Homily on Friday of the first week of Great Lent, at Matins

The Holy Church now calls us to confession. She wants, she demands that we not only repent of our sins before the face of our conscience, but also bring repentance before the servant of God. Are they asking us to do something useful for us? Is a necessary task entrusted to us? Why confess to a person like us? Certainly not for the Lord. He knows our sins even when we hide them not only from others, but also from ourselves. He knows our heart secrets. But does everyone know what lies in his heart? Is everyone able to give a detailed and accurate account of their affairs? And repentance necessarily requires a complete and faithful examination not only of our deeds, but also of our motives. Really, who better to know yourself than yourself? But is it necessary to say that there are thousands of us among us who are too little able to enter into themselves, know little of the law of God, and are even less able to trust themselves to the law of God? Who will show them themselves if not a servant of God? Shouldn’t everyone admit that we are too much deceived by our pride; We see a lot of things in ourselves that are not in their proper form, and we don’t see a lot of bad things at all. So, thanks be to the Lord that He gives us a helper when our conscience is tested. Why don’t you want to tell someone else about your sins? Ashamed? Oh, if only it were so! Then it would remain to say: that is why you must reveal everything to the priest, not excluding any deeds, so that saving shame can awaken in your soul, which you may not have felt before, or felt, but not as much as vile deeds deserve. That is why you must confess everything to the servant of God, so that the shame that awakens in you during confession can serve as a guard for your soul against base deeds. But is it a shame? Or is it only shame that keeps you from revealing your sins to the priest? Be sincere to yourself: pride lives in all of us; This is our common property. And, by her grace, we do not like to think lowly of ourselves, we do not like to appear even to ourselves, not only to others, in a black form. Do you agree, can confession be pleasant for our pride? If so, then confession is an expensive, invaluable medicine when it softens the most dangerous disease of our soul - pride. Humility is the basis of virtues; without it, spiritual perfection in a person is a dream, and a destructive dream. Confession, forcing us to descend into the depths of the soul and bring to light one after another the vices and impurities of the heart, crushes our pride and sows humility in the soul. Earthly authorities may place shackles on hands and feet; they have a prison, imprisonment: but does all this bind the soul? No. Pride does not put anything human above itself. Another thing is that the power is not earthly, but heavenly. The villains, whom no executions could correct, came into deep contrition before the humble servant of God, and once and for all renounced their former life. The predator returned what belonged to others, the irreconcilable enemy made peace with the enemy, the litigants stopped their litigation, the quarreling spouses forgot the quarrel, according to the inspirations of the servant of God - because he is not a servant of men, but a servant and messenger of God. Oh, earthly wisdom! how blind she is, rejecting the help of heaven, which is so useful even for the earth! “Reh: let me confess my iniquity to the Lord” (Psalm 31:5), so says the repentant David. What does it mean? Does it mean only the heart's consciousness in its iniquity? But he already spoke about this when he said before: I have known my iniquity and have not covered my sin. If David says: let us confess my iniquity: then, according to the meaning of the words, he is not talking about the consciousness of sin in his conscience, but about the knowledge, the revelation of iniquity before others. Let us believe the words of David's song by the story of David, and we will find the same thing. The prophet Nathan denounced David for his sin with Bathsheba, and David did not limit himself to recognizing the sin in his soul; he confessed the iniquity before Nathan and said in his hearing: “those who have sinned against the Lord” (2 Sam. 12:13). We see God’s commandment about confession in the Law of Moses; there God commanded to announce to Israel: “If any man or wife commits all the sins of men, he despises the Lord, and her soul transgresses: let him confess the sin he has committed, and let him repay the true crime” (Num. 5:6-7). Various sacrifices for sins are known; bringing them, they confessed their sins over them in the presence of the priest, who prayed, so that, for faith in the future universal sacrifice, they would not be charged for sins (Lev. 4: 1-26). The Baptist John baptized in the Jordan only those who, coming to him, confessed their sins. He gave special instructions to tax collectors, special instructions to soldiers, and special instructions to ordinary people (Luke 3:10-15; Matt. 3:6); and this particularity of instructions, of course, was consistent with the fact that unequal sins were revealed, or the unequal state of souls was revealed to confession. That confession before John was not a matter of human arbitrariness is clearly stated. The Pharisees did not want to confess their sins to John and be baptized by him, and the word of God says about the Pharisees: “they rejected the advice of God about themselves, not being baptized by it” (Luke 7:29-30). It is not clear how they can doubt the holiness of confession when they do not doubt that repentance of sins must be sincere? If you sincerely repent, if your soul is full of sorrow for sins: in such a state, what is natural to expect from your soul? Screams and groans, bitter complaints about losses - this is what flows naturally from a sorrowful soul! At least, while the feeling of the soul is sacred, the expression of feeling cannot be sinful; when sorrow for sins is holy, confession of sorrow for sins is also holy. On the contrary, reluctance to reveal sin is a sign that