On the eve of confession

This publication is compiled primarily from articles that were included in the books “Daily Teachings in the Word of God,” “A Complete Year of Short Teachings,” “Spiritual Sowings,” and “Lessons and Examples of Christian Faith, Hope and Love.” To these we have added stories from church history and articles telling about the paths leading to achieving the eternal salvation of the soul, which in a publicly accessible and interesting form introduce the reader to the essence and properties of true repentance and thus prepare the Christian for the great and saving Sacrament of repentance. In view of the greatest importance and universally binding nature of this Sacrament, without which a truly Christian life is impossible and eternal salvation is unattainable - “unless you repent, you will all perish,” as our Lord Jesus Christ said (Luke 13:3), - it is extremely important that a Christian have a correct understanding of it and properly approach it. He must once and for all abandon the purely external, formal attitude towards him, which consists of coming to confession without any spiritual preparation, standing silently before the lectern, or saying something meaningless: “I am a sinner in everything”; in the best case, make a few general confessions to the confessor, calmly, indifferently, sometimes even with self-justification and accusation of others, and then return to your former sinful life and not make any effort to take at least one step along the path of moral improvement. It seems that after reading this book, a Christian will come to the conviction that without realizing the full gravity of his sins, without heartfelt, tearful, humble contrition for them, “pity,” in the words of St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, and verbal confession of them before Jesus Christ, invisibly present and listening to the confession of the repentant, and before the visibly standing shepherd of the Church, without firm faith in Jesus Christ and strong hope for pardon, without a decisive intention to correct his life and, with God’s help, take the path of moral renewal, without actively trying to atone for sins with the opposite good deeds (for example, returning what was stolen, rewarding those who suffered from our unrighteousness, crucifying the flesh with its passions and lusts for excessively serving sensuality, etc.) - without observing these conditions, his confession will not have the character of a truly Christian confession and will not serve him for salvation. He must repent in a Christian way, as the Church demands, so that his repentance will lead to his salvation. In order to facilitate the very procedure of confessing sins, which immensely tires even the confessors themselves, we have attached several articles - plans for self-examination, adhering to which, it is not difficult to recall all the most important cases of violation of our duties in relation to God, our neighbor, the holy mother of our Church and to our soul. At the end of the book, we have attached several lively and visual articles about the salvation of the soul, which say what a truly repentant person should take care of, wanting and committing himself to embark on the path of a new, spiritual life after repentance. How far we have succeeded in this, we leave to the readers to judge, whom we earnestly ask to remember in their holy prayers the laboring priest Gregory. Priest Grigory Dyachenko February 4, 1897 You might be interested in: