Repentance according to the teachings of St. Gregory Palamas

Part 1 Part 2 Archimandrite Ephraim (Koutsu) Progumen of the sacred monastery of Vatopedi, Holy Mount Athos. Αρχ. Εφραίμ, Καθηγουμένου Ι. M. Μονής Βατοπαιδίου, Αγίου Όρου Saint Gregory Palamas, as everyone knows, is a great luminary of the Orthodox Church, who succeeded in his theology, which is the fruit of his life in Christ, aimed at reviving and reviving Orthodox theology in all its depth in that era. On the Holy Mountain they say that the theology of St. Gregory Palamas was covered by everything empty and useless of the past and future. The Holy Svyatogorets begins his life on the Holy Mountain from our monastery, the place of our repentance, the Great Monastery of Vatopedi, learning smart work and ascetic life from the Vatopedi elder Venerable. Nicodemus the hesychast. Enlightened, thanks to an ascetic active life, by the Holy Spirit, St. Gregory acquired spiritual wisdom and became a perfect teacher of virtues and life according to God. Following the true patristic tradition, he did not accept the moralistic theory of spiritual life, which some tried to bring from the West and impose in Orthodox countries. Throughout the patristic tradition it is emphasized that repentance is not limited to certain specific changes in behavior, either by statute or in some external way, but it belongs to some deep and complete change in a person. This is not at all a quickly passing sadness due to empathy for a perfect sin, but a certain unique spiritual state, which means a person’s firm direct direction to God, and a constant disposition towards restoration, correction, healing and the beginning of spiritual warfare. Repentance is a new way of thinking, the right spiritual direction, which should accompany a person until the moment of his death. Repentance is a dynamic change from a state contrary to nature, susceptibility to passions and sin, to a state consistent with nature - the desire for virtue, it is the final evasion from sin and the path to turning to God. This truth of St. Gregory Palamas re-notes. “Repentance,” he says, “is hatred of sin and love of virtue and avoidance of evil and creation of good.” From this definition it becomes clear that the Saint cannot look at repentance only as a formal and mechanical change, since it is determined by the essential renewal of man. And according to this exact word, the very fact of repentance cannot only fit within the framework of some impersonal recipe or tactic, but it always remains an acceptable potential personal revelation. “A person who repents from the soul, because he has a good will and has retreated from sin, comes to God” (Ομιλία 3 η P.G. 151, 44 B). This personal character of repentance for St. Gregory Palamas and, mainly for all the Holy Fathers, excludes any kind of pious external coloring that the West wanted to give to repentance, and consequently to the entire spiritual life. “Piety is not in our words, but in our deeds,” emphasizes the holy hesychast. (Προς Φιλόθεον 6, Συγγράμματα Β ', σελ. 521). But since repentance is the beginning and the end of the way of life in Christ, and since it is the goal of this life, therefore everything must be considered through it, and honor and dishonor must also be checked against it. And it is even “required by faith, if he lives according to his conscience and again purifies himself through confession and repentance” (Ομιλία 30, P.G. 151,185 A). However, it is presented as a promise and consent at the moment of holy Baptism. One important and fundamental point that precedes repentance is confession of sins and sympathy for them, “which are a great reason for deliverance,” adds the holy Archbishop of Thessaloniki (Ομιλία 28, P.G 151, 361C). According to St. Gregory Palamas, in order to come to repentance, a person must first achieve recognition of “the assimilation of his crimes” and, repenting, appear before God, to Whom it is appropriate to resort “with a contrite heart.” It is necessary to plunge yourself into the abyss of His mercy and believe, like the prodigal son, that you are unworthy to be pardoned by God and to be called His son. And when, with the knowledge and experience of your sinfulness, you are captivated by grief to the mercy of God, you gain perfection by the remission of sins through self-reproach and confession. The Godly Father, wanting to outline all the stages of repentance, says the following characteristic words: “There was first recognition of the assimilation of sins, and subsequently neglect of them with regret for the sins committed, as Paul declared according to God. According to God, regret about this, he said, is accompanied by contrition of the heart, an appeal to God and a prayerful request, a promise to reject evil, and this is repentance.” Repentance as a new state of human life is accompanied by certain certain consequences, which in biblical and patristic language are called “fruits of repentance.” The saint of Christ places confession of sins as the first fruit of repentance, since with its help healing and purification of the believer’s soul is achieved and a new life begins: “Confession of sins is the beginning of this good work, and by them, I say, through repentance and preparation they receive into themselves the seed of salvation, the word of God” (Σοφοκλέους Οικονόμου, Ομιλία ΝΣΤ ', σελ 201–202) However, confession is not the only fruit of repentance. Saint John the Baptist, calling people to repentance with his preaching, in addition to confession, moved people to mercy, justice, modesty, love and truth, which are signs of the regenerating power of truth. The Holy Hierarch in the 28th of his Omilia