About how everyone should prepare when he wants to confess

This publication presents a chapter from the 3rd part of the “Book of Confession” by St. Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain. The author gives instructions to the penitent on how to prepare for confession. He shows that repentance is a difficult spiritual feat, requiring contrition of the heart, sincere sadness and complete rejection of sin. The text explains in detail the 3 components of repentance - contrition, confession and satisfaction - and makes a subtle distinction between contrition (spiritual sorrow from the love of God) and sorrow (fear of lost goods), calling the believer to strive for the highest - contrition born of love, not fear. St. Nicodemus reflects on the triple damage that sin causes to God: an insult to His greatness, a violation of the Atonement and an insult to the Holy Spirit; and about the triple damage that it brings to the sinner: loss of grace, loss of eternal bliss and doom to eternal torment. The author advises testing your conscience, choosing experienced confessors (like doctors for bodily wounds), and warns against sadness about temporary losses. The only worthy sorrow is that which arises from the awareness of the loss of God. Contents About what repentance is About how many components of repentance There are About what contrition is About what grief is About the fact that one should confess to the most experienced confessors About how one should test one’s conscience About the fact that sin causes triple damage to God About the fact that sin causes triple damage to the sinner About the fact that sadness about temporary blessings is useless “Confess... your sins to one another” (James 5:16). My brother sinner, when you want to repent and confess, you need to make the following preparation. Know, first of all, that repentance, according to the divine John of Damascus 1, is a turning from the devil to God, accomplished with labor and feat. So, you, my beloved, if you want to repent as it should be, you must leave the devil and the works of the devil and return to God and life according to God, leave sin, which is contrary to nature, and return to the virtue inherent in nature, hate evil so much that you too say with David: “I have hated iniquity and detested it” (Ps. 119, 163), and, on the contrary, to love goodness and the commandments of the Lord so much as to say to him: “I have loved Your law” (Ps. 119:163) and also: “For this reason I have loved Your commandments more than gold and topaz” (Ps. 119:127). In short, the Holy Spirit, speaking through the wise Sirach about what true repentance is, gives you the following advice: “Turn... to the Lord and forsake your sins... ascend to the Most High and turn away from unrighteousness, and hate abomination greatly” (Sir. 17:21, 23). What is true repentance and its fruits, see in the word placed at the end. About how many components of repentance there are Know, secondly, that there are three components of repentance: contrition, confession and satisfaction. About the fact that there is contrition And contrition is sorrow and complete pain of the heart 2 arising due to the fact that man has upset God with his sins and transgressed His divine law. It is also characteristic of perfect sons, since it comes only from love for God, that is, a son repents in this way only because he has upset his father, and not because he must lose his father’s inheritance or be expelled from his father’s house. In addition to contrition, there is also mental torment, which is also sorrow and imperfect heart disease, arising not because a person has upset God with his sins, but because he has lost divine grace, lost heaven and received hell. It is characteristic of imperfect people, that is, mercenaries and slaves, since it does not come from love for God, but from fear and love for oneself, that is, this is how a mercenary repents because he has lost his reward and a slave because he is afraid of punishment from his master 3 . So, you, my brother sinner, if you want to acquire this contrition and sadness in your heart, so that thanks to them your confession will be pleasing to God, you must do the following. About the fact that one should confess to the most experienced confessors First of all, ask and find out which confessor is the most experienced of all, for the great Basil says that, just as people reveal bodily illnesses and wounds not to everyone, but to experienced doctors who know how to heal them, so sins should not be revealed to the first person they come across, but to those who can heal them: “Confession of sins is like the discovery of bodily suffering. For, just as people do not reveal bodily suffering to everyone, not to the first people they meet, but to those who are experienced in healing them, so confession of sins should be made among those who are able to heal, according to what is written: “We who are strong bear the infirmities of the weak.” 4 That is, choose carefully” 5. How to examine your conscience Secondly, just as you sit down and consider what monetary loss you have suffered over many days in your business, concentrate in the same way, my brother, and two or three weeks before you go to your confessor, especially at the