Confession: The Path to Renewal of the Heart
by Archimandrite Irenei, Transcribed from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDXQz02KX9c
The life in Christ is a Mystery. I wish to speak today of the contours of this Mystery, which is at the very center of our existence as Christian people and which defines in a special way, our manner of life in the Church, for this is precisely with our precious Orthodox faith is, it is a life, it is something that is to be lived and lived specifically and wholly in Christ.
It is this that makes Mystery something intrinsic to who we are and how we exist. For our lives are bound up in nothing other than the life of God Himself, who takes us from among all creation and calls us His own. He inscribes our names on the palm of His hand, as the Holy Prophet Isaiah says, and more than this, He takes not just our names, but our whole lives, frail and weak and sinful though they are, and draws them to Himself, giving us nothing less than the highest honor in all of Creation, that which nothing else shares, not the angels, not anything in the Created Order.
Communion in His own life, a drawing of our created hearts into His own uncreated glory, until we are able to say with the Holy Apostle St. Paul, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” It is in the heart that I would like to begin.
For the Holy Fathers teach us that the heart is the chief organ of our spiritual life, the center of our being, they even call it a microcosm of all Creation. It is itself a Mystery, this heart of ours, something deep and wonderful to behold in which all the incomparable realities of this life are manifest. I would like to read to you a quotation by St. Macarius the Great, that over the years has become possibly one of my most beloved passages in the whole corpus of the Holy Fathers.
“Speaking of the heart,” St. Macarius says this, “the heart, my brethren, is only a small vessel, and yet there are dragons there and lions, there are poisonous beasts, every treasure of evil, there are rough and uneven roads, there are precipices, but led to our God and the angels, life is there and the Kingdom, there too is light, and there are the Apostles, and heavenly cities and treasuries of grace, all things lie within that little space.”
There is something to the Saint’s words that is as profound as this passage is beautiful. The heart contains with it all the glories of Creation, the Kingdom, light, great treasuries of grace, the essence of the apostolic life, God Himself. Yet at the same time, this same heart contains profound darkness, dragons and lions, as St. Macarius calls them, wild beasts, uneven roads, deep treasure houses of evil.
Can any of us, when we look into this Mystery of the heart that God has given to us, not cry out, “What a Mystery is man, what Mystery lies in me?” This very Mystery is, no pun really intended, at the heart of the Mystery of the Church, the Holy Sacrament about which I would like to speak this afternoon, the Mystery of Holy Confession.
Amongst the Church’s Sacraments, it is at least the second most frequent, if not in many contexts, by far the most frequent Sacrament in which the faithful will partake. It is in a real and unique way, the Sacrament of the heart, that which has the heart as the summation of our whole spiritual being as its direct aim and focus, its precious Church, it is the Heavenly Grace.
Confession is a gateway to salvation, a treasury of Divine beauty and joy, yet it is also perhaps the Mystery of the Church, the least treasured by those who partake of it. Holy Communion, by contrast, is approached most often, thanks be to God, as a profound privilege, an unparalleled joy, something for which we eagerly await and look forward, but Confession is very often seen as an obligation, a duty to be fulfilled, a responsibility.
This, in my experience, is not only the case with the faithful approaching to make their confession. I oftentimes hear very similar statements coming from clergy, from confessors. I spoke with a priest recently, who told me that he’s afraid of Confession, that he views it as a duty that he must bear. Another priest told me that it is, in his words, the responsibility that comes before the joy, the joy of serving the Divine Liturgy.
I certainly know that amongst many, many priests, it is approached with real trepidation and fear and trembling, the hearing of confessions. We see this twofold hesitancy towards what is perhaps one of the greatest mysteries of our Christian life. There is the hesitancy amongst all of us going to Confession, who are afraid, perhaps, of being put in a position to reveal the deep secrets of our hearts.
Behind this, we are perhaps even more afraid of simply having to confront what is really present there in our hearts. This is combined with that sense of obligation of rote practice, of patterned life that is devoid of any real potency.
On the other hand, as confessors, we encounter the fear, born perhaps of a godly humility. We don’t feel worthy to hear another person’s confession, but this often creates a discomfort. At confronting us, we think of it others' sins, for taking responsibility for the spiritual life of another, especially in awareness of our own shortcomings, and there is hesitancy.
I would wish to offer the following statements into the atmosphere of this pastoral conference, a statement that I believe is very much in line with the teachings of our Holy Fathers, and it is this, “So far as the practice of Confession thrives and is vibrant within the Church, so far also do Her people thrive, and so far this confession is a living reality, true, a vibrant experience of the Mystery of God’s grace. Their lives are transfigured and changed, but where it is weak and rote, and feeble, their lives are locked in a darkness that is terrible indeed. It is a darkness that is profoundly difficult to escape.”
As priest called by God to be His, to assist His ministers, our bishops in the shepherding of His Flock, we must foster in the hearts of the faithful, a burning love for the sacramental life in Christ that the Church offers us.
We must help them to see that a life in true freedom in Christ is possible. It must begin with the child of God rushing with full zeal, eagerness and seriousness to Confession often and with full devotion and joy. It is our obligation to show them how to open their hearts, wholly and completely to God, holding nothing back, so that no corner of their life remains divided from Him rebellious towards Him.
It is our responsibility to help them to run eagerly, as if it was important as their own breath to that Mystery by which His power can conquer their sin and draw them out of darkness towards His glory. In the remaining five hours and 43 minutes that I have with you this afternoon, I would like to offer a few practical reflections on how we can accomplish this in our church ministry, in terms that I hope might provide spiritual encouragement to all of us who struggle to fulfill our obedience to the ministry of God’s Holy Church.
I think that if Confession is to truly be made vibrant and alive, it has to begin with the vision of creation of the faithful to be brought into the fullness of the Sacrament. The confessors' work must not begin at the analoi, at the icon at the Gospel, and the Cross when Confession itself starts. The work of raising up God’s children to fully embrace this Mystery begins with catechesis with the Divine Church to preach the Word of the Father.
It is hearing the Sacred Scriptures, rightly delivered in the context of the Divine Services, expounded in obedience to the teachings of the Holy Fathers, that the faithful hear their story of the Salvation, the story of which they are a part, a story which is about their spiritual life. We must teach our people, in sincerity and honesty and love, what the Scriptures proclaim, that they are creatures of a God who has fashioned them with His own hands, not merely addressing Creation as accounting of past history, but is the very foundation of their spiritual life.
The Lord loves them. He has taken them up from the dusts. He has fashioned them into their mother’s wombs that He gives them His own breath, and above all that He has created them for sanctity and for Holiness. The life that God has given to them is His own life. He has created them for glory. We live in the world that seeks to strip them at every time of their hope, to rob them of joy, to make fear and despair the basic ingredients of human existence, in the context of this, we must tell them a greater truth.
We must give them the experience of that truth to the fullness of the Church’s life, unadulterated, unchanged, unbending, undiminished, so that they may know the preciousness of the life that God has created in them, hear the words that He says to each of us, “Fear not my little flock, it is your Father’s goodwill to give you the Kingdom.” We must tell them the story.
It must burn in their heart as their own spiritual autobiography, a life in vibrant and giving shape to their life. Having spoken to them of love, having shown them the love of Christ, we must help them to see that this creature that God has fashioned for Holiness, for sanctity, has been profoundly wounded, disfigured, crippled.
We must help them to see that sin, our own rebellion, has made this disfiguration so overwhelming, so universal, that it has come to appear to be normal, as if it were our nature itself. This is precisely the point at which the responsibility of the priest is at its highest. For the priest must help his flock to see that this crippling subhuman existence is not normal, it is not our nature, it is never who we are.
Why must this be stressed so strongly in our pastoral work? It is because it is the very root, the bedrock of the whole Gospel itself. It is only when we have rightly heard this message that the proclamation of the Church can be received for what it really is. You can be healed. It is only then that we can hear the words of the Savior, “If thou wouldst to be made perfect, take up thy cross,” and responds not merely sentimentally or a metaphor, but in the manner of St. Anthony the Great of Egypt, knowing in the depths of his being as he heard these words one afternoon from St. Matthew’s Gospel, that Christ was telling him it is possible to be perfect, to be made Holy and resolving to change his life by God’s grace.
The world looks at our lives. The world looks at man. What does it see? It looks at man and sees envy, strife, hatred, bitterness, brokenness. The world, beholding all of these says, “Look, he is an ignoble creature, barely better than an animal,” and so fosters despair, but God looks at man, His own creation. He sees strife, and envy, and bitterness, and hatred, and brokenness, and beholding all of these things, he says, “Look, there is great darkness, yet out of darkness cometh light.”
The Lord sees the weak creature and beholds one whom He would save. The Church sees the weak human creature and sees only a cause of profound hope, for where is in terms of physical sicknesses, not every ailment can be healed in this life. God gives to some of us suffering that is useful and beneficial for our salvation. At the realm of our spiritual life, every soul can be healed.
The power of God is greater than any and every sin, any and every force of evil. The mercy and the love of God can heal the most broken of creatures. The great hope of our life in Christ, the great hope of the Church, is precisely this, the broken creature can be mended, the sick patient can be healed. The heart darkened by sin, so lost and alone in this life can be renewed, restored, and made whole.
To accomplish this, we must enter directly into the Mystery of Confession itself, the third pillar of the pastoral work of the priest, as Father Artemi articulated it this morning, is careful souls. Confession is the chief means by which this careful soul is exercised. The priest who withdraws his flock into lives of truly salvific confession is a priest who understands them, that seeing our lives from the vintage point of God through the Church is a necessary starting point.
Too many people come to Confession not having been shown this reality of life. They come hardened by despair that, at the very best, all they would be able to do is get a few things off their chest, receive a little bit of fraternal support and some guidance, but the Church says, “No. More is possible, the very illness is from which you suffer can be addressed and healed.”
Recognizing this need, the priest then frames his pastoral care, his catechesis, his homilies delivered in the Divine services in such a way that the sacred nature of our Creation is known by the faithful. It is what prepares them to open their hearts to God, awaiting healing rather than fearing Him in despair for rooms that can never be alleviated. Having taught them in this way, having revealed to them that message, when it comes time to stand together before the Gospel and the Cross and to hear the confessions of His flock, the confessor will have but a few simple aims in mind.
I’d like to just talk about three of them. I could have talked about many more, but I think three will be sufficient. The first aim that the confessor has in his heart must be to stand in an awareness of the fear that rules the human heart in our days and to help the person out of this fear. What all of us discover, whatever priest discovers more and more concretely with every passing day, is the degree to which fear grips the heart of our present generation, of the people who come to us in Confession, as well as other context of pastoral council.
People are completely enslaved by their fear. They are afraid of God’s wrath, but they are also afraid of His mercy. They are afraid of the seemingly, overwhelming, overpowering dominance of their own sin. They are afraid of the hidden inner mysteries of their own heart. They are afraid. This fear which is the opposite of love gives fuel to all the tortures of the world. It is fear that gives power to hatred, to anger, to judgment. It is food for bitterness, for rebellion, for schism, for apostasy. It is the anchor of apathy.
We must strive, each of us, with every fiber of our being, to help people out of their fear. We must console them, help them, fill their ease and heart with the word of God through His Prophet. God who says, “Fear not for I am with thee, do not be dismayed, I am thy God. I will strengthen thee and I will help thee. I will uphold thee with My own right hand.”
In Confession in particular, the heart is at its most vulnerable to its own fears. People are afraid to disclose their sins, even to God. When they have received absolution, they are free to go back out into the world, afraid that they will commit more sin, the same sin and simply test God’s patience and wrath. We must help them know the perfect love which cast out fear.
We have to tell them over and over again that they do not need to be afraid, not of the devil, not of the world, not of their own sin. I cannot think of the last confession that I heard, when I did not say at one point or another, that simple phrase, “Don’t be afraid.” We must console and comfort and help to take this poison away from the faithful.
The second aim of the confessor must be to enter into the heart of the penitent person, not merely to observe, but to listen in some passive way, but to be a companion in the secret places of the heart, to stand there with the faithful penitents at the threshold of great darkness, where person has found himself trapped, enslaved, overcome, and at that point, standing together, with this child of God to announce the true light of God Himself, the light of Christ that illumines all things.
In one of the ancient pre-confession exaltations, the confessor says to the penitent before the confession begins, “It is not I, but Christ, who hears your confession. I am only a witness bearing testimony to the things that you shall say,” but we, as confessors, must not hear these words, and particularly this word “witness,” in a legal sense of a witness in a court room, or witness as one who simply vouches for a fact, who confirms the detail.
God does not need witnesses of that sort, He knows the human heart. He does not need any of us to standby and confirm what another person has said. When Christ appeared after His Holy Resurrection to the Apostles, recounting His Divine sufferings, He said, “You all were witnesses of these things.” In this saying, He exhorts them until they claim to their experiences. They saw Him suffer, they were at the empty tomb, they participated in the preaching of repentance.
As witnesses, they were present at the saving Passion and Resurrection of the Lord. The confessor, bearing witness to the confession of his precious spiritual child, must offer himself into the heart of the penitents. We cannot merely listen as some objective, outside-rationalizing observer. The priest must allow his heart to be touched by the suffering of the other person.
He must feel compassion for the great crosses born in every human heart, of which he can only see the tiniest glimpse. He must allow their sorrows to be known, to be felt in the very depths of his own heart. In this, we imitate the Savior, who did not stand off in the distance and preach passively into the air, but who walked with His disciples, who endured scourging, and suffering, and ridicule, who participated in their life, and by standing with them, drew them out of the darkness.
The confessor must be a companion to the faithful person in the journey through their own spiritual life. It is only if he does this, that the confessor can then say to the penitent, “Thy sins are forgiven thee,” and have these words not merely be some sort of announcement, but the very essence of the Gospel proclaimed in the heart of that person. The confessor must, therefore, see every confession as a missionary endeavor, he proclaims the Gospel in the territory of the heart where it is most needed, and if we want to know how to evangelize our people, how to be missionaries in the world, Confession is at the heart of our missionary endeavor.
As a third point, a third aim of the confessor, I would like to take an idea from the fathers of joining the myrrh-bearing women, and particularly St. Mary Magdalene, in proclaiming the Resurrection to the heart of the faithful. In fact, it is the voice of the angel that the priest is called to give life to at the moment of Confession, to make his own.
Wonderful moment that encounter recorded for us in the Holy Gospel. St. Mary comes to the tomb in all of her sorrow, or for mourning, or complete brokenness of heart. She’s lost, she sees only darkness, defeat, evil. In the midst of these, the angel proclaims to the women, “Why are you seeking the living among the dead? He is not here, He is risen.”
St. Mary Magdalene’s sorrow is so deep that she cannot even recognize her Lord when she looks at Him face to face, but then He called her by name, and her eyes the eyes of her heart are opened, and she sees and beholds her salvation. The priest, in the context of confession, must allow the same encounter to take place in the heart of the faithful. It is important to allow mourning, to find the depth that our sin really represents, to feel sorrow, to feel grief.
Death always precedes Resurrection, but the priest speaking with the words of the angel must speak the resurrection into the life of the faithful. God is not here. He is not trapped in your sins. He has risen, bringing you up in glory. The priest must take the voice of the Savior and call the penitent by name. The Lord looked at St. Mary Magdalene and said just that one word, “Mary.”
She responded her heart opened, “Rabboni,” Master. This is why it is so critical, and one of the most important moments in the Prayer of Absolution, is when the penitent hears his or her name, whether or not with generic absolution prayers. Absolution is God speaking by name, John, Mary, Peter, Adam, “Your sins are forgiven. I am here. Your heart is my heart. I will raise you up from death, now go forth in joy. I have made all things new. I have made you new. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad.”
These are the aims that the confessor must hold in his heart, not simply to listen attentively to offer a few remarks that he once heard in Seminary and to pronounce a prayer and let people go on their way, but to enter deeply into the spiritual lives of his faithful, creating that encounter with the Gospel that the Mystery represents, but I cannot finish without asking the question how.
How is the priest possibly supposed to do any of these things? How are we to accomplish such aims in the midst of the great work of the life in Christ? I would like to conclude by just reflecting a few thoughts on that practical question. It seems to me and it seems to the Church, to Her fathers, to Her canons that the priest who offers or who provides Confession to the people must offer nothing of his own wisdom.
This is a great excruciation, a great temptation for confessors, but a priest must not pass along his own wisdom, his own learning, his own reasoning, his understanding, much less his advice. In the spiritual healing of souls, these are not real medicine, they’re, at best, placebos. They look and they sound like spiritual consolation, but, at best, they accomplish nothing at all. At worst, they are profoundly distractive to the spiritual life.
Instead that pastor, rather than offering the wit and the wisdom of his rational mind, must offer his own heart in which the Holy Spirit lives, works and speaks. Our life in Christ is a personal life. It works person-to-person. This is evidenced for us over and over again in our liturgical services. Confession is not done generally. We do not give Communion, except by name, to one person encountering God face-to-face.
The priest, therefore, must in the same way offer his own heart. This is the context for the spiritual council. When we do this, we emulate the life of the Trinity in eternal Communion of love shared between the Father and Son and Spirit. This means that the priest himself must be profoundly strengthened in his own heart by his own confession and deep interior repentance. I will tell you the advice that was given to me when I was made a deacon by Bishop Kallistos.
We had a tradition back in England of going around to all the priests, the bishops who were present, and asking for a word. I would go around and ask everyone, “What is the role of a deacon?” Perhaps the most direct answer that was given to me was from a priest, Latif Mikhail, I said to him, “Father, what is the role of a deacon?” and he looked to me squarely in the eyes and said, “The role of a deacon is to be wrong,” (laughing) that was very true, I found in my back.
I went to Vladika Kallistos, and I asked him to give me some council after my ordination. He said, “I will tell you my own experience that every day of my life, since I was first ordained, has been a day of deeper suffering than I ever could have imagined, but with it a more profound joy than I could ever have known otherwise.”
I wish you more of the latter and less of the former. Of course, the latter only comes from the former, suffering which leads to repentance is what creates our joy, and all of us as priests must embrace a life of profound continual repentance. It is the great sorrow of Church life that it is priests who generally, least of all, has access to Confession, that’s why events such as these conferences are so important, that every priest has the possibility of confessing.
Many priests are blessed in being in large cathedrals with multiple clergy, but many priests are alone. It is impossible to say Confession regularly. Let us take advantage of that opportunity when it comes. Our hearts must be fed, but similarly, the priest must be deeply, unbendingly shaped by the canonical consciousness of the Church. I very much do not mean that to suggest that priest must be an expert in so-called Canon Law, a phrase that I quite despise, as if the canons were laws to be exercised in a legal framework.
I’m not suggesting, either, that the priests need to be overly familiar even with the text of the canons. This is the responsibility given not to the priest, but to our hierarchs. Rather, what I mean to suggest is that the priest must be wholly shaped by that to which the canons give life, the living heritage of the Church in its fullness, the unchanging Truth of the Gospel preserved in the world until He comes again.
This, and only this, must be what forms the confessor’s heart, if he is to be of any spiritual value whatsoever to his children. A priest’s obedience to the life of the Church is the source of his spiritual strength. It is the source of his potential as a surgeon of the soul. It is indirect proportion to obedience to the Church, what She teaches, how She teaches, what She proclaims, whether or not it is popular, is in direct proportion to our obedience, that we have the ability to give not our own word to those who are suffering, but the Word of God which the Church gives to us.
So often our confessions, that we as priests offer, are weakened deeply by the fact that we are offering our own thoughts rather than the Word of God preserved and handed to us in the Church, which is only accessible to us when we submit wholly, joyfully, and openly to all that the Church teaches.
There’s a story of one of the desert fathers on which I was reflecting recently, of a father who was reading the Psalter, the Kathisma, during Vespers. He lost his place, and he skipped one Verse and he kept reading. At the end, one of the elder monks came up to him, he didn’t interrupt him in the Service, it’s a very good lesson. I think sometimes in some of our parishes today, someone who would have left out of the iconostasis, would slap them and say, “No, no go back (laughing).”
The elder let him finish, but he went up to him at the end and he said, “Father, do you not know in whose presence you’re standing? If you really knew that you speak to God Himself, every word would be precious.” This must be our attitude to all of the Church’s life, every word, every motion, every tradition, every element of our life handed to us in the Church is precious.
Every time we try to violate it, because it makes us uncomfortable or we think we have a better idea, every time our spiritual life is weakened and every time we allow that to happen, the words that we then speak to our flock becomes diluted, watered down, lukewarm and that word does not have the power to heal, but if we are obedient, if we treasure in the depths of our heart all that the Church gives us, in obedience and humility, then the words that come out of our mouth are not our words, but the words of God.
St. Seraphim of Sarov was once asked, “What is like, Father, to receive Divine words and to speak them, tell us what it’s like, what the experience of that?” He said, “I simply open my mouth and talk,” he was suggesting that there is no great trends into which he was delivered, in which Divine revelation came through him, but when his life was wholly conformed to God’s, the words that came from his own heart were Divine words. They were the words of the Lord for those who needed to hear them.
The Mystery of the priesthood, the fearful Mystery of the priesthood, is that that is true for every priest of God. If our life is conformed to His will, wholly and completely, then by His Grace, not by our own work or merit, God speaks to His flock the words that they must hear.
Let me conclude with one final comment, brief comment, on the importance of fostering this deeper love for Confession, the effects that it has on the life of a parish. Sometimes we wonder why our parishes don’t grow, or why there is dissension, or why stagnancy seems to win out of our zeal and piety, but when we wonder these things, when we observe these realities in our parish life, in our Christian community, let us not neglect to ask whether a distinct cause of these spiritual struggles is an attitude towards Confession that prevails amongst us, that does not open the heart to true renewal.
Abba John of Apamea, another father from the desert, once said, “If we purify ourselves of wickedness, then we will see invisible Divine realities, but, brethren, there is not point while we are still blind and asking why we cannot see the light. There’s no point in stuffing up our ears and then protesting that we cannot hear anything.” It is with us and so it is with the life of a parish.
There is no point in saying why do we not have a vibrancy of spiritual fervor, of zeal, when the very thing that could provide us is something that we treat so flippantly or with such as a sense of duty, but if we wholeheartedly embrace the Mystery of Repentance, not as an obligation, not as a requirement, but as a joyful and joy-creating foundation for the spiritual life, then we will have hearts that burn with God’s grace.
We will have, within us, that which is promised by the Savior and delivered at Holy Pentecost, the Holy Spirit Himself alive in our hearts, filling our lives and our words and our actions, in the same way that He has filled the lives of the great saints and martyrs of all generations passed and including our own. My beloved fathers and brethren, may our own hearts be strengthened for the joy of this great Holy Work.
Let us be fed each of us by the love of God, that standing with His children, we may show them what He offers in this life. Make real what He promises away out of sin, a path to the renewal of the heart and life transformed by His love.
I’ll leave you with the words of St. Theodoros the Ascetic from his spiritual chapters, he writes, “With the modest and humble heart, let us repeat over and over again the prayer of our great Father Arsenios, the prayer he used to offer to the Lord, 'My God, do not abandon me. I have done nothing good in thy sight, but because thou art compassionate, grant me the power to make a new beginning,' and how true it is,” the Saint continues, “that all our salvation lies in the mercy and the deep love that God has for us. To Him, be glory, dominion, and worship now and ever.” Amen. Please forgive me and pray for me, a sinner.
Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDXQz02KX9c
by Archimandrite Irenei, Transcribed from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDXQz02KX9c
The life in Christ is a Mystery. I wish to speak today of the contours of this Mystery, which is at the very center of our existence as Christian people and which defines in a special way, our manner of life in the Church, for this is precisely with our precious Orthodox faith is, it is a life, it is something that is to be lived and lived specifically and wholly in Christ.
It is this that makes Mystery something intrinsic to who we are and how we exist. For our lives are bound up in nothing other than the life of God Himself, who takes us from among all creation and calls us His own. He inscribes our names on the palm of His hand, as the Holy Prophet Isaiah says, and more than this, He takes not just our names, but our whole lives, frail and weak and sinful though they are, and draws them to Himself, giving us nothing less than the highest honor in all of Creation, that which nothing else shares, not the angels, not anything in the Created Order.
Communion in His own life, a drawing of our created hearts into His own uncreated glory, until we are able to say with the Holy Apostle St. Paul, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” It is in the heart that I would like to begin.
For the Holy Fathers teach us that the heart is the chief organ of our spiritual life, the center of our being, they even call it a microcosm of all Creation. It is itself a Mystery, this heart of ours, something deep and wonderful to behold in which all the incomparable realities of this life are manifest. I would like to read to you a quotation by St. Macarius the Great, that over the years has become possibly one of my most beloved passages in the whole corpus of the Holy Fathers.
“Speaking of the heart,” St. Macarius says this, “the heart, my brethren, is only a small vessel, and yet there are dragons there and lions, there are poisonous beasts, every treasure of evil, there are rough and uneven roads, there are precipices, but led to our God and the angels, life is there and the Kingdom, there too is light, and there are the Apostles, and heavenly cities and treasuries of grace, all things lie within that little space.”
There is something to the Saint’s words that is as profound as this passage is beautiful. The heart contains with it all the glories of Creation, the Kingdom, light, great treasuries of grace, the essence of the apostolic life, God Himself. Yet at the same time, this same heart contains profound darkness, dragons and lions, as St. Macarius calls them, wild beasts, uneven roads, deep treasure houses of evil.
Can any of us, when we look into this Mystery of the heart that God has given to us, not cry out, “What a Mystery is man, what Mystery lies in me?” This very Mystery is, no pun really intended, at the heart of the Mystery of the Church, the Holy Sacrament about which I would like to speak this afternoon, the Mystery of Holy Confession.
Amongst the Church’s Sacraments, it is at least the second most frequent, if not in many contexts, by far the most frequent Sacrament in which the faithful will partake. It is in a real and unique way, the Sacrament of the heart, that which has the heart as the summation of our whole spiritual being as its direct aim and focus, its precious Church, it is the Heavenly Grace.
Confession is a gateway to salvation, a treasury of Divine beauty and joy, yet it is also perhaps the Mystery of the Church, the least treasured by those who partake of it. Holy Communion, by contrast, is approached most often, thanks be to God, as a profound privilege, an unparalleled joy, something for which we eagerly await and look forward, but Confession is very often seen as an obligation, a duty to be fulfilled, a responsibility.
This, in my experience, is not only the case with the faithful approaching to make their confession. I oftentimes hear very similar statements coming from clergy, from confessors. I spoke with a priest recently, who told me that he’s afraid of Confession, that he views it as a duty that he must bear. Another priest told me that it is, in his words, the responsibility that comes before the joy, the joy of serving the Divine Liturgy.
I certainly know that amongst many, many priests, it is approached with real trepidation and fear and trembling, the hearing of confessions. We see this twofold hesitancy towards what is perhaps one of the greatest mysteries of our Christian life. There is the hesitancy amongst all of us going to Confession, who are afraid, perhaps, of being put in a position to reveal the deep secrets of our hearts.
Behind this, we are perhaps even more afraid of simply having to confront what is really present there in our hearts. This is combined with that sense of obligation of rote practice, of patterned life that is devoid of any real potency.
On the other hand, as confessors, we encounter the fear, born perhaps of a godly humility. We don’t feel worthy to hear another person’s confession, but this often creates a discomfort. At confronting us, we think of it others' sins, for taking responsibility for the spiritual life of another, especially in awareness of our own shortcomings, and there is hesitancy.
I would wish to offer the following statements into the atmosphere of this pastoral conference, a statement that I believe is very much in line with the teachings of our Holy Fathers, and it is this, “So far as the practice of Confession thrives and is vibrant within the Church, so far also do Her people thrive, and so far this confession is a living reality, true, a vibrant experience of the Mystery of God’s grace. Their lives are transfigured and changed, but where it is weak and rote, and feeble, their lives are locked in a darkness that is terrible indeed. It is a darkness that is profoundly difficult to escape.”
As priest called by God to be His, to assist His ministers, our bishops in the shepherding of His Flock, we must foster in the hearts of the faithful, a burning love for the sacramental life in Christ that the Church offers us.
We must help them to see that a life in true freedom in Christ is possible. It must begin with the child of God rushing with full zeal, eagerness and seriousness to Confession often and with full devotion and joy. It is our obligation to show them how to open their hearts, wholly and completely to God, holding nothing back, so that no corner of their life remains divided from Him rebellious towards Him.
It is our responsibility to help them to run eagerly, as if it was important as their own breath to that Mystery by which His power can conquer their sin and draw them out of darkness towards His glory. In the remaining five hours and 43 minutes that I have with you this afternoon, I would like to offer a few practical reflections on how we can accomplish this in our church ministry, in terms that I hope might provide spiritual encouragement to all of us who struggle to fulfill our obedience to the ministry of God’s Holy Church.
I think that if Confession is to truly be made vibrant and alive, it has to begin with the vision of creation of the faithful to be brought into the fullness of the Sacrament. The confessors' work must not begin at the analoi, at the icon at the Gospel, and the Cross when Confession itself starts. The work of raising up God’s children to fully embrace this Mystery begins with catechesis with the Divine Church to preach the Word of the Father.
It is hearing the Sacred Scriptures, rightly delivered in the context of the Divine Services, expounded in obedience to the teachings of the Holy Fathers, that the faithful hear their story of the Salvation, the story of which they are a part, a story which is about their spiritual life. We must teach our people, in sincerity and honesty and love, what the Scriptures proclaim, that they are creatures of a God who has fashioned them with His own hands, not merely addressing Creation as accounting of past history, but is the very foundation of their spiritual life.
The Lord loves them. He has taken them up from the dusts. He has fashioned them into their mother’s wombs that He gives them His own breath, and above all that He has created them for sanctity and for Holiness. The life that God has given to them is His own life. He has created them for glory. We live in the world that seeks to strip them at every time of their hope, to rob them of joy, to make fear and despair the basic ingredients of human existence, in the context of this, we must tell them a greater truth.
We must give them the experience of that truth to the fullness of the Church’s life, unadulterated, unchanged, unbending, undiminished, so that they may know the preciousness of the life that God has created in them, hear the words that He says to each of us, “Fear not my little flock, it is your Father’s goodwill to give you the Kingdom.” We must tell them the story.
It must burn in their heart as their own spiritual autobiography, a life in vibrant and giving shape to their life. Having spoken to them of love, having shown them the love of Christ, we must help them to see that this creature that God has fashioned for Holiness, for sanctity, has been profoundly wounded, disfigured, crippled.
We must help them to see that sin, our own rebellion, has made this disfiguration so overwhelming, so universal, that it has come to appear to be normal, as if it were our nature itself. This is precisely the point at which the responsibility of the priest is at its highest. For the priest must help his flock to see that this crippling subhuman existence is not normal, it is not our nature, it is never who we are.
Why must this be stressed so strongly in our pastoral work? It is because it is the very root, the bedrock of the whole Gospel itself. It is only when we have rightly heard this message that the proclamation of the Church can be received for what it really is. You can be healed. It is only then that we can hear the words of the Savior, “If thou wouldst to be made perfect, take up thy cross,” and responds not merely sentimentally or a metaphor, but in the manner of St. Anthony the Great of Egypt, knowing in the depths of his being as he heard these words one afternoon from St. Matthew’s Gospel, that Christ was telling him it is possible to be perfect, to be made Holy and resolving to change his life by God’s grace.
The world looks at our lives. The world looks at man. What does it see? It looks at man and sees envy, strife, hatred, bitterness, brokenness. The world, beholding all of these says, “Look, he is an ignoble creature, barely better than an animal,” and so fosters despair, but God looks at man, His own creation. He sees strife, and envy, and bitterness, and hatred, and brokenness, and beholding all of these things, he says, “Look, there is great darkness, yet out of darkness cometh light.”
The Lord sees the weak creature and beholds one whom He would save. The Church sees the weak human creature and sees only a cause of profound hope, for where is in terms of physical sicknesses, not every ailment can be healed in this life. God gives to some of us suffering that is useful and beneficial for our salvation. At the realm of our spiritual life, every soul can be healed.
The power of God is greater than any and every sin, any and every force of evil. The mercy and the love of God can heal the most broken of creatures. The great hope of our life in Christ, the great hope of the Church, is precisely this, the broken creature can be mended, the sick patient can be healed. The heart darkened by sin, so lost and alone in this life can be renewed, restored, and made whole.
To accomplish this, we must enter directly into the Mystery of Confession itself, the third pillar of the pastoral work of the priest, as Father Artemi articulated it this morning, is careful souls. Confession is the chief means by which this careful soul is exercised. The priest who withdraws his flock into lives of truly salvific confession is a priest who understands them, that seeing our lives from the vintage point of God through the Church is a necessary starting point.
Too many people come to Confession not having been shown this reality of life. They come hardened by despair that, at the very best, all they would be able to do is get a few things off their chest, receive a little bit of fraternal support and some guidance, but the Church says, “No. More is possible, the very illness is from which you suffer can be addressed and healed.”
Recognizing this need, the priest then frames his pastoral care, his catechesis, his homilies delivered in the Divine services in such a way that the sacred nature of our Creation is known by the faithful. It is what prepares them to open their hearts to God, awaiting healing rather than fearing Him in despair for rooms that can never be alleviated. Having taught them in this way, having revealed to them that message, when it comes time to stand together before the Gospel and the Cross and to hear the confessions of His flock, the confessor will have but a few simple aims in mind.
I’d like to just talk about three of them. I could have talked about many more, but I think three will be sufficient. The first aim that the confessor has in his heart must be to stand in an awareness of the fear that rules the human heart in our days and to help the person out of this fear. What all of us discover, whatever priest discovers more and more concretely with every passing day, is the degree to which fear grips the heart of our present generation, of the people who come to us in Confession, as well as other context of pastoral council.
People are completely enslaved by their fear. They are afraid of God’s wrath, but they are also afraid of His mercy. They are afraid of the seemingly, overwhelming, overpowering dominance of their own sin. They are afraid of the hidden inner mysteries of their own heart. They are afraid. This fear which is the opposite of love gives fuel to all the tortures of the world. It is fear that gives power to hatred, to anger, to judgment. It is food for bitterness, for rebellion, for schism, for apostasy. It is the anchor of apathy.
We must strive, each of us, with every fiber of our being, to help people out of their fear. We must console them, help them, fill their ease and heart with the word of God through His Prophet. God who says, “Fear not for I am with thee, do not be dismayed, I am thy God. I will strengthen thee and I will help thee. I will uphold thee with My own right hand.”
In Confession in particular, the heart is at its most vulnerable to its own fears. People are afraid to disclose their sins, even to God. When they have received absolution, they are free to go back out into the world, afraid that they will commit more sin, the same sin and simply test God’s patience and wrath. We must help them know the perfect love which cast out fear.
We have to tell them over and over again that they do not need to be afraid, not of the devil, not of the world, not of their own sin. I cannot think of the last confession that I heard, when I did not say at one point or another, that simple phrase, “Don’t be afraid.” We must console and comfort and help to take this poison away from the faithful.
The second aim of the confessor must be to enter into the heart of the penitent person, not merely to observe, but to listen in some passive way, but to be a companion in the secret places of the heart, to stand there with the faithful penitents at the threshold of great darkness, where person has found himself trapped, enslaved, overcome, and at that point, standing together, with this child of God to announce the true light of God Himself, the light of Christ that illumines all things.
In one of the ancient pre-confession exaltations, the confessor says to the penitent before the confession begins, “It is not I, but Christ, who hears your confession. I am only a witness bearing testimony to the things that you shall say,” but we, as confessors, must not hear these words, and particularly this word “witness,” in a legal sense of a witness in a court room, or witness as one who simply vouches for a fact, who confirms the detail.
God does not need witnesses of that sort, He knows the human heart. He does not need any of us to standby and confirm what another person has said. When Christ appeared after His Holy Resurrection to the Apostles, recounting His Divine sufferings, He said, “You all were witnesses of these things.” In this saying, He exhorts them until they claim to their experiences. They saw Him suffer, they were at the empty tomb, they participated in the preaching of repentance.
As witnesses, they were present at the saving Passion and Resurrection of the Lord. The confessor, bearing witness to the confession of his precious spiritual child, must offer himself into the heart of the penitents. We cannot merely listen as some objective, outside-rationalizing observer. The priest must allow his heart to be touched by the suffering of the other person.
He must feel compassion for the great crosses born in every human heart, of which he can only see the tiniest glimpse. He must allow their sorrows to be known, to be felt in the very depths of his own heart. In this, we imitate the Savior, who did not stand off in the distance and preach passively into the air, but who walked with His disciples, who endured scourging, and suffering, and ridicule, who participated in their life, and by standing with them, drew them out of the darkness.
The confessor must be a companion to the faithful person in the journey through their own spiritual life. It is only if he does this, that the confessor can then say to the penitent, “Thy sins are forgiven thee,” and have these words not merely be some sort of announcement, but the very essence of the Gospel proclaimed in the heart of that person. The confessor must, therefore, see every confession as a missionary endeavor, he proclaims the Gospel in the territory of the heart where it is most needed, and if we want to know how to evangelize our people, how to be missionaries in the world, Confession is at the heart of our missionary endeavor.
As a third point, a third aim of the confessor, I would like to take an idea from the fathers of joining the myrrh-bearing women, and particularly St. Mary Magdalene, in proclaiming the Resurrection to the heart of the faithful. In fact, it is the voice of the angel that the priest is called to give life to at the moment of Confession, to make his own.
Wonderful moment that encounter recorded for us in the Holy Gospel. St. Mary comes to the tomb in all of her sorrow, or for mourning, or complete brokenness of heart. She’s lost, she sees only darkness, defeat, evil. In the midst of these, the angel proclaims to the women, “Why are you seeking the living among the dead? He is not here, He is risen.”
St. Mary Magdalene’s sorrow is so deep that she cannot even recognize her Lord when she looks at Him face to face, but then He called her by name, and her eyes the eyes of her heart are opened, and she sees and beholds her salvation. The priest, in the context of confession, must allow the same encounter to take place in the heart of the faithful. It is important to allow mourning, to find the depth that our sin really represents, to feel sorrow, to feel grief.
Death always precedes Resurrection, but the priest speaking with the words of the angel must speak the resurrection into the life of the faithful. God is not here. He is not trapped in your sins. He has risen, bringing you up in glory. The priest must take the voice of the Savior and call the penitent by name. The Lord looked at St. Mary Magdalene and said just that one word, “Mary.”
She responded her heart opened, “Rabboni,” Master. This is why it is so critical, and one of the most important moments in the Prayer of Absolution, is when the penitent hears his or her name, whether or not with generic absolution prayers. Absolution is God speaking by name, John, Mary, Peter, Adam, “Your sins are forgiven. I am here. Your heart is my heart. I will raise you up from death, now go forth in joy. I have made all things new. I have made you new. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad.”
These are the aims that the confessor must hold in his heart, not simply to listen attentively to offer a few remarks that he once heard in Seminary and to pronounce a prayer and let people go on their way, but to enter deeply into the spiritual lives of his faithful, creating that encounter with the Gospel that the Mystery represents, but I cannot finish without asking the question how.
How is the priest possibly supposed to do any of these things? How are we to accomplish such aims in the midst of the great work of the life in Christ? I would like to conclude by just reflecting a few thoughts on that practical question. It seems to me and it seems to the Church, to Her fathers, to Her canons that the priest who offers or who provides Confession to the people must offer nothing of his own wisdom.
This is a great excruciation, a great temptation for confessors, but a priest must not pass along his own wisdom, his own learning, his own reasoning, his understanding, much less his advice. In the spiritual healing of souls, these are not real medicine, they’re, at best, placebos. They look and they sound like spiritual consolation, but, at best, they accomplish nothing at all. At worst, they are profoundly distractive to the spiritual life.
Instead that pastor, rather than offering the wit and the wisdom of his rational mind, must offer his own heart in which the Holy Spirit lives, works and speaks. Our life in Christ is a personal life. It works person-to-person. This is evidenced for us over and over again in our liturgical services. Confession is not done generally. We do not give Communion, except by name, to one person encountering God face-to-face.
The priest, therefore, must in the same way offer his own heart. This is the context for the spiritual council. When we do this, we emulate the life of the Trinity in eternal Communion of love shared between the Father and Son and Spirit. This means that the priest himself must be profoundly strengthened in his own heart by his own confession and deep interior repentance. I will tell you the advice that was given to me when I was made a deacon by Bishop Kallistos.
We had a tradition back in England of going around to all the priests, the bishops who were present, and asking for a word. I would go around and ask everyone, “What is the role of a deacon?” Perhaps the most direct answer that was given to me was from a priest, Latif Mikhail, I said to him, “Father, what is the role of a deacon?” and he looked to me squarely in the eyes and said, “The role of a deacon is to be wrong,” (laughing) that was very true, I found in my back.
I went to Vladika Kallistos, and I asked him to give me some council after my ordination. He said, “I will tell you my own experience that every day of my life, since I was first ordained, has been a day of deeper suffering than I ever could have imagined, but with it a more profound joy than I could ever have known otherwise.”
I wish you more of the latter and less of the former. Of course, the latter only comes from the former, suffering which leads to repentance is what creates our joy, and all of us as priests must embrace a life of profound continual repentance. It is the great sorrow of Church life that it is priests who generally, least of all, has access to Confession, that’s why events such as these conferences are so important, that every priest has the possibility of confessing.
Many priests are blessed in being in large cathedrals with multiple clergy, but many priests are alone. It is impossible to say Confession regularly. Let us take advantage of that opportunity when it comes. Our hearts must be fed, but similarly, the priest must be deeply, unbendingly shaped by the canonical consciousness of the Church. I very much do not mean that to suggest that priest must be an expert in so-called Canon Law, a phrase that I quite despise, as if the canons were laws to be exercised in a legal framework.
I’m not suggesting, either, that the priests need to be overly familiar even with the text of the canons. This is the responsibility given not to the priest, but to our hierarchs. Rather, what I mean to suggest is that the priest must be wholly shaped by that to which the canons give life, the living heritage of the Church in its fullness, the unchanging Truth of the Gospel preserved in the world until He comes again.
This, and only this, must be what forms the confessor’s heart, if he is to be of any spiritual value whatsoever to his children. A priest’s obedience to the life of the Church is the source of his spiritual strength. It is the source of his potential as a surgeon of the soul. It is indirect proportion to obedience to the Church, what She teaches, how She teaches, what She proclaims, whether or not it is popular, is in direct proportion to our obedience, that we have the ability to give not our own word to those who are suffering, but the Word of God which the Church gives to us.
So often our confessions, that we as priests offer, are weakened deeply by the fact that we are offering our own thoughts rather than the Word of God preserved and handed to us in the Church, which is only accessible to us when we submit wholly, joyfully, and openly to all that the Church teaches.
There’s a story of one of the desert fathers on which I was reflecting recently, of a father who was reading the Psalter, the Kathisma, during Vespers. He lost his place, and he skipped one Verse and he kept reading. At the end, one of the elder monks came up to him, he didn’t interrupt him in the Service, it’s a very good lesson. I think sometimes in some of our parishes today, someone who would have left out of the iconostasis, would slap them and say, “No, no go back (laughing).”
The elder let him finish, but he went up to him at the end and he said, “Father, do you not know in whose presence you’re standing? If you really knew that you speak to God Himself, every word would be precious.” This must be our attitude to all of the Church’s life, every word, every motion, every tradition, every element of our life handed to us in the Church is precious.
Every time we try to violate it, because it makes us uncomfortable or we think we have a better idea, every time our spiritual life is weakened and every time we allow that to happen, the words that we then speak to our flock becomes diluted, watered down, lukewarm and that word does not have the power to heal, but if we are obedient, if we treasure in the depths of our heart all that the Church gives us, in obedience and humility, then the words that come out of our mouth are not our words, but the words of God.
St. Seraphim of Sarov was once asked, “What is like, Father, to receive Divine words and to speak them, tell us what it’s like, what the experience of that?” He said, “I simply open my mouth and talk,” he was suggesting that there is no great trends into which he was delivered, in which Divine revelation came through him, but when his life was wholly conformed to God’s, the words that came from his own heart were Divine words. They were the words of the Lord for those who needed to hear them.
The Mystery of the priesthood, the fearful Mystery of the priesthood, is that that is true for every priest of God. If our life is conformed to His will, wholly and completely, then by His Grace, not by our own work or merit, God speaks to His flock the words that they must hear.
Let me conclude with one final comment, brief comment, on the importance of fostering this deeper love for Confession, the effects that it has on the life of a parish. Sometimes we wonder why our parishes don’t grow, or why there is dissension, or why stagnancy seems to win out of our zeal and piety, but when we wonder these things, when we observe these realities in our parish life, in our Christian community, let us not neglect to ask whether a distinct cause of these spiritual struggles is an attitude towards Confession that prevails amongst us, that does not open the heart to true renewal.
Abba John of Apamea, another father from the desert, once said, “If we purify ourselves of wickedness, then we will see invisible Divine realities, but, brethren, there is not point while we are still blind and asking why we cannot see the light. There’s no point in stuffing up our ears and then protesting that we cannot hear anything.” It is with us and so it is with the life of a parish.
There is no point in saying why do we not have a vibrancy of spiritual fervor, of zeal, when the very thing that could provide us is something that we treat so flippantly or with such as a sense of duty, but if we wholeheartedly embrace the Mystery of Repentance, not as an obligation, not as a requirement, but as a joyful and joy-creating foundation for the spiritual life, then we will have hearts that burn with God’s grace.
We will have, within us, that which is promised by the Savior and delivered at Holy Pentecost, the Holy Spirit Himself alive in our hearts, filling our lives and our words and our actions, in the same way that He has filled the lives of the great saints and martyrs of all generations passed and including our own. My beloved fathers and brethren, may our own hearts be strengthened for the joy of this great Holy Work.
Let us be fed each of us by the love of God, that standing with His children, we may show them what He offers in this life. Make real what He promises away out of sin, a path to the renewal of the heart and life transformed by His love.
I’ll leave you with the words of St. Theodoros the Ascetic from his spiritual chapters, he writes, “With the modest and humble heart, let us repeat over and over again the prayer of our great Father Arsenios, the prayer he used to offer to the Lord, 'My God, do not abandon me. I have done nothing good in thy sight, but because thou art compassionate, grant me the power to make a new beginning,' and how true it is,” the Saint continues, “that all our salvation lies in the mercy and the deep love that God has for us. To Him, be glory, dominion, and worship now and ever.” Amen. Please forgive me and pray for me, a sinner.
Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDXQz02KX9c