emphasizes that “repentance, if it truly comes from the heart, convinces the acquisitive person to no longer indulge in sins, no longer join in with the lost, no longer rush greedily into ignoble pleasures, but to despise the present, hold on to the future, fight passions, try to do virtues, be abstinent in everything, watch in prayers to God, renounce unjust profits, to be merciful to his offenders, to be favorable to petitioners who need his help, to be ready to help in any way he can - in words, deeds, costs.” (Ομιλία 28, P.G. 151,364 BC). That is, a person who lives truly by repentance does not return again to the first sins, does not cleave to persons, corruptible objects, nor is attached to undoubted sweets, but despises the present, turns his gaze to the future, fights passions, strives for virtues, stays awake in prayer, avoids wicked gain, shows leniency towards those who are guilty against him, extends compassion to those who call on him and is ready to help. words, deeds and even self-sacrifice for those who need it. And when the most reverend saint encourages Christians to achieve works of repentance, he mainly emphasizes humble disposition, piety and spiritual sadness. A Christian who lives in repentance is crowned with all these signs, says the saint - peace and silence, filled with mercy and compassion for other people, zeal for the truth, striving for purity, patience during persecution and disasters, as well as during the enduring of insults, slander and suffering for truth and righteousness ((Ομιλία 31, P.G. 151, 392C, Φυσικά Θεολογικά ). The path of correction through repentance, removal from work of passions and exercise in fulfilling the commandments of God is the path of saints and those who have reached the state of deification. Based on this, St. Gregory emphasizes this: “Since every Christian cannot achieve the state of the saints and those great and admirable successes that have become characteristic of their life and which is immaculate in everything, however, we can and it is appropriate for us to do this - to imitate and follow their way of life through repentance. And this is because every day, as we hear “we sin a lot,” and the only hope of salvation for all of us is, according to the word of St. Gregory Palamas, - vigilant stay and experience of “unceasing repentance” (Ομιλία 28, P G. 151.361C). Grief-sadness as the basis of feat The fundamental condition for delivering a person from the shackles of passions, but at the same time, the beginning and source of repentance is sorrow for God. St. Gregory Palamas in his works often touches on grief for God as a painful, painful, but also joyful state that must be experienced by a Christian who strives to live a real life. Therefore, he does not hesitate to characterize the period of the Great Pentecost as primarily a period of grief, sadness and spiritual achievement, as a symbol of the present age, and for every believer as a condition of resurrection for life. St. Gregory Palamas, when he experienced grief for God, indulged in deep sighs with the words “enlighten my darkness,” he quite rightly said that it is impossible for a person to pass the path from life in sin to “life in essence” without sorrow and repentance. When the mind, he says, freed from every sensory object, has risen from the noise of earthly things scattered everywhere and has been able to see the inner man, since it brings to consciousness, according to his statement, “visions of his personality,” when the soul has reached an earthly haven after a long wandering, then it hastens to wash away its dirt with tears of grief and sadness (Λόγος εις Πέτρον Αθωνίτην, P.G. To the extent that a person moves away from worldly concerns and returns to himself, to the extent that he becomes capable of receiving divine mercy in many ways. Christ has made us blessed, those who grieve over their sins and the loss of their salvation, the cause of which is sin. However, this word suggests that this sadness is called bliss. Sadness, since it is in accordance with the patristic and ascetic tradition, is a divine fruit, but it also presupposes the synergy of a person who needs humility, self-reproach, suffering, fasting, vigil, and, mainly, prayer. And this state of carelessness of a person is acquired by him through virtues and asceticism, and in order to achieve sadness for God, he is strengthened by an experienced life in silence, which testifies that this sadness is not the cause of pain and hopelessness, but it creates in a person the conditions for him to experience and feel spiritual joy, consolation and, according to St. Gregory Palamas, “treats with the sweetest joy” (Προς Ξένην, P.G. 150) And when the mind helps to rise above clinging passions, fearlessness is introduced into the true treasury of the soul and with it a person learns “in secret” to offer prayer to the Father. There are many reasons why a believer needs to have sadness. Just as the Lord’s disciples grieved because of the deprivation of the “truly good Teacher,” so it is fitting for us, when we are subjected to the same deprivation and the absence of Christ in our lives, to have and cultivate the same sorrow (Ομιλία 29, P.G. 151). However, there is another reason for sadness - this is the falling away from the land of true paradise into the region of suffering and passions. This falling away is such a grief that it even hides the whole drama of being removed from God, deprived of seeing Him “face to face,” talking with Him, deprived of eternal life, and being glorified with the angels. Who, when he realizes everything he has lost, will not grieve? The Saint asks himself this question. And he encourages all believers who live “in the consciousness of such deprivation” to grieve and cleanse themselves with the help of divine sadness from “the filth that has occurred as a result of sin” (Ομιλία 29, P.G. 151) This is the impulse of St. Gregory is in full accordance with the impulse and experience of the Church, which in the chants of Cheese Week calls on Christians to remain during the days of the Holy Pentecost in the memory of their distance from the lost paradise, to grieve over such destruction. Sadness, according to the ascetic views of the Thessalonian saint, is a natural and spontaneous manifestation of the soul being affected by sin, which leads to repentance. The saint uses a wonderful example to prove that the injury of a person is precisely what causes pain, and at the same time, in each such case of repentance, what happens is that it gives the soul only joy and consolation. He says that like someone whose tongue is damaged, it turns out to be an affected member in the human body, and in order for a person to feel the sweetness of honey with his tongue, it is necessary to heal his damage. The same thing happens with the fear of God in the souls of those who barely begin to understand and feel the gospel preaching; it causes them sadness, since they are damaged by sins. However, as soon as they hear the joyful gospel sermon, they leave their sins through repentance (Ομιλία 29, P.G. 151, 369 Β). However, this is why sorrow for God is called “joyful.” St. Gregory Palamas, delving into the content of the second beatitude of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, which relates to sadness, establishes that Christ correctly places this beatitude after spiritual poverty for the reason that sadness accompanies spiritual poverty and coexists with it. A characteristic sign of a person who has sorrow for God is a refusal to transfer or shift to others any responsibility for his sins. The fundamental principle pointed out by St. Gregory Palamas, when he talks about sorrow for God, is to blame ourselves for our sins and in every possible way avoid shifting responsibility for sin to others (Ομιλία 29, P.G. 151,369C). However, this shifting of responsibility for Adam’s violation of God’s commandments to Eve deprived them of the saving sorrow of repentance (Gen. 3:12–13). Since man was created by God as autocratic, and, according to Palamas, he assumed “autocratic power over the passions, i.e. the inner guiding principle of the soul" and "no one can control us or force us by force" (Ομιλία 29, P.G. 151, 369C), with the help of self-reproach and sorrow for God we could choose what we lost when we refused to take responsibility for his sins. For this reason, St. Gregory Palamas, trying to give some definition of sadness, says: “So, this is what saving sadness for God consists of: to blame ourselves, and not someone else, for what we ourselves have sinfully committed, and to grieve for that, and through confession of our sins, and grave contrition for them, to propitiate God” (Ομιλία 29, P.G. 151, 369C). Sadness is an integral state for the soul, in which humility resides. In the beginning it leads to fear of punishment. It brings images of terrible punishments, as they are depicted by the Lord in the Gospel, which will be even more terrible in the eternity that will come. Thus, a person who here grieves over his sins and reproaches himself for them avoids the above-mentioned, inconsolable and endless sadness that is born in those who are punished and come to the knowledge of their sins. There, and in hell, the soul of a person, located without any hope of change or salvation, increases its mental suffering in sorrows due to the lack of choice for conscience. And this is the only and lasting sorrow, since man does not know the time of their end, which is the cause of other sorrow, and terrible darkness, and fire without dew, which leads to an inexpressible abyss of despondency (Προς Ξένην, P.G. 150,1076D-1077A). As an example opposite to Adam and Eve, St. Gregory Palamas brings Lamech, who came to self-reproach and sorrow for his sins (Ομιλία 29, P.G. 151, 369D). I would like to especially emphasize that the feat of asceticism in the Orthodox Christian tradition is completely connected with sadness. The monk experiences spiritual grief over the fall and the joy of resurrection amid joyful sadness. With bodily poverty and humility, which are thirst, hunger or suffering of the body, with the help of which the bodily feelings have been prudently suppressed, the ascetic monk only gives birth to streams of tears. St. Gregory Palamas gives a clear explanation of this spiritual state in his letter to the nun Xenia. As he says, after bodily rest, sleep and nutrition, insensibility, callousness and hardness of heart are born, just as due to dispassion, from poverty and abstinence from eating, all this leads to contrition of the heart and sadness. With the help of this, evil actions are rejected and an indescribable and sweetest silence is brought to the soul. Without contrition of the heart it is impossible to achieve deliverance and liberation from passions. The heart cannot come into contrition only through abstinence from sleep, food and bodily rest. When, through contrition of the heart, the soul is freed from passions and the bitterness of sin, then it accepts spiritual joy (Προς Ξένην, P.G. 151,1076BC). However, this is the consolation that the Lord pleases when speaking about those who cry. This is the only way to explain that there is a change from sadness to joy, which the Lord spoke about to his disciples. A revival occurs, which the monk achieves through daily experience of achievement. Sorrow becomes joyful and blissful because it mainly brings to man the guarantee of eternal joy. Self-abasement and worry about sinfulness is a state that prepares the soul for sadness. In many cases, the Saint says, like a mental burden on top of the rational part of the soul, self-abasement presses, oppresses and compresses the soul in such a way that it turns into saving wine that “makes glad the human heart.” This wine is tenderness, which is joy in sorrow, and together with the active part of the soul, it also squeezes the passionate part of it. And since it frees the soul from the dark weight of passions, it fills it with blissful joy (Προς Ξένην, P.G. 150, 1077 Β). However, as painful as sadness is at the first stage, since it coexists with the fear of God, so later, after some time has passed and with the spiritual progress of the soul, it becomes joyful, since it truly looks at the blessed and sweet fruits. As long as sadness lasts in the soul, love for God grows and in an incomprehensible way unites with it. When the soul deeply experiences sadness, it also experiences and feels consolation from the mercy of the Comforter of the Spirit. This is such a sacred, sweet and mysterious experience for the soul that those who do not achieve this personal sensation are completely unaware of its existence (Προς Ξένην, P.G. 150, 1077 Β). One of the fundamental views in the theology of grief is that it involves not only the soul, but also the body. And the “consolation” that the Lord spoke about in the beatitudes regarding those who cry is a fruit that is perceived not only by the soul, but, as St. emphasizes. Gregory Palamas, “and the body participates in various ways” with him (Yπέρ ησυχαζόντων 1, 3, 33). Effective proof of this reality is “the bitter tears of those who mourn their sins” (Yπέρ ησυχαζόντων). The fruit of sorrow for God is even the affirmation of a person in virtue, as the Apostle Paul says, a certain “sadness for the sake of God produces unchangeable repentance leading to salvation” (2 Cor. 7:10), since according to the thought of St. Gregory Palamas, a person can become a beggar for the sake of God and spiritually humble himself, but if he does not accept sorrow for God, then his condition will easily change, and he can return to the absurd and sinful deeds that he left. And he will again become a violator of God’s commandments, since he again burns with the desire to live sinfully. But if a person remains in poverty, which the Lord blessed, and begins to cultivate spiritual sadness in himself, then he will be established and rooted in spiritual life, thereby driving out the danger of returning to where he left (Προς Ξένην, P.G 150, 1085C). The benefit of sadness and spiritual mourning is not limited only to the fact that a person becomes almost motionless to evil, but according to St. Gregory, a person completely abandons his previously committed sins, when, of course, he receives permission from them in the sacrament of repentance. Because at a time when a person mainly grieves and cries for them, God counts them as involuntary. The saint characteristically says about this that “one is not held responsible for what is done involuntarily” (Προς Ξένην, P.G. 150, 1085C). Thus, according to God, sadness not only attracts consolation and God’s forgiveness of sins, bringing a guarantee of eternal joy, but, at the same time, it preserves the virtues that the soul has, since according to St. To Gregory Palamas, the soul that has learned to cry becomes motionless towards evil (Προς Ξένην, P.G. 150,1085D). In conclusion, the hesychast saint and saint of Thessaloniki, in his treatise on the passions and virtues, devotes most of it to sorrow. 1 Here he uses a very expressive example in relation to showing a person the path to crying-sadness. He likens the beginning of crying to the return of the prodigal son, which is why he fulfills the lamentation of the mourner and leads him to restoration in these words: “According to the wealth of ineffable compassion, the poor son is filled with great joy and boldness, he accepts the kiss and gives it himself, and entering the house with the Father and eats with Him, while tasting heavenly joy” (Προς Ξένην, P.G. 150, 1085C). Therefore, the term “joyful sadness” (χαρμολύπη) is often used by ascetics to express the experience of eschatological overcoming pain and suffering, and it is probably an expressive symbol of their life entirely devoted to asceticism, a life mainly in tears and sadness. (See Γ . Μαντζαρίδου " Η περί θεώσεως διδασκαλία " στα Παλαμικά 1973, σελ . 215 ). In this short report we can talk about the schematic presentation of the teachings of St. Gregory Palamas about repentance, however, we see that St. Gregory is a man primarily of inner life, therefore his works are interesting not just for correcting evil outwardly, but they are also important for our inner repentance, those who grieve and cry. St. Gregory was himself a man of repentance, but also a true preacher of repentance. We now humbly pray as the period of the Great Pentecost approaches, which, first of all, according to Palamas, is a period of repentance, “let us sweat and weep before our God,” in order to experience the bliss of His kingdom. We will not forget that correction of ourselves, but also of the entire society as a whole, begins and is based on the personal repentance of each person. However, this is also the spirit of Svyatogorsk monasticism, as St. Gregory Palamas, “constant repentance.” Amen. St. Theophan the Recluse in his translation of the Epistle of St. Gregory Palamas to the nun Xenia the word sadness is το πένθος as “crying,” which gives a somewhat passionate connotation to this virtue.