Homily on Thursday of the first week of Lent

“I have known my iniquity, and have not covered my sin” (Psalm 31:5). Here is an example of repentance - repentant David! Brethren! we are all sinners before the Lord; our sins multiply every day; Every day we transgress the will of God, we fulfill the whims of our hearts, we follow the thoughts of our passions. Where will our sins lead us? What awaits us with our iniquities? What does our careless wickedness prepare for us? Or is the fire of hell not terrible for us? Isn’t the eternity of unspeakably fierce torment terrible? To fall into the hands of the menacingly just Judge - is it really a small thing for us? Oh, how disastrous that would be! Well? Or is the way out of the abyss of sin closed to us? Is the path to heaven blocked? Are the doors of God's mercy closed to us? No! What is it that we lack to be saved from our sins? Repentance is lacking, the very thing that was in David’s soul when he cried: “I have known my iniquity, and have not covered my sin.” What is needed first of all to turn to the path of life from the path of destruction? First of all, we need to see that we are not where we should be. If a traveler is not following his own path, he needs to come to his senses, to realize that this is not his path, that the path he must follow is completely different, and only then can he feel the need to return to his own path. How can we follow the paths of salvation when we still do not realize where we are walking, when we do not see that we are on the path of destruction? How can we sincerely, ardently wish for eternal life, life according to the will of God, when we have not yet realized that we live in the darkness of sins, in the lusts of the heart? If the captive sons of Israel had attached their thoughts and hearts to Babylon in the same way as the children of Babylon, would they have begun to cry for Zion, shed bitter tears for it, and strive with their hearts for their hometown? Woe to us when we remain in the bitter captivity of Babylon, work without rest for passions and a pernicious world, do not think about returning to heavenly Zion and forget about the eternal city of God, as if it does not exist for us. What could be stranger - to have eyes and not see dirt on your clothes, uncleanliness on your hands, disorder all over your body? Oh my God! Where has the brightness of my eyes gone? Who took away the sight from my thought! I am completely covered with uncleanness, and I do not see my uncleanness. Everything is disordered, everything is disfigured in my soul, and I do not see my disorder. Who will depict the depth of my fall? It is given to the wordless to see earthly things, and he sees the earth; but my soul, which has been given the gift of seeing the beauty of heaven, sees neither heavenly blessings nor the ugliness of its earthly life. Oh my God! You enlightened the eyes of the blind, dispersed the sinful darkness in the souls of the lost; Enlighten the eyes of my heart, that I may see the light of Your commandments, and my disastrous distance from them! Brethren! We see our sins poorly. But let us look at them, and we will see more than we see now; let us turn our gaze away from the vain world, let us not look at the objects of our rebellious passions; let us gather our scattered thoughts, stop them, keep them on one thing - on the memory of ourselves and our sins. If we decide to recognize ourselves, our sins, then it is necessary that we focus all our attention on ourselves. Otherwise, we will never recognize ourselves. How do we know how to look at ourselves when the world with its crowd of delights is before our eyes, when our thoughts are busy, filled with vanities, worries, and earthly impressions? You, who say that you are preparing to make a confession of your sins before the Lord, and at the same time are worried about the worries of everyday life, trade calculations, chores around the house, or thoughts of passions, what are you doing? Do you want to deceive yourself, or God? The former is reckless, the latter is scary. Come to your senses! Here in the whole year the Church assigns you several days so that you gather with yourself, devote hours of prayer to reviewing your affairs; and you don’t have much to do with that either. God knows what. The world with its vanities and seductions has upset you, scattered you, desecrated your soul; is it not enough to abandon it, even for a few hours? Oh, fatal blindness! “I know my iniquity, and I will take away my sin before me” (Psalm 50:5). This is how the repentant David knew himself. Take out - constantly, without deviating to anything else, he looked at his sin - and then he recognized it, as he should have known. And is cursory attention necessary when it comes to the salvation or destruction of the soul? ABOUT! no, do not rush to turn your gaze away from your sin, look at it diligently. Have you recognized the sin of condemnation in yourself? Look: what did you do? Weigh the weight of your sin. You will see that you have seized upon yourself the right of God to be the Judge of all; being a sinner, he took upon himself the face of a sinless one, madly wandered in thought to the deeds of another and left himself in the power of sins; pride, or vanity, forced you to judge another, and your judgment offended him, your judgment led him to the sin of dissatisfaction with you, and, perhaps, anger. That's how many sins there are in one sin of condemning a brother! Is a cursory attention enough to examine and discuss the unhappy fruitfulness of one sin? You said in thought or in word: I am a sinner, and you were pleased with that and ended your confession. No, confession is not over yet, it has not even begun. Think about it. You would not be pleased with the judge if he did not enter into the criminal’s case with full attention; you would say: the court of strict truth requires that the judge, by the force of the laws, induce the criminal to state all the circumstances of