beginning of the four annual fasts 6, sit in great silence and, bowing your head, make the test of your conscience, which Philo the Jew calls “the judgment of conscience,” and be “not protector, but a judge of one’s sins” according to St. Augustine. You too, like Hezekiah, will count all the time of your life with the sorrow and bitterness of your soul: “I will count all my years in the sorrow of my soul” 7. Or, at least, count how many sins you have committed in deed, word and agreement with thoughts after confessing; measure months from months to weeks and from weeks to days. Remember the people with whom you sinned, the places where you sinned, and think carefully to find each of your sins. This is what the wise Sirach advises you, on the one hand, saying: “Before judgment, test yourself” (Sir. 18, 20), and the theologian Gregory, on the other, who said: “Test yourself more than the affairs of others; It is better to think about deeds than about money, for some are perishable, while others are permanent” 8 . And just as a hunter is not content with just finding the beast in the thicket, but tries with all his might to kill it, in the same way you, my brother sinner, do not be content with just testing your conscience and finding your sins, because this in itself will bring you little benefit, but strive with all your might to kill your sins with the pain of your heart, that is, with contrition and torment. And in order to gain contrition, think about the great damage caused by your sins to God. In order to acquire sadness, think about the great damage caused by your sins to yourself. That Sin Causes Triple Damage to God So, starting with the first, think about the damage caused by your sins to God: firstly, for with your sins you have offended and dishonored the high and great God, you, a worm, the Almighty, you, rotten earth, the Creator of all, you, nothingness, the Existing Infinity, since you have transgressed His law: “By transgressing the law of God you are dishonored” (Rom. 2:23); appeared as a slave and an ungrateful son in relation to such an all-good Master and his most loving Father, Who loved you from all eternity, not for any of your merits, but solely by His goodness and decided in His God-initial thought to create you, although He could have created others instead of you. For you appeared ungrateful towards such a God, who gave you existence, created you in His image and likeness, gave you one body with all the feelings and one soul with all the powers, made you the king of all earthly creatures, provided you with food, clothing, housing until this day, commanded all sensory creatures to serve you, freed you from so many troubles, from so many diseases from such great poverty that they experience others, gave you an angel so that he would always stand next to you and protect you. For you have appeared ungrateful towards such your Benefactor, Who arranged for you to be born of Christian parents, received you so many times in His sacraments, made you His son through holy baptism, delivered you from the hand of demons, became Man for your sake, shed His blood to the last drop to make you the heir of His Kingdom, waited so many times for you to repent after sinned, condemning many others for sins less than yours, follows you everywhere you go, knocks on your heart, although you do not accept Him, talks to you, loves you, begs you, because he wants your salvation. For you, to put it briefly, appeared ungrateful towards such a Master, who granted you so many natural, gracious, general, private, hidden, obvious benefits, and, what is most terrible of all, while you received all these gifts, you, an ungrateful creature in His sight, dared to repay him for it with your malice. Ah, my brother sinner, if some person like you wanted to do you one single good deed out of all these, you would not know what to do to repay him, and while not some person, but the Most High God, the Creator of all angels, did you so many good deeds, you, on the contrary, show yourself to be so ungrateful towards Him! Marvel, brother, marvel at how the earth carried you and did not open up to swallow you alive! Marvel how the sky did not send out lightning to burn you, how the air, which you desecrated with your sins, did not blow its poisonous breaths on you to poison you, and how all the elements did not rise up against you like animals to devour you alive, not suffering to see how you, an apostate and slanderer, repay with your sins such ingratitude to their Creator and such your greatest To the benefactor: “O obstinate and perverse generation, do you repay the Lord for this?” (Deut. 32:5, 6). You have caused harm to God, for by your sins you have created unheard-of injustice and shown contempt for the atonement made for you by the Son of God, because you lifted Him up on the cross a second time, trampled on His love, desecrated His all-holy blood, insulted the grace of His Spirit, opened His wounds, renewed spitting, strangling, the crown of thorns, scourging, nails, the spear and all the suffering and reproach, since he created the sin that became the reason for His crucifixion: “The second is that of those who crucify the Son of God and expose them to themselves” (Heb. 6:6). Ah, my brother, if you thought, as