the soul still likes sin, that it does not feel disgust for it, that grief for it is still insincere, incomplete and shallow. Who can forgive sins except God alone? In His right hand are our life and death, before Him we are sinners. He can only forgive us or not forgive us. Have you sinned against man? It is in his will either to hand you over to the power of the court, or to reconcile with you. Exactly the same before God. Repent as much as you want: but until they tell you that you are forgiven, you remain responsible; - if you tell yourself that you are forgiven, this will be a new insolence that will not go unpunished. True, even in the Old Testament it was said that God is ready to forgive a repentant sinner. But a decisive answer to confession then depended on the future time, on the time of the appearance of the Conciliator. Then, as the Son of God Himself appeared on earth to reconcile the truth of God with guilty humanity, then the Son of God announced to people that He, as God and the reconciliator, has the right to forgive sins, and in His own person He transferred Divine power to His servants. “Receive the Holy Spirit,” He said to the apostles, “whose sins you forgive, they will be forgiven, and whose sins you hold, they will hold” (John 20:22–23). Understand how the establishment of a special power to forgive or not forgive the sins of people all over the world corresponded to the time of the fullest revelation of God's love for people, the fullest closeness of God to humanity. What was transmitted to the apostles in relation to the sins of people was transmitted to all their successors, since Christ the Lord did not establish his church for one apostolic time, and since it was not for the apostles alone that the Holy Spirit was given, by the action of which the permission or non-resolution of the sinner should be accomplished. And in the apostolic writings we see that the apostles of Christ command their successors to continue the work of reconciling sinners with God, entrusting them with the power to bind and loose consciences, with instructions on the use of this power. Remember, for example, how dissatisfied Saint Paul was with the Corinthian shepherds for their weakness in relation to an open sinner (1 Cor. 5:2). So, this is who among the people has the power to forgive, or not to forgive, a sinner. These are those to whom this power was transferred by God himself, the Redeemer - the Son of God. What can we say about you, an uncalled shepherd of the schism, who takes upon yourself the Divine power, invests yourself with a right that was not given to you? Woe to your blind audacity! Is there salvation for those who expect from you what you cannot give them? So - it is criminal, terrible to neglect the divinely established authority, not to turn to it to hear the verdict on one’s sins! No, go to the one who has received power over your conscience; go not as to human judgment, but as to God’s judgment. It is not man who will pronounce judgment on you; he is only a servant of God, who is entrusted in the name of God to forgive or not forgive a sinner. The servant of God, having accepted the power to forgive or not forgive sins, cannot exercise this power either according to his own will or according to the will of people; he will have to give a strict answer in the use of this terrible power. Therefore, he must first carefully examine whether the sinner is worthy or unworthy of forgiveness of sins? To give grace-filled forgiveness to an unworthy person would mean exposing oneself to condemnation; and it would not mean salvation for one who accepts grace unworthily. If the priest must see whether a sinner is worthy or unworthy of forgiveness, and as a person, he can know this only when the internal state of the sinner’s soul, its deeds, its thoughts, its dispositions is revealed to him by the sinner himself, through testing, then confession before the priest is as much in accordance with the will of God as the Divine establishment of the power to forgive sins is undoubtedly. So, confession before a priest is an establishment of God’s will. Be afraid, sinful soul, to hide your deeds before the servant of God: he has received authority from God to be the judge of all your deeds. “Even if you manage to deceive him as a person in the position of your soul, then you will not deceive God, who, knowing everything secret, will not leave your deed without terrible punishment, will not leave it because you insult not a person, but God and the Holy Spirit, acting through God’s servant. The servant of God assumed power over the conscience to save the sinner from sin; he is the physician and teacher of the sinner. Depending on the state of mental illness, he should also seek medicine; depending on the mistakes and shortcomings, he must also teach instructions. If so: then the sinner’s sincere desire to be healed of mental illness, a sincere desire to follow the straight path to salvation should prompt him to sincerely confess his sins before a spiritual doctor and teacher; just as a person who is sick in body, sincerely wanting healing from an illness, himself tells the doctor about the conditions of the illness. So, hiding your sins from the priest would mean, in addition to insolence against the will of God, blind enmity against your salvation. Is it necessary to say after this that in the first times of Christianity, confession was a holy thing for everyone? Oh! Is it really in order to expose our coldness towards sacred duty? Since then everyone’s hearts burned with love for the Lord, those who had the misfortune of falling into sins then confessed their sins not only out loud to the servant of God, but also out loud to the whole church, and they confessed them for more than one hour, but for several weeks they exposed themselves to everyone, among the repentants. Oh my God! how far we are from your best servants. I conclude with the word of the Apostle: “It is now time for us to rise from sleep... Let us therefore put aside dark works, and let us put on the weapons of light” (Rom. 13:11-12). Amen. You might be interested in: