What is confession, and what is repentance? Why are so many people afraid of both? Do you confound one or both with penance? Do you understand the word? Why should society be horrified, as—with some pretense to consolation—it thinks it is horrified when the season of fast comes around, and long faces inquire of round faces, whether they are going to confession? Do you know the history and purpose of repentance? Confession is no bugbear. It is an action. Repentance is not a ghost. It is a condition of our nature. And so, if there is a foundation, a purpose, a history of repentance, there must also be a result to all this—to repentance I mean, or it would not be today as old as the human race!
Let us now first hear of the origin of confession and repentance, and then, having traced it down through the ages to our day, we shall see the results, or more accurately speaking, we shall see the fruits of repentance. In doing so we will pay particular attention to the first confession ever heard on earth, and see what a terrible curse can follow an improper confession, as well as a blessing follows a true confession.
At the same time, we must bear in mind that the Old Testament’s record of repentance we employ as history, while the teaching of the New Testament are the words essentially necessary for making valid this Christian Sacrament.
Our forefathers, Adam and Eve, having eaten of the forbidden fruit, sinned; and behold the Lord appeared to them, to move them unto repentance. Adam, said He, where art thou? Who told thee that thou wast naked? But Adam, unfortunately, did not take heed to this merciful call to repentance. He did not open-heartedly confess his sins before the All-knowing God; he did not prostrate himself before God and with tears of contrition pray to Him:—O, Lord, I sinned before Thee, I transgressed Thy commandment. He makes an attempt to lay the fault on Eve—his wife. The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me,—says he—she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the woman, in her turn, follows the example of her husband. Instead of repenting, she casts the blame on the serpent. The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat—Eve says. So unfortunately did the first confession end. And they who confess so ignorantly receive a heavy punishment. Cursed is the ground for thy sake, pronounced the All-just Judge. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return (Gen. iii).
Adam’s first-born—Cain—out of envy commits a terrible crime: he slays his brother Abel. And again the Lord God endeavors to move the criminal unto repentance. Where is Abel, thy brother? He asks of the fratricide. And again the Merciful God’s call is unheeded. But what audacity do we see in the miserable man; what terrible intellect—blinded sacrilege! The youngest brother’s elder boldly answers the All-knowing One: Am I my brother’s keeper? And again the All-just pronounces a bitter sentence: thou art cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand (Gen., iv. 9-11).
In course of time people multiplied. Sin, unrighteousness, blasphemy, iniquity multiplied. To put an end to their iniquities the Lord set on annihilating the human race, and with it every living thing on the earth. Mankind was given time and special opportunities to repent, so that the people were entirely unjustifiable in their evil ways. For one hundred and twenty years the call to repentance was continually heard; but corruption continued; the earth was filled with unrighteousness. And the unrepentant people, with everything living were lost in the waters of the deluge. After the deluge, when mankind again increased, the Lord God selected as the object of His special care the Hebrew people. That faith and piety might be insured in them, God gave them commandments and ordinances. And among those ordinances we see they had confession. The book of Levitcus states that those who sinned had to bring unto the door of the tabernacle of the Congregation a sacrifice, and laying their hand on the animal’s head, which they offered, confess their sins (Levit. iv) . Besides this, the High Priest once a year heard the confession of all Israel (Levit. xvi). In special cases the Lord would send. Prophets to receive confessions. Nathan, for instance, having rebuked King David, received his repentance, and in the name of God declared him absolved . King Ahab repented and confessed before the Prophet Elias (I Kings, xxi. 27).
Before the advent of Jesus Christ there was sent to preach repentance and receive confessions a Forerunner—John the Baptist. Then went to him Jerusalem, and all Judea, and all the region round about Jordan, and were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins (Matt., iii. 5-6). Calling unto repentance, he said: Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths straight. O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance. For now the axe is laid unto the root of the tree; every tree, therefore, which bringeth not forth good fruit, is hewn down, and cast into the fire (Luke, iii). At last the Lamb of God, Who taketh away the sins of the World, appears on earth. Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, He says, and I will give you rest. And He actually does take off the yoke of sins of every sinner, in whom He finds repentance. He forgives the adulteress; He forgives the publican; He forgives the thief.
That confession, after His ascension, may be perpetuated in His Church, Jesus Christ gives the Apostles the Spirit, saying: Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whosoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them, and whosoever sins ye retain, they are retained (John, xx. 23). Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven (Matt., xvi. 19). The Apostles, through ordination or laying on of hands, transmitted the Spirit given to them to Bishops and Priests. And since then to our day, in the true Church of Christ, the Sacrament of Repentance is maintained imperishable. Do you now see whose work it is? It is the work of the merciful God, Who would that no one be lost, but that all may come to repentance. Consequently how very unfortunate are they, who do not repent and confess their sins, but give themselves to their own frail competence, give themselves up to the world and then to the devil! They deny their own salvation, they cast away from themselves the mercy of God. And what can they say reasonable in their defense? That they have no great sins, but only the common ones? But is it thus? Hear ye, then, what is said in a prayer composed by a sainted father, approved by the Holy Church, and read for all in the name of the Church on earth, and therefore obligatory for every one of us: What evil have I not done? What sin have I not committed? What wickedness have I not imagined in my soul? Have I not sinned indeed by pride, boasting, slander, idle speech, improper laughter, intemperance, hatred, envy, avarice, self-love, ambition, falsehood? Have I not defiled all my senses, all my members, and have I not been a ready agent of Satan? What sins have I not committed? What evil hath not possessed me? Every sin have I committed. Every uncleanness have I taken into my soul. What now? Is it possible that one would dare say, that the Holy Church, through the mouth of which speaks the Spirit of Almighty God, the Spirit of Truth, is mistaken, applying this prayer to him or to her? Be it not so! Wherefore repentance, confession? say some; it is merely an empty formality; as if I would become better, just because I talk for a few moments with the priest! How ignorant, how blind, how self-conceited, how unfortunate are such who thus try to stifle the last weak cry of their struggling conscience. A philosopher still of old, and a pagan, had said, that for the moral prosperity of man, one thing is needed, i.e. to know one’s self. And all the learned scholars of human nature say, that in those words is a great truth. Repentance also is knowing one’s self, with only the difference, that in the Christian self-examination, or repentance, a man cannot fail, as the priest, by the light of God’s Word, the rich and the wise practice of the Church, and as the minister of the Holy Ghost in the Holy Mysteries, discloses unto the sinner his true condition, and witnessing his repentance, the priest brings down on the head of the sinner a blessing, absolution, which by virtue of the infinite merits of Him Who suffered for us—the God-Man, our Savior—makes the penitent clean, worthy, holy.
We now have an idea in regard to repentance, and we plainly understand what is meant by the word—confession. There is yet another word that is used when writing of the Sacrament of Repentance. It is a word that many persons abhor; they simply detest it, and say that it belongs to the middle, dark ages, and should not be practiced, or even mentioned in these enlightened times of the new civilization! The word penance does not worry the genuinely educated element of society. Nor does the practice of penance (in the true, Orthodox sense) frighten the truly enlightened. Penance in the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, or in the Greek and Russian Churches as her chief members, is ascribed only in certain instances—as means to an end—by the priest, who, as a gentle pastor, endeavors to humble the arrogant soul and make her voluntarily seek the mercy of a Charitable God, against Whose commandments she has sinned; likewise as a disciplinary measure for those who are morally weak. She recommends for instance: prayer, alms-giving, abstinence in some things, fast, pilgrimage to certain celebrated places which can inspire the soul for good, genuflections, home-readings, etc.
It is not so in the Roman Church, where the priest is separated from his flock by a wall (as if he was not one of the family), and where he appears as a judge meting out to some salvation, and to some condemnation, while others are sentenced for a temporal punishment for their sins, if it be in this world—by penance, if the soul be beyond the grave—in purgatory, for the satisfaction of the infinite justice of God; and from which punishment for a certain sum of money the Pope can liberate, applying to the demoralized soul (whether it be in a state of learning in this world, or whether it be past the final limit) the overdue virtues and merits of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, and other saints from a treasury (thesaurus satisfactionum) which the Pope keeps at hand.
Such anti-Christian doctrine Martin Luther sincerely refuted. But unfortunately, he did not see his way clearly (in those dark days), and he made the path for a host of Protestant divisions. The Protestant sects do not recognize Repentance as a Sacrament. Yet certain bodies cannot help but reveal signs of repentance; this proves that the Christian Church would be incomplete and untrue without it, for instance, the Methodists in their revivals. These revivals of course do not present methodical and complete confessions, real repentance often being a question of doubt, and likewise, they want the presence of a canonically ordained priesthood, of whom they could be assured of absolution.
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