you should, about these three spears with which, when you sinned, you wounded God, I am sure that you would roar and roar like a lion from groaning: “Roars from the groaning of my heart” (Ps. 37:9), that you would hate sin and abhor it and that you would break your heart into a thousand pieces, even if it were the most cruel and stony and would shed bloody tears. Therefore, as far as possible, remain meditating on this triple loss in order to acquire holy contrition, which is the noblest and most important component of repentance, grieving not so much for other things as for the fact that you have sinned against God and offended the Holy Spirit, according to the Apostle: “And do not offend the Holy Spirit of God” (Eph. 4:30). Just as David did not grieve for any other losses brought upon him by sin, but only for the fact that it caused him to cause harm to the only God, although he caused harm to himself and others. That’s why he said: “I have sinned against You alone, and I have done evil before You” (Ps. 50:6). Like him, Manasseh only grieved over this, and his heart never weakened. That’s why he said: “I have no weakness, because I was angered by Your wrath and did evil before You, not doing Your will and not keeping Your commandments” 9 . That sin causes triple damage to the sinner Then, in order to gain mental torment, think, brother, about how much evil your sins have brought to you: 1) About the fact that they forced you to lose the supernatural gifts given to you by God in this life - the grace of justification, the grace of adoption, eternity and all other gifts, the dignity of which alone is more valuable in itself than all nobility, all wisdom, all beauty and all powers, in short, all natural gifts and the most valuable blessings of the world, as Solomon says: “All gold is little sand before her” (Wis. 7:9). 2) Think about the fact that they made you lose all the eternal bliss of heaven, the enjoyment of God and the contemplation of God, the contemplation of the sweetest Mother of God, the Mother of God and the Mother of all Christians, union with the angels, communion with the saints, inexpressible joy, the Kingdom of Heaven, unceasing rest, eternal light and in general all those blessings that the eye has not seen, the ear has not heard and the human mind has not heard cannot comprehend; and they forced you to exchange all this for one small thing, for one bitter and vile pleasure, and to despise it all as something insignificant, just as those cruel Jews degraded the image of paradise Jerusalem: “And they despised the desired land” (Ps. 105:24). 3) Think about the fact that these sins brought you eternal torment, an unquenchable fire, the gnashing of teeth, a never-ending worm, the torment of all your bodily senses and all the strength of your soul, which will always have what it hates and will never have what it desires. There you will never experience any pleasure, you will not see any more of your friend, you will not talk with any of your relatives, you will never sleep, you will not find peace for a single moment from these executioners-demons who will torment you and, simply put, think that your sins have forced you to acquire an eternity of endless hellish torment, one single moment of which, after as many millennia as there is sand in the sea, how many stars there are in the sky, how many drops of rain there are, how many leaves there are on trees and atoms in the air - this moment will never, ever pass. “And they will be tormented with fire and with a bugbear... and the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever” (Rev. 14:10, 11). Thinking, secondly, about this, beloved, you will undoubtedly be touched in your heart and will experience the previously mentioned mental torment, grieving, if not for something else, then at least for the fact that because of your sins you yourself have suffered an endless loss, the loss of the smallest part of which the whole world with all its kingdoms is not able to compensate. Oh! Is it a small deprivation, is it a small sorrow to lose, a damned sinner, God, who is all sweetness, all joy, all desire and all insatiable satiation, who is all light and the beginning of light, all life and the beginning of life, all wisdom and the beginning of wisdom? Is it a small sorrow to lose God, whose beauty surpasses all beauty, His wisdom - all wisdom, His sweetness - all sweetness, from one single ray of glory of Whose, if it shone in hell, hell would immediately become paradise? Is it a small sorrow to lose the beginningless Father, the co-originating Son and the Most Holy Spirit, the One Trinitarian God, from Whom everything that is beautiful has beauty, everything that is bright has lightness, everything that is alive is life, everything that is intelligent is reason and everything that exists is existence? In a word, is it a small sorrow, wretched one, to lose your God, Who is the utmost good, the beginning, the middle, and the end of your existence? “Watch and see,” warn and see (God Himself proclaims to you), “for... it is bitter for you that you should forsake Me, says the Lord your God” (Wed: Jer. 2:19). Therefore, the great Basil said that even if a person does not suffer, even if he does not endure suffering, however, the