the crime, to reveal the place, time, motives, accomplices of the crime; you would say: this is necessary - circumstances give more or less weight to the crime - and you were right in relation to the other. How can you not want to be fair to yourself? No, don't be frivolous; you stand before the judgment of God. Will you repent? - You will live. Repent. You said: I am a sinner. But what? How many times? In what location? What made you commit sin and sins? Examine your deeds, count your crimes one by one, give an account before the court of the Lord, live according to all the commandments. There is no place for negligence here. You were not lazy to sin. Don’t be lazy to repent; force yourself to recognize your sins, remember what you were like at prayer, what you were like at home? What is your attitude towards those who insulted you, what is your attitude towards those who love you? What is the responsibilities of the title, what is the desire? What was he like in happiness, what was he like in misfortune? How did you look at your own grief as if it were someone else’s? What was the attraction of the old weakness, what was the new habits? Did you restrain your body? Did you restrain your tongue? Did you restrain your soul from anger, from passions? Go through in your memory all the indirect paths along which you wandered, review the various places that witnessed your falls, think about all the duties of conscience that you neglected. Remember how many times did you make promises to correct and change your life and how many times did you break them? How many grace-filled calls to repentance in the circumstances of your life have you ignored? – Is it difficult and impossible to give an account of all your affairs? So. But this does not mean that you should be content with a general, dull, careless review of yourself. What kind of self-knowledge is this? Let us test and recognize all the sins in ourselves that we can recognize: this is what is required of us! “I have known my iniquity, and have not covered my sin” (Psalm 31:5). According to this example of David’s repentance, the testing of our sins must be sincere. Don't hide yourself from yourself and God. Will you hide here? They will open it there, and to bleak sorrow. Will you hide it from yourself? You cannot hide it from God, and you will face a more severe condemnation. We all firmly recognize the holiness of Christian duties: but as soon as we apply them to ourselves, we immediately begin to weaken their severity; As soon as we begin to judge ourselves for not fulfilling them, we immediately reduce our guilt with various pretexts and various apologies. We willingly acknowledge the universality of the rules, but we place ourselves as an exception. Self-love acts in this case both diligently and skillfully; it manages to cover up the most serious betrayals of duty so well that they seem like minor shortcomings. But what a terrible, ungodly work this is! What does pride do in this case? By justifying us as criminals, it rebels against the judgment of God, which declares us criminals. By reducing the limits of the power of God's commandments over us, it brazenly insults the power of the legislator - God. And our desire to reduce our guilt is criminal and reckless and destructive. Sin seeks protection for itself in your soul. This is what your insincerity in the consciousness of your sins means! Sin seeks your destruction. If now, when you are about to drive him out of your soul by repentance, you yourself cover him in your soul: after that he will have more power over you, he will corrupt your soul more and more. Pray to the Lord, “do not turn my heart into words of wickedness, and do not bear the guilt of sins” (Psalm 140:4). Be afraid to invent excuses for sins. Do not turn away from the many who walk the broad path: there will be a place in hell for many. And many who perish will not protect you from destruction. They will give an answer for themselves, just as you will be required to give a special account. Why look to the example of many sinners? You are commanded to follow the example of saints, not sinners. Why turn to many now? It's not about many people, but about you, about your sins; judgment over your affairs, they require an account. Don't plead weakness either. Saints also had weaknesses. Like all believers, you were given grace that was strong in weakness: what did you do? You had enough strength to spend days and nights doing everyday things, or even worse, doing harmful things, but you didn’t have enough strength to fast. You had the patience to be tormented by malice and anger, but did not have the courage to endure an unpleasant word from another, or an easy loss of property. Do not cover up the guilt of your bad life with the goodness of God. Is God merciful? But doesn’t His goodness indicate your ingratitude towards her? He is merciful, will he not punish? On the contrary, pray to Him to seek here and forgive there, to punish the wickedness of your heart here, so that you do not perish there. He will not punish you, he is long-suffering! But woe to us if we remain unrepentant sinners and do not take advantage of His long-suffering; then only the judgment of terrible truth will remain for us. No matter how hard it is to pay for sin, according to the debt of sincere repentance: pay. The punishment for an unrepentant sinner will be more severe. Depending on the degree and nature of mental illness, use medicine, no matter how bitter it may be. If you feel coldness in your soul, strike it with the blows of strict reproof; show her the river of fire, the never-ending worm, the eternal stench, to awaken her from carelessness, to force her to break the connection with the sins that are dear to her. So I repeat, for our eternal salvation, consciousness of sins is necessary; complete and sincere repentance is necessary. May the good and merciful God grant us the grace to perform repentance pleasing to Him. Amen. You might be interested in: