, but he already believed in God and prayed in his own words.
Where does repentance begin, where does the movement towards God begin, where does awakening begin? To set out on this path, we must give ourselves the chance to be alone. To tear the mind away from earthly cares, from the vanity of this world, which prevents us from seeing God.
Each of us has a great many duties and a great many headaches; we are busy with lots of things; if a pause comes, we at once switch on the television, and the pause is gone. So there is no time at all left for thinking. We are always rushing about: talking, or eating, or washing up, then we have to run off somewhere. Got some time? — we make a phone call. Finished the conversation? — back to the television. At last we are tired out and go to bed exhausted. Now it's morning. I wake up, jump up — what shall I do? Right: washed, warmed up, had breakfast, washed the dishes, off I run again. Always things to do, things to do, things to do… The question arises: if I'm always rushing about like this, when am I going to live? And what is all this endless vanity for? Only to bring us closer to the moment of our burial? But such a view seems far too primitive to people.
So a person who wants to gain faith must begin by learning to be alone with himself — to go off somewhere or shut himself away in another room, and look into his own soul. The vast majority of people do not look into their own souls. They watch themselves from the outside, and so they have lost themselves completely. When we are alone, we must look into our heart. What shall we see there? It turns out that in our head there is constant movement; a thousand thoughts, memories and snatches of conversation jostle one another. We must try to hold all this back and think: what kind of person am I, on the whole — good or bad? Most people will say: no, I'm not the best, but I'm not bad either. People find it hard to admit that they are sinners. Yet repentance is acknowledging the truth about oneself, which is that everyone is a sinner; even the saints had sins, though with God's help they overcame their sins. Only God is without sin. Repentance begins only when a person acknowledges that he is very sinful. But as long as a person considers himself righteous — thinks he is good, knowledgeable, clever — he will not see God, because he considers himself righteous for one reason only: pride. And pride is the greatest delusion. It hardens the heart and prevents one from seeing God. A proud person is always suspicious; it always seems to him that he is being deceived.
So for repentance we must first of all admit that we are proud and try to break down this solid wall that separates us from God. This wall is broken down gradually. First let us acknowledge that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, who came down from heaven, and that Holy Scripture is called holy because it is from God, though written down by human hands — but not without God's participation. Then let us take the commandments of Holy Scripture and compare them with our past and present life. The difference between God's commandments and our actions will be precisely our sins. But now I have seen that I have sinned in this or that. What am I to do next? Next I must summon up courage, renounce the sinful life and begin to change it. But where to begin? Sins are like a tangled ball of thread, and of course you can start untangling it from any side, but it is better to begin with the simplest.
Here, for example, is a commandment: “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour… but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God.” This commandment comes before such commandments as “thou shalt not kill,” “thou shalt not covet,” “thou shalt not steal,” which everyone knows. Why? Because every Sunday we must go to church. But people as a rule do not know this, and do not consider breaking this commandment a sin. In reality this sin is greater than murder, theft and envy. A person should leave every task in order to dedicate this day to God — to God, who feeds, clothes and warms him, who has given us this beautiful world. That is why one day a week we need to put our affairs aside, come to church and give thanks to God. This is exactly where we must begin, because it is the simplest commandment.
The second thing needed for repentance, for knowing God, is an interest in God. In the past, when I baptised adults, I always asked them whether they knew when Christ was born. And in ten years I never once got the right answer. Not one of them knew that our calendar is counted from the Nativity of Christ. That is, the most important event for the world remains outside people's interests. Nobody is interested in why Christ came, what He said, what He did. Yet we need to learn this, even to know it by heart, because our whole existence depends on it.
The next step towards knowing God is reading the Gospel. It teaches us how to come out of the darkness of sins and how to begin a new life.
And finally, the main thing Jesus Christ did was to found the Church. He endowed His disciples with divine power, giving them the authority to bind and to loose: “Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” And the disciples handed this authority on to their disciples, and they to theirs, and so on to this day. Who can loose us from our sins? Only Christ. Through whom? Through His disciples. Only in the Church can we receive the grace that will help us set our life right. If a person does not go to confession, does not constantly fight his own “I,” does not force himself to pray (though this is not easy), does not often receive Communion, he simply will not have the strength of repentance; he simply will not be able to go to God. So repentance is not only confessing one's sins; it is also prayer, the study of Holy Scripture, taking part in Orthodox worship, and constant readiness to help one's neighbour, because my neighbour is a tormented sinner like me, a spiritual invalid like me.
We forgive our children's mistakes when we see sincerity in them, a desire to improve, although we know that a child, true, says “I won't do it again,” yet will do the same thing all the same. But what we expect from him is not formal words but a good intention. God too expects from us at least an intention, at least some movement in His direction, however small the way it shows itself.
The third-century saint Cyprian of Carthage says: “He cannot have God for his Father who has not the Church for his mother.” For Christ came to earth with one single aim — to found the Church. He said that the Church would exist until the end of the world, so that anyone who repents might begin a new life through her. Only in this way shall we escape the horror of our humdrum life and understand what we must do to save ourselves and to save our neighbours.