deprivation of God itself is more unbearable than all future torments: “For alienation and rejection from God for the one who has experienced it is more unbearable and more difficult than all generally expected torments, just as for the eye - deprivation of light, even in the absence of illness, and for an animal - life” 10. And if Esau, because he had lost his birthright and the blessing of his father Isaac, was so sad that he uttered a very bitter and terrible voice: “When Esau heard... he cried out with a great and bitter voice” (Gen. 27:34), why don’t you, the repentant one, shout to the sky, why don’t you, unfortunate one, groan from the depths hearts because he lost so many supernatural blessings and gifts from his Heavenly Father? Because you lost the sweetest face of the Mother of God, the contemplation of which, after God, is the second bliss in paradise, and lost forever this most merciful Mother of Christians, whose churches and sacred icons you worshiped, and whose name you called upon in all your sorrow, and who immediately listened to you? Because you were deprived of an all-joyful presence with all the angels and saints, whose memory you celebrated and whose sacred books you listened to and read every day? And because, on the contrary, instead of all these blessings, you inherited an infinity of evils and torments? In short, why don’t you cry, sinner, because, having lost God, you have lost everything with Him? O endless loss! O immeasurable loss! I am sure, brother, that if you had seen at least once the great loss that you suffered because of your sins, you would have exclaimed, like that king who said at the time of his death that he had lost everything, because, having lost God, he had lost both body and soul, and earth and heaven, both temporary and eternal, and everything in general: “We have lost everything, we have lost everything.” I am sure that if you saw collected before you all that you had lost, you would have decided thousands of times not to sin anymore, but to correct yourself and live a holy life, just as this young man corrected himself, who often lost a lot of money at cards, because he did not see it after that, who, having once lost twelve thousand ducats and seeing them in front of him collected and put in twenty-four bags by his father, was afraid, unfortunate, of this great loss and from then on decided not to play anymore. That sorrow for temporary goods is useless Know also this, brother, that it is not appropriate to grieve if, because of your sins, you lose some natural and temporary good: either your children, or your wife, or the world itself, or your very soul, because this sadness will not be counted towards you as repentance, but will be vain, and useless, and displeasing to God. Saul also became sad when he heard from Samuel that he would lose his kingdom and his own life, so he fell to the ground out of fear: “And Saul struggled and fell standing on the ground” (1 Sam. 28:20), but in vain. Antiochus also came to the knowledge of the evil he had created when he saw that he was losing both his life and his kingdom through this painful death, but in vain; That’s why Scripture says: “The wicked man prays to the Master who never wants to have mercy on him” (2 Mac. 9:13). I won’t even talk about the fact that sadness because of worldly and temporary goods is not only useless for the sinner, but also brings death to him, as Paul says: “Sorrow brings death to the world” (2 Cor. 7:10). This pain lies not only in feeling, that is, in sighs and tears, but, first of all, lies in the fact that a person’s inner will hates sin, and that he wishes that the sin never happened, and decides not to commit it again. Note also that this pain and contrition of the heart are an integral part of repentance, and as long as they are in the heart, the person remains in repentance, and as soon as this pain leaves the heart, repentance leaves the person, which means that pain and contrition must remain in the heart of the repentant constantly, thanks to which his repentance becomes true. Some teachers divide the sadness and pain that a sinner experiences because of his sins into three: the pain he experiences before confession, which they call pain over sin; the pain he experiences when he confesses, which they call contrition; and the pain after confession, which they call regret for sin. Rules, summarized, 229. My Christian brothers, when you need to confess, come to your confessor not on the eve of the days on which you are going to receive communion, but before that. And first of all, during the four annual fasts, as soon as fasting begins, come to your confessor and confess calmly and slowly, so that he corrects you as appropriate. And a day or two before communion, come so that your confessor will read one prayer of absolution over you about the forgiving sins you have committed in the time that has passed since then, and then take communion. The monks on the Holy Mountain also follow this good custom. The quote is inaccurate. Wed: Isa. 38, 10: “I said in the height of my days: I will go into the gates of hell, I will leave the rest of the years.” Prayer of Manasseh, King of Judah. See the Order of Great Compline. The rules, stated at length, 2. You might be interested in: