Слово в пяток недели 1-й Великого поста, перед исповедью

Again the day of repentance and confession! Once again we will open before the Omniscient the dark scroll of our deeds; Once again we will hear from His face forgiveness for everything we have done, and we will go to our home justified! So inexhaustible is the mercy of our Lord towards us! His truth could completely reject our present repentance; could tell us that since we, having repented so many times and accepted forgiveness just as many times, do not cease to offend her with our sins; then all that remains for her is no longer to pardon the criminal and wicked slaves in vain, but to arm herself against them with judgment and execution. But they will not do this to us: before the throne of this Truth, even now we will find the same love and forgiveness! Do you feel it, sinful soul? Do you feel that you have long been worthy of hell a hundred times over, and yet again heaven and the kingdom will be opened to you? Be careful that this mercy is not shown to you for the last time! Yes, my brothers, there is no one on earth who could tell us for sure that our real confession is not our last. This could be done only by He, in whose right hand are “the keys of hell and death” (Rev. 1:18), but in Him we all live, move and are. But He Himself, to protect us from carelessness, deigned to announce to us in His Gospel that the day and hour of both His coming to us and our departure to Him must remain a mystery to us. After this, everyone to whom the salvation of his soul is dear, bringing confession now, must bring it as if he were bringing it for the last time in his life. How would we confess when we are on our deathbed? We would confess with the deepest contrition of spirit and unrepentant disgust for sin, which would then lose all its charm for us; they would confess completely, without hiding anything; for what is there to hide before death? We would confess with a firm determination not to deviate any more to the side of lies and lawlessness, for then the need for man to live a pure and holy life would be revealed to us in all its strength. Let us act now exactly as we would have acted on our deathbed. Let us reveal to the Omniscient our whole soul and heart, all the secrets of passions and sinful lusts. Let God's mercy see all the ulcers and all the rottenness of our inner man: it will see them only in order to heal them all the more firmly. Having accepted forgiveness for our sins, let us immediately expel them not only from our lives and deeds, but from our very imagination and memory: let them remain the share of our enemy, who encouraged us to sin and rejoiced when we transgressed the commandments of the Lord. Having made a vow before the Holy Cross and the Gospel to lead a pure and good life, let us repeat this vow to ourselves morning and evening, in hours of joy and sorrow, in the church of God and at home, sitting at a meal and resting on a bed, so that the work of our salvation never leaves our memory and turns into the main work of our life. And in order to confirm ourselves in this necessary feat, to protect ourselves from new temptations of life, from new attacks from passions, let us take with us from the holy levy, as a way of life, mortal memory; for it was not in vain that the Wise Ones said: “Remember your last, and you will never sin”! (Sir. 7:39). Amen. You might be interested in: