Invitation to Repentance
The title of this book, the one word
repentance, is a term that causes man of our modern society a feeling of
discomfort similar to that which a sick man experiences on hearing the name of
an unpleasant drug. Nevertheless, in every age and far more in the present
deeply uneasy, tired and unsettled age nothing is more useful, more
indispensable and more salutary than repentance. Often man wishes for nothing else
more Keenly, even though he has no clear notion of what he really craves. Man
has an ardent desire for repentance, because the finest and noblest words in
human literature expressing the highest degree of human happiness and the most
valuable gifts which respond to the deepest desires of our souls are rest,
peace, love, joy, life, all of which are contained in one somewhat repulsive
word and which are promised by the Lord who invites every man to repentance and
are given by Him to every true penitent. We do not know whether the reader has
ever heard of the inestimable invitation that the Lord addresses to us humans:
“Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest…
and ye shall find rest unto your souls” (Matt. 11,28-29). Come, He says, to Me.
Return to Me and approach Me all of you who are tired and heavily burdened and
I will give you rest; in Me you shall find the rest and peace for which your
soul longs. Of all the loads and burdens of this life nothing weighs down so
much on the soul and presses so heavily upon the conscience as sin. From it
spring all the other tribulations of this life, as St. John Chrysostom, a great
Father of the Church, says. It does not matter if this heavy weight of sin is
not felt by all and especially by those who are heavily burdened. Does a sick
man benumbed under the influence of a narcotic feel pain? Nevertheless the pain
is there, and his body is eaten up by the disease. Likewise all sinners who
have come to and realized what being guilty before God means, and have known
well the multitude of their sins, have found that in the life of men there is
no weight heavier, no burden more oppressive and more detestable, no poison
more bitter and deadly, no torment more painful and more excruciating than sin.
For this reason the prophet declares: “There is no peace in my bones because of
my sins; for mine transgressions have gone over mine head: they have pressed
heavily upon me like a weighty burden”. For this reason “he waters his couch
with his tears” (Ps. 37{38},3-4 and 6{7},6). Those who study themselves deeper,
realize at every step of their lives the heaviness of burdens such as : egoism
and selfishness, self-interest and covetousness, pride and ambition. If each of
us examines his past and consults his everyday experience he will find that the
greatest part of our anxieties, our bitterness, our greatest disappointments
and our sorrows comes from the frustration of our selfish intentions, from our
unsatisfied self-interest, from our unsatiated covetousness, covetousness of
money, of pleasures and enjoyments, of favor and preference, of position and
rank. From our wounded ambition, from the frustration of our hidden yearnings
and plans, the thwarting of our will, the outbursts of our temper, the eruption
of our anger, in general from the blows that our ego sustains in the encounters
of everyday life. These have always been the common and universal causes of
anxiety and sorrow in man. The great tribulations that oppress man’s soul and
body are neither daily nor permanent. But the disorder, small or great, created
by the vices and affections of sin in everyday life—in the family, in one’s
work, in business, in social life—make life a heavy burden, render the
attainment of inner peace and rest impossible and prepare the way to a sad and
pernicious future.
***
We do not know whether our reader has ever
opened the wisest book ever written, the New Testament or Gospel, in order to
read the most valuable assurance of our Savior, Jesus Christ: “ I am the
resurrection and the life. He that heareth my word and believeth on Him that
sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is
passed from death unto life” (John 11,25 and 5,24). Spiritual and eternal death
is incomparably more terrible and grievous than natural death—which we abhor
and fear so much. Spiritual death is not caused by bodily disease, nor by
crimes or wars, but by sin. Neither is this death brought about by the
separation of the soul from the body, but rather by the eternal separation of
the soul from God. By separating the immortal soul from God, who is the source
of life, sin throws the soul into everlasting misfortune and misery. The life
of a faithful and true Christian is immensely and incomparably happier than the
life of the richest and most glorious mortal on earth; for it shall never be
snuffed but shall go on after his departure from the earth—perfectly, happily
and eternally. These are the priceless gifts—rest and peace on the one hand, a
life of joy and happiness on the other—that Christ gives us when He invites us
to repentance and the return to Him. Repentance is, therefore, the unique way
that leads to the attainment of these great gifts that man so ardently desires.
Repentance is the only medicine which cures a soul poisoned by sin—a soul weary
and groaning under a heavy burden—and gives it a new, true and eternal life.
“Come unto Me”, says the Lord, the one and only infallible physician and
savior, calling us to repentance and return to Him. Come to Me so that I may
cure you for certain, give rest to your soul which is groaning under so many
heavy loads, and grant it new life. You have had enough of self-appointed
physicians, who claim to be “the physicians of others while they are swarmed
with ulcers themselves”. Many a time have they promised to cure you but have
done nothing else than make worse the illness, heavier the load; or the most
they did was to administer soothing lotions or pain-killing injections for the
time being. But as in the case of a patient suffering from malaria or typhoid,
feeling utterly weary and broken down, uncomfortable and feverish, a
superficial treatment or a fall of fever effected by drugs will be of no avail
if the deeper cause is not removed, if the deadly malaria or typhoid germs are
not destroyed; so in your case, the material goods of this world by which the
clumsy and false physicians, “deceiving and being deceived”, propose to cure
you cannot remove anxiety nor give rest, joy and life to a soul which is separated
from God and is headed straight on the death. One is the infallible medicine
that destroys deeper causes, restores health, and effects radical cure: true
repentance and a return to Christ. To this repentance the Lord invites us with
such compassion, affection, and goodness, saying: “Come unto Me all ye that
labor and are heavy laden,…. And ye shall find rest unto your souls. He that
heareth my word hath everlasting life”. Dear reader, you may be among those
people who have never known real relief and peace, among those in urgent need
of a saving physician and of a salutary medicine for their souls (and who can
say he has no such need if he stays away from Christ?). You certainly wish for
joy and happiness. You may have looked for it in worldly places and by worldly
means and have not found it, for it cannot be found there. You may have read
many books telling you about joy, but have not valued any of them to the
satisfaction of your soul. Now, take the trouble to read carefully what will be
setforth here about repentance, this great and most important means of
salvation and happiness. Do not say that you know about it and have no need to
learn of it or that it does not fit your position or rank to deal with it. We
ask you to study this book. If by studying it you know better where you stand
and wish for repentance, if you repent in the way you will see explained here
and thus find the path that leads to Christ, we assure you beforehand without
the least fear of being proved wrong, that you have already stepped onto the
road of salvation, life and happiness.
The Necessity and Value of Repentance.
Lest it should be supposed that what was
previously written reflected the ideas of the writer, the notions of a mere
man, and in order that the reader may be more fully rersuaded of the need for
repentance—which is spoken of with displeasure, or ironically smiled at by
those who wander away from God—and on the other hand of its value and
importance, let him give heed to what the Holy Scriptures declare. Whatever the
Sacred Writings say is not the view of man but the perfect truth declared by
God. The Holy Scripture is the divine book our heavenly Father, the most high
God, has sent to us through God-inspired men like a letter to give light and
teach the whole truth to us, His earthly children. In this divine book, God has
made repentance the basis of His relations with us. First in the times of the
Old Testament, that is the period before Christ, an excellent and wonderful
example of repentance and confession was set for us by David the great prophet
and king, who by his personal example and his famous 50th (51st)
Psalm has been ever since and will always be preaching and urging all men
throughout the ages, to repentance and return to God. On the other hand God has
through His messengers, the prophets, often issued appeals for repentance such
as the following: “Wash you, be clean; remove your iniquities from your souls
before mine eyes; cease from your iniquities” and “Be converted, and turn from
all your sins” (Isa. 1:16 and Ezek. 14:6). Wash, He says, your souls clean, and
stop doing the evil deeds you are doing before my eyes. Repent and turn from
your abominations. When Christ, the Savior, was about to come into the world,
He sent His great forerunner John the Baptist, the greatest herald of
repentance, and through him He preached to the Jewish people, “Repent ye… bring
forth fruits meet for repentance”. When Christ Himself came to the world
opening the era of the New Testament, of the new Christian life, His first
message was a proclamation for repentance. “Jesus began to preach and to say:
Repent ye and believe the Gospel” (Matt. 4:17 and Mark 1:15). Jesus Himself declared
that He came into the world to call sinners to repentance (Matt. 9:13). The
excellent and most admirable parable of the prodigal son, this inestimable
treasure of the Gospel, is the most touching sermon of repentance in which our
Lord illustrates that God the Father not only enjoins repentance, but considers
it of such great value that “there is joy in the presence of the angels over
one sinner that repenteth” (Luke 15:10). The Lord Himself received penitents
with great compassion, affection, and love. The whole teaching of Christ on
earth begins with repentance. His Apostles too, were sent to the world mainly
to preach repentance. On the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came and
“sat upon each of them and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost”, it was
through the preaching of repentance that Peter inaugurated the apostolic
ministry: “Repent and be baptized everyone of you in the name of Jesus Christ
for the remission of sins”, he declared. Paul speaking to our ancestors of
Athens on Mars’ Hill preached repentance saying: “The times of ignorance God
winked at; but now He commandeth all men everywhere to repent, because He hath
appointed a day in the which He will judge the world in righteousness” (Acts
17:30,31). He further declared that he testified “both to the Jews and also to
the Greeks, repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ”, for
“God hath granted repentance that our sins may be blotted out, and unto life”
(Acts 3:19, 20:21, 11:18). St. Peter adds that if our Lord has not yet come to
