Слово в неделю о мытаре и фарисее, сказанное в Предтеченской церкви архиерейского дома 12 генваря 1858 года.

“Open the doors of repentance, O Life-Giver!” From now on, St. The Church begins to prepare us for the feat of fasting and repentance. And since we, the weak, are not even able to repent of our sins on our own, without the help of God, then first of all she puts into the mouth of each of us a touching song: “Open the doors of repentance, O Giver of Life,” a song that, having echoed through the vaults of churches now, will be repeated on all subsequent Sundays before and during Lent. Meanwhile, on each of the Sundays preceding St. Pentecost, St. The Church still teaches us special lessons that guide us to repentance. Now she taught us such a lesson with the Gospel parable of the publican and the Pharisee. In the person of the Pharisee, she points us to pride, which is the first obstacle to true repentance; in the person of the publican - to humility, which is the first condition for true repentance. In fact, what is required of us when we approach the sacrament of repentance? First of all, so that we recognize our sins, remember them in all detail, weigh their significance, strength, guilt, and after that show sincere contrition for them, i.e. contrition about how deeply we offended God, our Father and benefactor with our sins, violating His holy will, offended ourselves, humiliating our God-like nature with our sins and exposing ourselves to their disastrous consequences, offended neighbors with their countless unjust actions. “Turn to Me,” the Lord commands, “with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning, and break your hearts” (Joel 2:12-13). Tell me, is a proud person capable of all this? Is he able to look at himself in this moral ugliness, feel his guilt before God and insignificance, and grieve in his heart for his unworthy deeds? On the contrary, he is only capable of enjoying his merits, true or imaginary, and is always ready to boast of them not only before people, but even before God, as the Pharisee did. He entered the church to pray: how does he pray? “God, I give You praise, for I am not like other men, the predators, the untruthful, the adulterer, or like this tax collector. I fast twice on Saturday, I give tithes as much as I can get” (Luke 18:11-12). It is obvious that this person, instead of God, praises himself and instead of asking for God's mercy and help, he seems to express that he does not need it: he is so perfect! Pride blinds a person and does not allow him to see himself in the real light: he greatly enhances his merits, diminishes his shortcomings or completely hides them. And if the unfortunate person wanted, in moments of spiritual enlightenment, to consider his sins, she will find thousands of excuses to excuse them, reduce their importance and even present them as virtues. Humble people are not like that at all. And observing the law of God, they usually say: “We are unworthy servants: as we ought to have done, to have done” (Luke 17:10). And standing at the height of virtues, they love to remember their weaknesses and shortcomings and contemplate the depth of human fall. And when they really sin, not only will they not justify themselves or reduce their guilt before God, on the contrary, they are ready to exaggerate it and admit that they are the first sinners in the world. This naturally awakens in them the deepest contrition for their sins and the most living repentance. And the truly humble sometimes considers himself so unworthy before God that, like the publican, he does not even dare to lift his eyes to heaven, but only, beating his chest, cries out: “God, be merciful to me a sinner” (Luke 18:13). Having realized his sins and sincerely lamenting them, a repentant Christian is also obliged to confess these sins before his spiritual father. There is no doubt that the Lord God knows all our deeds without any confession from us. But since He was pleased to grant in His Church on earth the power to “bind” and “decide” whether to forgive or not forgive sins to the shepherds (John 20:22–23); and shepherds, like people, are not omniscient and must know in advance what to allow or not to allow: then an oral and most detailed confession before them is necessary. Would a proud person agree to such a confession? Will he agree to appear in a humiliated form before the face of a humble servant of the Church and reveal to him his dark soul and unworthy deeds? Oh, rather, he will not go to the confessor at all, calming himself with the thought that it is enough to repent before God; or if he does, he will limit himself to confessing only common and most ordinary sins, without revealing his hidden and humiliating atrocities; and if he finds out, he will try to somehow excuse them and present them in the best possible way. No, in order to make a full and sincere confession of sins, a proud person must first humble himself: without humility, confession is impossible. And the humble and truly repentant will not only not be ashamed to expose their sinful wounds before spiritual doctors, but would not refuse to expose themselves to the whole world, as happened in the primal Church. Then the sinners brought repentance publicly: for several months, and sometimes years, they stood or lay at the church gates in the most humiliated form and revealed their atrocities to everyone who entered the church, asking for their prayers, until they finally received permission from the spiritual shepherds. This is what sacrifices Christian humility is capable of! Should we talk about other conditions for true repentance? About living faith in Christ the Savior of the world, without which no one will ever receive remission of sins, no matter how deeply one repents and contrite (Acts 4:12; Rom. 3:28), and about a firm intention to correct one’s life, without which contrition for sins would be incomplete and dishonest? A proud person cannot be expected to fulfill these conditions. Faith for the proud always seems shy: he dreams so highly of his intelligence and his virtues, relies so much on his own strengths that he does not feel the need for higher help and the need to captivate himself into the “obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5). On the other hand, with constant contentment with himself and his actions, the desire to change his way of life and become morally better cannot be born and nurtured in him. What about the humble one? The more he realizes his weaknesses and moral weakness: the more deeply he realizes the need for heavenly help, the more vividly he is able to believe in the One who “is able to save to the end those who come to God through him, who is always alive to intercede for us” (Heb. 7:25). A humble person, feeling all the vileness of his sinful life and truly regretting it, can naturally come to a firm determination to correct himself and take the path of virtue. Brothers Christians! If you really want to bring sincere repentance of your sins and clear your conscience in the coming Lent: then notice where it should begin, according to the intention of St. Churches, our preparation for this great work. Let us begin by little by little crushing the pride that more or less nests in the heart of every person, and in order to awaken humility in ourselves. Let us each examine ourselves with complete impartiality, our strengths, abilities, talents, our lives and deeds, before the mirror of Divine revelation, before the court of the moral law; let us remember our complete dependence on God and His infinite greatness above us: and we will understand how small, poor, pitiful, insignificant we are, how reckless and unnatural pride is in man and how akin to God-loving humility is characteristic of him. The father and example of pride is the devil; and the example of humility is the Lord Jesus. That is why it is necessary for us to reject pride and be imbued with humility before the sacrament of repentance, in order to at the same time renounce the devil and become true followers of Christ. Amen. You might be interested in: