Man is a creature that gets used to everything. He gets used to his sins and passions, although he feels the abnormality, the discomfort of his position. And at the same time, he doesn’t have the determination or willpower to start fighting against his sins. So, often, spouses who once loved each other spend many years in a state of flaccid conflict. They suffer, and of course they’d like normal human relations, love, but they’re so used to this situation, they’ve come to terms with it so much that they won’t lift a finger to change anything. Sins are those things that severely hinder our lives. They are the cause of our spiritual and sometimes physical illnesses. Even people who are very far from the Church understand this. It’s not only Christians who suffer from anger, despondency, gluttony, drunkenness and other passions. Sins don’t allow us to be happy even here on earth, not to mention in eternity. How can a man be happy when he’s dominated by pride, vainglory, anger, or lust?
How can we begin to battle with the passions? St. Theophan the Recluse writes: “First, we must rise up against sin in general by hating it, expel it from its main dwelling place by breaking our will, arousing a thirst for resistance to sin, and submitting ourselves to the holy will of God; and then rise against the offspring of this sin, striking down its remnants within ourselves until its exhausted within us.” After we’ve firmly decided to engage in the battle against sin, we must repent of it. For only in the Sacrament of Confession do we receive absolution of sins.
Let’s look at this in more detail. Repentance is undoubtedly the foundation of the spiritual life. The Gospel testifies to this. The Forerunner and Baptist of the Lord John began his preaching with the words: Repent ye: for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand (Matt. 3:2). And our Lord Jesus Christ began His public ministry with the exact same call (Matt. 4:17). Without repentance, it’s impossible to draw near to God and overcome your sinful inclinations. The Lord has given us a great gift—Confession, in which we are freed from our sins, for the priest is endowed by God with the authority to bind and loose human sins.
It’s not uncommon to hear statements such as this: “Everything’s easy for you believers: You sin, then you repent, and God forgives everything.” There was a museum in the St. Paphnuty of Borov Museum in Soviet times, and after visiting the monastery and museum, the guide would put on a record with the song, “There Were Twelve Thieves,” in which Feodor Ivanovich Shalyapina sings with his velvety bass:
He abandoned his comrades,
He stopped raiding then,
Kudeyar himself went to a monastery,
to serve God and men.
After playing the song, the guide would say something like this: “This is what the Church teaches: sin, steal, commit robberies—no matter what, you can repent later.” Such an unexpected interpretation of a famous song. Is it true? Indeed, there are people who perceive the Sacrament of Confession precisely like this, like some kind of spiritual wash room, shower. You can live in filth without fear: Everything will be washed away in the shower anyway. “Dirt isn’t fat: Scrub it and that’s that.” I don’t think such a “confession” will do any good—this would mean going to the Sacrament not unto salvation, but unto judgment and condemnation. And having formally “confessed,” a man doesn’t receive absolution for his sins from God. It’s not that simple. Sin and passion cause great harm to the soul, and even when he offers repentance, a man bears the consequences of his sin—just as a patient who has suffered from smallpox is left with scars on his body. It’s not enough to simply confess a sin; you have to make an effort to overcome the inclination to sin in your soul—just as a doctor removes a cancerous tumor and prescribes a course of chemotherapy to defeat the disease and prevent relapse. Of course, it’s not so easy to immediately give up a passion. But a repentant man shouldn’t be hypocritical and say, “I’ll repent, and then continue to sin.” A man should make every effort to start out on the path of correction, to no longer return to sin. Ask God for help in fighting your passions: “Help me, Lord, for I am weak.” A Christian should burn the bridges that lead back to a sinful life. Repentance in Greek is metanoia, which translates as “change.”
Why do we repent if the Lord already knows all our sins? Yes, He knows, but He wants us to acknowledge them. I’ll give you an example. A child sneaks into the cupboard and eats all the candy. His father knows perfectly well who did it, but he waits for his son to come and ask forgiveness himself. And of course, he’s also looking for his son to promise to try to never do it again. Confession, of course, should be private, not general. I’m thinking of the practice where a priest reads a list of sins and then simply covers the one confessing with his stole. Thank God, there are very few churches where they do this. General Confession became almost ubiquitous in the Soviet times, when there were very few active churches and they were overflowing with people on Sundays, feasts days, and during the fasts. It was simply unrealistic to confess everyone who wanted to then. And hardly any churches were allowed to have Confession after the evening service either. One old priest, who had served in church for more than fifty years, told me that during Great Lent, the priests would have to go down the line of people confessing just to have time to cover each one with his stole. Of course, such “Confession” is an abnormal phenomenon, and it doesn’t bring benefit or purification to the soul.
The very word “confession” means that a Christian has come to tell something, to confess, to talk about his sins himself. In the prayer before Confession, the priest reads: “May these Thy servants be loosed by Thy word.” Man himself is absolved of his sins through the word and receives forgiveness from God. Of course, sometimes it can be very difficult and shameful to reveal our sinful wounds, but this is how we get rid of our sinful habits—by overcoming shame and tearing them out of our souls like weeds. Without Confession, without purification from sins and passions, it’s impossible to fight against them. First you have to see them, tear them out, and then do everything you can so they don’t grow back in your soul.
Not seeing our sins is a sign of spiritual illness. Why did the ascetics see their sins as innumerable, as the sand of the sea? It’s simple: They drew near to the source of light—to God—and began to notice secret places of their souls that we simply don’t notice. They observed their soul in its true state. Here’s a fairly familiar example: Let’s say your room is dirty, not cleaned up, but it’s night and everything’s hidden in semi-darkness. It seems like everything is basically okay. But then dawn breaks through the window and the first ray of sunlight penetrates the room, illuminating half of it. And you start to notice the mess. You notice it more and more as the day goes on, and when the sun illuminates the entire room, the dirt and your scattered things are visible everywhere. The closer you are to God, the more visible are your sins.
A noble citizen of a small town in Gaza went to see Abba Dorotheos, and the abba asked him: “Distinguished sir, tell me, who do you consider yourself to be in your city?” He replied: “I consider myself great and first in the city.” Then the venerable one asked him: “But if you go to Caesarea, who will you consider yourself there?” The man answered: “The least among the nobles there.” “And if you journey to Antioch, who will you consider yourself to be there?” “There I would consider myself as one of the commoners.” “And if you go to Constantinople and approach the emperor, who will you consider yourself to be there?” And the man replied: “Almost a beggar.” Then the abba said to him: “This is how it is with the saints: The closer they draw to God, the more they see themselves as sinners.”
Confession isn’t an account of our spiritual life (what’s good and bad in it) or a conversation with the priest. It’s self-reproach without any self-justification or self-pity. Only then will we receive satisfaction and relief and depart from the analogion lightly, as if on wings. The Lord already knows all the circumstances that led us to sin. But it’s absolutely unacceptable to talk in Confession about how people pushed us to sin. They’ll answer for themselves, and we must answer only for ourselves. The husband, brother, or in-law who contributed to our fall means nothing now; we have to realize how we ourselves are guilty. St. John of Kronstadt says: “Whoever is accustomed to repent and give an answer for his life here will find it easy to give an answer at God’s Dread Judgment.
The Holy Fathers call Confession a second baptism—a baptism by tears. Just as in Baptism we’re given the gift of the forgiveness of sins, and we need to appreciate this gift. We mustn’t postpone Confession until later. We have to confess more often and in more detail. We don’t know how much time the Lord has given us for repentance. We should think of every Confession as our last, for no one knows in what day and hour God will call us to Himself.
There’s no need to be ashamed to confess your sins—you should be ashamed to commit them. Many think that a priest, especially one they know, will condemn them and so they want to show themselves better than they really are in Confession, justifying themselves. I assure you that any priest who hears confessions often won’t be surprised by anything, and you’re unlikely to tell him anything new and unusual. On the contrary, it’s a great consolation for the spiritual father when he sees a sincere penitent before him, even if he has committed grave sins. It means he’s not standing at the analogion in vain, he’s receiving the repentance of those who come for Confession.
In Confession, the penitent is given not only forgiveness of sins, but also grace and God’s help to fight sin. Therefore, we begin to correct our lives with Confession. I’ll give you an example from the Solovki Patericon, how the passion of lust left an ascetic only after he confessed it to an elder. The Solovki elder Naum said:
One time they brought a woman to me who wanted to speak with me. My conversation with her was short, but a passionate thought attacked me and gave me no rest day or night—and not just a day or two, but for three whole months I struggled in the battle with this fierce passion. What I didn’t do! Even snow baths didn’t help. One night after my evening prayer rule, I went outside to lie in the snow. Unfortunately, the gate locked behind me. What to do? I ran around the fence to the second, the third monastery gate—it was locked everywhere. I ran to the tannery, but there was no one there. I had no more than a cassock on, and the cold penetrated my bones. I barely made it till morning, arriving at my cell barely alive. But the passion didn’t subside. When St. Philip’s [Advent] Fast came, I went to see my spiritual father and tearfully confessed my grief to him, and received a penance. Only then, by the grace of God, did I find the rest I so desired.
Confession should be frequent and, if possible, always to the same priest. In our time of general disobedience, unfortunately, far from all Orthodox Christians have a spiritual father. And that’s not good. If a Christian truly wants to wage spiritual warfare with the passions, he has to confide in a spiritual father, who will know the state of his soul and guide him on the path to salvation. When a man confesses to his priest, he even indirectly seeks to improve himself—by a sense of shame before his spiritual father. Rare confession (a few times a year) often leads to a hardened heart. People stop noticing their sins; they forget what they’ve done. Their conscience easily reconciles itself with so-called minor, everyday sins: “What’s the big deal? Everything’s fine. I don’t kill, I don’t steal, I don’t commit adultery.” On the other hand, frequent confession causes the soul and conscience to be concerned, to rouse from their slumber. We mustn’t make peace with or coexist with our sins. Once you’ve begun to struggle with even one sinful habit, you feel how it becomes easier to breathe, both spiritually and physically.
People who confess rarely or formally sometimes stop seeing their sins altogether. Any priest knows this well. Someone comes to Confession and says: “I haven’t sinned at all,” or: “I’ve committed every sin” (which is actually the same thing). This happens, of course, from spiritual laziness, from the unwillingness to do at least some work on your soul. I remember a funny story about this. An old woman came to a provincial priest for Confession. And, the usual thing: “I’ve lived my whole life honestly. I haven’t offended anyone; I have no sins.” Batiushka tried everything to move her to repentance, asking her various questions, but the only lady was unbending: “I haven’t sinned in any way—and that’s it.” Then the priest, frowning more and more, asked her: “Where do you work?” She said: “On a collective farm, my dear.” “And what, you never took anything extra, anything that wasn’t yours from the farm?” “No, I haven’t taken anything. There was nothing to take there anyway—they didn’t give us any food or money, just labor credits.” Then Batiushka completely lost his patience: “Don’t lie, I worked on a collective farm too!” May village workers take no offense—there really are people of crystal clear honesty among them. This case simply shows how ridiculous and absurd you look when you come to Confession and can’t see your own sins.
Let’s summarize.
So, in order to embark upon the path of war against the passions, you must have a firm determination and hate your passion with all your soul and take up arms against it. The second thing you need to do is repent of your sins, flee to the Sacrament of Confession—not just to confess your sins, but to make the decision to fight against them; and after Confession, not to look back, to burn all the bridges connecting you with your past passionate, sinful life, and move ahead, conquering the passions.
Julius Caesar, having crossed from Gaul over the English Channel, landed on the territory of present-day England. He led his army up onto the cliffs and ordered them to look down. Below, they saw their ships burning. The last thing connecting them to the land from which they had sailed was destroyed. The soldiers had only one option left—to march forward and conquer. There’s no looking back for a man who has set out on the path of battling the passions.
And the third condition for gaining victory over the passions is the awareness of our infirmity. Without God’s help, it’s impossible to conquer the passions by our own efforts. That wouldn’t be a struggle with the passions, it wouldn’t bring purification from them, but would only be us replacing one passion with another. By the way, this substitution method is used by some unscrupulous psychotherapists. For example, a man is encouraged to overcome melancholy and depression through self-love and vanity. He’s given special exercises for how to love himself and begin living for his own pleasure. In this case, the devil may even withdraw from the man for a while, pretending to be defeated, but then attack with renewed, tenfold strength.
Battling with the passions without humility can cause a man to fall into pride, which is worse than the passion. This is the basis for the phenomenon of spiritual delusion. St. Anthony the Great was shown the earth as if entangled in a net, and he exclaimed: “Who can escape these nets?” And the answer was: “Humility!”
Contrary to the well-known expression, “like cures like,” the passions are treated with their opposites, that is, by cultivating the opposite virtue in the soul. St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov) writes about this. For each of the eight passions, he contrasts the opposing Christian virtue. For example: gluttony is conquered by temperance, anger by meekness, vanity by humility. We’ll discuss this more in the following articles.