judge and condemn sinners, He has not done so as He “is long-suffering to
us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to
repentance”. For this reason the Lord pities and considers most hapless those
who have not fully repented (Matt. 11:20, Luke 13;3). The Church has until this
day preached repentance as the foremost and absolutely indispensable road to
salvation. Through repentance the Church has cleansed myriads of souls,
sanctified them and secured for them God’s heavenly kingdom. Through repentance
the Church will continue her salutary work, even unto the end of the world. For
repentance is the gate of entrance and return to that divine mansion called
Christ’s Church, the Christian religion. The idolater, the unbeliever, or
unconverted, on the one hand—everyone who is not a Christian—must repent and be
baptized in order to become a Christian and thereby enter the Church. The
Christian on the other who has sinned in any way after his baptism and lost the
purity he had received when he was baptized, by polluting his soul through sin
and estranging himself from his Heavenly Father like the prodigal son of the
parable, has to go through the sacrament of Repentance and Confession in order
to get rid of sin, to cleanse his soul of the filth produced by sin and return
to the Church as one of her genuine members. The Church calls to repentance not
only those who are estranged from Christianity or those who call themselves
Christians although they live like heathens, but also the Christians who have
received a Christian education and have been kept safe from moral downfall but
have nevertheless fallen or still fall into violations of the law of the
Gospel. Reminding such Christians of the God-inspired saying of John the Evangelist,
“If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us”
(I John 1:8) the Church invites them to develop a more genuine repentance, to
make a firm decision of becoming true Christians, accurately examining
themselves each day, and carefully uprooting even the so-called small and
involuntary sins or vices—which in fact are the root of the great and serious
ones. The Church urges such Christians to try, as far as is humanly possible,
to live worthily of the vocation of a Christian devoted to God in spirit and in
truth. For these reasons every man has need of repentance, the most valuable
means of salvation for all.
The Meaning of Repentance.
To repent means literally to change one’s mind.
Namely, to change sinful thoughts and opinions manifested in everyday life by
sinful words and deeds; to be sorry for every sin one has committed; to disapprove
of it and loath it; to make a sincere decision not to come back to it; to keep
in one’s mind the thoughts on the other hand and opinions which are agreeable
to God and to observe for the rest of one’s life, by word and deeds, the law
that God has ordained and laid down. To use the words of the Lord Himself, to
repent means “to turn(one’s self) from darkness to light and from the power of
Satan unto God, that (one) may receive forgiveness of sins and inheritance
among them which are sanctified (Acts 26:18). Repentance, hence, may be defined
as the divine sacrament of the Christian Church whereby God, through a priest,
forgives all sins committed by Christians after Baptism, provided that they
truly repent and confess their sins to the priest. Therefore, since forgiveness
is granted, as was mentioned above, only to those Christians who truly repent
of their sins and confess them to a priest, the act of repentance presents two
sides: a) repentance proper, and b) confession—both of which we now proceed to
explain.
The Characteristics of True Repentance
We repent often and of many deeds. There is no
man on earth who has never repented of his evil deeds. Even Judas the traitor
repented of having betrayed innocent blood. This, of course, does not mean that
all people repent truly and return definitely to God and enter into the new
life in Christ, clean and forgiven, walking steadily on the road of salvation
like true children of God. It therefore has to be ascertained in each case
whether repentance and return to God are frank and genuine. There are several
signs and indications by which both the penitent and his friends or relatives
may know for certain that he has truly repented and that a change in his inward
disposition has been noted. Here are the most essential of these signs:
a. The
Awareness of a Sinful Condition.
The penitent must first obtain a clear knowledge
of his sins and be convinced that he is a sinner. He must examine, as
accurately as possible, the sins he has committed during the whole time he
lived a life of sin away from God. Moreover, he must examine the passions,
vices and defects that sin has created in his soul and to which he has bound
his mind, heart and body. This examination will convince him plainly that he is
guilty not of one or two, but of many sins. As there are Christians who have
never known the law of God and do not know even how to examine themselves,
unaware that many of their deeds are sinful, we shall enumerate some rather
serious sins in order to help them do so. We begin with the more grievous and
well known sins which even the most unenlightened and ignorant Christian may
detect.
(1) Transgression
of Commandments and Duties.
The penitent will examine whether he tells lies
in talking to others or in his dealings at his everyday occupation;
furthermore, whether by long use this has become a habit. Let him know that
falsehood is one of the gravest sins, which the God of truth abhors and
punishes as the offspring and product of the devil, who is a liar and the
father of lies, as Christ Himself declares (John 8:44). The penitent must be
very careful, for this sin has spread so wide in society that many do not think
of it as a serious fault and in fact often assume that they simply have to tell
lies, for otherwise they cannot earn their living. This idea is preposterous
and unfounded. For it is deplorable to maintain that the truthful and sincere
Christian who walks in truth, obeying the God of Truth and having full
confidence in Him as a good Protector and Father, cannot work and make a
living. He will also examine if the vice of falsehood has led him to slander
and calumny, in which case his guilt is far greater. For he has not simply
brought harm on another’s material interests, but on his honor and reputation
and has morally wounded or killed him.
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