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“Repent and believe in the Gospel! Repent: for the Kingdom of Heaven is drawing near” (Mk.1:15, Matt.4:17). These were the first words of the God-Man’s sermon. He still pronounces these same words to us through the Gospel. When sin became most intense in the world, the all-powerful Doctor descended into the world. He descended into the land of exile, into the land of our anguish and suffering, preceding eternal torment in hell, and preaches deliverance, joy, healing to all people, without any exception. "Repent!" The power of repentance is based on the power of God: the Physician is omnipotent, and the healing given by Him is omnipotent. Then - during His preaching on earth - the Lord called for the healing of all those sick with sin, and did not recognize any sin as incurable. And now He continues to call everyone, promises and grants forgiveness of every sin, healing of every sinful illness. O wanderers of the earth! Oh, all of you, striving or being drawn along the wide path, with the incessant noise of earthly cares, entertainment and amusements, along flowers mixed with prickly thorns, hurrying along this path to the end, known to everyone and forgotten by everyone - to the gloomy tomb, to an even darker and more terrible eternity, stop! Shake off the charm of the world that constantly holds you captive! Listen to what the Savior proclaims to you, pay due attention to His words! “Repent and believe in the Gospel,” He tells you, “repent: for the Kingdom of Heaven is drawing near.” It is extremely necessary for you, earthly pilgrims, to pay full attention to this essentially useful, saving admonition: otherwise you will reach the tomb, reach the threshold (threshold - Ed.) and the gates of eternity, without acquiring any correct concept of either eternity or the duties of those entering it, having prepared for yourself in it only just punishments for your sins. The gravest of sins is inattention to the words of the Savior, neglect of the Savior. "Repent!" The path of earthly life is flattering and deceptive: for beginners it seems like an endless field, full of reality; for those who have accomplished it - through the shortest path, surrounded by empty dreams. "Repent!" And glory, and wealth, and all other perishable acquisitions and advantages, to acquire which he uses his entire earthly life, all the strength of soul and body, a blinded sinner must leave in those minutes in which his clothes - his body - are forcibly removed from the soul, when the soul is led by inexorable angels to the judgment of the righteous God, unknown to it, neglected by it. "Repent!" People work and hurry to enrich themselves with knowledge, but only with unimportant knowledge, suitable only for time, helping to satisfy the needs, conveniences and whims of earthly life. We completely despise knowledge and work, which are essentially necessary, for which earthly life is the only thing given to us - knowledge of God and reconciliation with Him through the Redeemer. "Repent!" Brethren! Let us look impartially, in the light of the Gospel, into our earthly life. She's insignificant! All its benefits are taken away by death, and often much earlier than death by various unexpected circumstances. These perishable, so quickly disappearing blessings are not worthy to be called blessings! Rather, they are deceptions, networks. Those who get bogged down in these nets, and who are entangled by them, are deprived of the true, eternal, heavenly, spiritual benefits delivered by faith in Christ and following Him along the mysterious path of living the Gospel. "Repent!" How terribly blind we are! How clearly our fall is proved by this blindness! We see the death of our brothers; we know that it will certainly and perhaps very soon be presented to us, because none of the people remained forever on earth; we see that for many, even before death, earthly well-being changes, that it often turns into misfortune, similar to the daily taste of death. Despite this, so clear evidence of experience itself, we are chasing only temporary goods, as if they were permanent, eternal. All our attention is focused on them alone! God is forgotten! the majestic and at the same time formidable eternity is forgotten! "Repent!" They will change, brothers, they will certainly change all perishable blessings for us: the rich will be changed by their wealth, the glorious by their glory, the young by their youth, the wise by their wisdom. Only one eternal, essential good can be acquired by a person during his earthly journey: true knowledge of God, reconciliation and union with God, bestowed by Christ. But to receive these supreme benefits, one must leave a sinful life, one must hate it. "Repent!" "Repent!" What does it mean to repent? means: to confess, repent of your sins, leave your sins - answered some great holy Father to such a question - and never return to them 5. Thus, many sinners were transformed into saints, many lawless people into righteous people. "Repent!" Reject from yourself not only obvious sins - murder, robbery, fornication, slander, lies, but also harmful entertainment, and carnal pleasures, and criminal dreams, and lawless thoughts - everything, everything forbidden by the Gospel. Wash your former sinful life with tears of sincere repentance. Do not say to yourself in despondency and mental relaxation: “I have fallen into grave sins; I acquired sinful habits through a long life of sin: they turned over time, as if into natural properties, and made repentance impossible for me.”6 These dark thoughts are instilled in you by your enemy, who has not yet been noticed or understood by you 7: he knows the power of repentance, he is afraid that repentance will tear you out of his power, and he tries to distract you from repentance, attributing weakness to God’s almighty healing. The Establisher of repentance is your Creator, who created you from nothing. The easier it is for Him to recreate you, to transform your heart: to create a God-loving heart from a sin-loving heart, to create a pure, spiritual, holy heart from a sensual, carnal, malicious, voluptuous heart. Brethren! Let us recognize the inexpressible love of God for the fallen human race. The Lord became man, so that through His incarnation He could make it possible for Himself to take upon Himself the executions deserved by men, and through the execution of the All-Holy One to redeem the guilty from execution. What attracted Him to us here, to earth, to the land of our exile? Are we right? No! He was attracted to us by the distress into which our sinfulness had plunged us. Sinners! Let's take heart. For us, precisely for us, the Lord accomplished the great work of His incarnation; He looked upon our illnesses with incomprehensible mercy. Let's stop hesitating! Let's stop being discouraged and doubting! Filled with faith, zeal and gratitude, let us begin repentance: through it we will be reconciled with God. “If the wicked man turns from all his iniquities that he has committed, and keeps all my commandments, and does justice, righteousness and mercy, he will live and not die: all his sins that he has committed will not be remembered to him, but in his righteousness that he has done, he will live” (Ezek. 18:21-22). God gives such a promise to the sinner through the mouth of His great prophet. Let us correspond, according to our weak strength, to the great love of the Lord for us, just as His creatures and fallen creatures can correspond to the love of the Creator: let us repent! Let us repent not with our lips alone; Let us testify to our repentance not just by a few short-term tears, not just by outward participation in church services, in the performance of church rituals, with which the Pharisees were content. Together with tears, with outward piety, let us bring fruit worthy of repentance: let us change our sinful life to the life of the Gospel. “Ye are dying, O house of Israel!” (Ezek.18:31). Why are you, Christians, perishing from your sins with eternal death? Why is hell filled with you, no matter how almighty repentance has been established in the Church of Christ? This infinitely good gift was given to the house of Israel - Christians - and at whatever time of life, whatever the sins, it acts with the same power: it cleanses every sin, saves everyone who runs to God, even if it was in the last, dying minutes. “Ye are dying, O house of Israel!” This is why Christians finally perish by eternal death, because throughout their earthly life they are engaged in one violation of the vows of baptism, in one service to sin; they perish because they do not pay the slightest attention to the Word of God, which tells them of repentance. In their dying moments, they do not know how to use the almighty power of repentance! They do not know how to take advantage of it because they have not received any concept of Christianity, or they have received the most insufficient and confused concept, which should be called complete ignorance rather than any knowledge. “As I live, says the Lord” - as if forced to strengthen the assurance before the unbelievers, and to arouse the attention of those who are not paying attention - “As I live, says the Lord: I do not want the death of the sinner, but for the wicked to turn from his way, and I will live to be him... In what way are you dying, O house of Israel?” (Ezek.33:11). God knew the weakness of people, He knew that even after baptism they would fall into sins: for this reason He established in His Church the sacrament of repentance, which cleanses sins committed after baptism. Repentance must accompany faith in Christ and precede baptism into Christ; and after baptism it corrects the violation of the duties of one who believes in Christ and is baptized into Christ. When many from Jerusalem and all of Judea came to John, the preacher of repentance, to the Jordan for baptism, they confessed their sins to him - they confessed not because, notes some holy Writer, 8 that the holy Baptist had the need to know the sins of those who came to him, but because for the strength of their repentance it was necessary to combine the confession of sins with feelings of regret about falling into sins. The soul, knowing that it is obliged to confess its sins, says the same Holy Father, is restrained by this very thought, as if by a bridle, from repeating previous sins; on the contrary, unconfessed sins, as if committed in darkness, are conveniently repeated. By confessing sins, friendship with sins is dissolved. Hatred of sins is a sign of true repentance and determination to lead a virtuous life. If you have acquired the habit of sins, then confess them more often, and soon you will be freed from the captivity of sin, you will easily and joyfully follow the Lord Jesus Christ. Whoever constantly betrays his friends, his friends become enemies, moving away from him as from a traitor seeking their certain destruction: whoever confesses his sins, they retreat from him, because sins are based and strengthened on the pride of a fallen nature, and do not tolerate reproof and shame. Whoever, in the hope of repentance, allows himself to sin arbitrarily and intentionally, acts treacherously in relation to God. The one who sins arbitrarily and intentionally, in the hope of repentance, is suddenly struck by death, and he is not given the time that he intended to devote to virtue 9 . The sacrament of confession decisively cleanses all sins committed in word, deed, or thought. In order to erase from the heart the sinful habits that have been ingrained in it for a long time, it takes time, you need to constantly remain in repentance. Constant repentance consists in constant contrition of the spirit, in the struggle with thoughts and sensations with which the sinful passion hidden in the heart reveals itself, in curbing the bodily feelings and belly, in humble prayer, and in frequent confession. Brethren! We have lost through arbitrary sin holy innocence, inviolable not only to sinful deeds, but also to the knowledge of evil - innocence, in the spiritual radiance of which we came into existence from the hands of the Creator. We have also lost the integrity that we received when we were recreated through baptism; On the path of life we ​​have stained our vestments, whitened by the Redeemer, with various sins. We have one more water left for ablution - the water of repentance. What will happen to us when we neglect this ablution? We will have to appear before God with souls disfigured by sin, and He will look menacingly at the defiled soul and condemn it to the fire of Gehenna. “Wash yourself,” God says to sinners, “and be clean, take away the wickedness from your souls before My eyes, cease from your wickedness. And come, and let us be exhausted." How does this judgment of God end, the judgment of repentance, to which God continually calls the sinner during his earthly life? When a person recognizes his sins and decides on sincere repentance and correction, then God decides His judgment with a person with the following decision: “Though your sins be as scarlet, I will make them as white as snow; if they are like scarlet, I will make them white as wool” (Is. 1:16, 18). If a Christian neglects this last, most merciful calling of God, then final destruction is announced to him by God. “The goodness of God,” says the Apostle, “leads you to repentance” (Rom. 2:4). God sees your sins: He long-sufferingly looks at the sins you commit under His gaze, at the chain of sins that make up your whole life; He awaits your repentance, and at the same time leaves to your free will the choice of your salvation or destruction. And you abuse the kindness and long-suffering of God! There is no correction in you! Your negligence is intensifying! Your disdain for both God and your own eternal destiny is increasing! You only care about multiplying your sins, adding new and worse sins to your previous sins! “Because of your cruelty and unrepentant heart, you store up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath and revelation of God’s righteous judgment,” at which “everyone is rewarded according to his deeds; For those who through patience seek good deeds, glory and honor and incorruption, have eternal life; and those who zealously oppose the truth, but obey untruth, rage and anger. Eternal tribulation and everlasting distress will be upon every soul of man who does evil” (Rom. 2:5-9). Amen. Pimen the Great. View Patericon of Skitsky. Venerable Macarius the Great, Homily 7, ch. 2. Saint John Climacus. Word 4. You might be interested in: