Aid to Confession
(FOR PRIESTS AND CONFESSIONALS)
Confession from the diary of St. right John of Kronstadt
I confess to the Lord God Almighty, in the Holy Trinity, glorified and worshiped Father and Son and Holy Spirit, all my sins, the evil I have committed in thought, word, deed, and with all my feelings.
I sinned before my Lord and Savior by self-love, carnality, lust, gluttony, gluttony, laziness, self-pity, pride, conceit, humiliation of others, envy, hostility, hatred, malice, lust, fornication, uncleanness, waywardness, disobedience, insubordination, rudeness, insolence , severity, obstinacy of character, unbelief, lack of faith, ingratitude, greed, cruelty, stinginess, greed, greed, sneaking, deceit, deceit, slander, perjury, theology, perjury, hypocrisy, pickiness, oppression, kidnapping, appropriation of someone else's property, abuse, indulgence sins, indulgence, vain spending of time, idle talk, idle talk, foul language, vanity, luxury, ill will, malice, malevolence, rancor, coldness, negligence, negligence in prayer and good deeds. Disrespect for old age, disrespect for parents, infidelity, inconsistency in virtue, frivolity, vanity, timidity, murmuring, despondency, cowardice, despair, anger, passion for reading empty books, negligence in reading the Holy Gospel and other spiritual books, inventing excuses for one’s sins and self-justification instead of condemnation and self-accusation, dishonest performance of official duties, ill will, negligence, incitement to evil, cursing one's neighbor, swearing, superstition, fortune telling.
I have sinned in all these iniquities and with them I have offended my All-Holy Lord and Benefactor immensely, for which I admit myself guilty, repent and regret.
I bitterly regret my sins and henceforth, with God’s help, I will avoid them.
Not the same thing
Today, even believers often identify repentance with the rite of confession performed in church by a priest. But this is a wrong identification. Repentance and confession are not equal to each other and are in approximately the same ratio as the concepts of “furniture” and “table”. Can we say that a table is furniture? Certainly! But the opposite statement will no longer be true, because we call furniture not only a table, but also many other items needed in the household.
Repentance is a general name for many different penitential practices that exist in the Church. Confession in the presence of a priest is only one of them. In general, the Greek word “metanoia” itself, translated into Russian as “repentance,” literally means “change of mind.” This is a kind of rethinking by a person of what he previously considered acceptable and important for himself, and suddenly discovered that these yesterday’s values actually turned out to be dirt and abomination, disfiguring the life of himself and other people. But leaving a sin that has become a habit can be very difficult. And then the person turns to God asking for help.
This is how the Monk Isaac the Syrian defined repentance: “Repentance is an unrelenting petition approaching God... for leaving the past and a prayer for preserving the future.” At various epochs of its history, the Church practiced such forms of this petition to God that were most suitable for it in certain historical circumstances. Thus, in the early Church there was public confession, when the penitent confessed his sins to the entire community. And the Apostle James already speaks about the benefits of Christians confessing their sins to each other: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can be healed (James 5:16 ). It would be a serious mistake to consider such repentance invalid simply because it was not brought before a priest.
Drawing by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
According to Orthodox doctrine, the performer of all the Sacraments in the Church is the Lord Himself. And, undoubtedly, God accepts a person’s sincere repentance even when he, due to circumstances, simply repents before his brother in Christ. So, already in the 20th century, Archpriest Pavel Anikeev, the author of the theological work “The Mysticism of Simeon the New Theologian,” died in a remote Siberian village. There was not a single priest around for hundreds of kilometers except him. And Father Paul confessed before his death to one of his parishioners, an ordinary layman. In the same way, the Russian new martyrs confessed to each other before execution in cases where there was not a single priest among them.
Confession in the presence of a priest appeared quite late in the history of Christianity, and, of course, the appearance of this form of repentance was due to its necessity and benefit for the Church. In a conversation about the healing of sins committed mentally, it is appropriate to remember about the immediate, direct confession of one’s sin in the soul before God. One could cite a great many examples of such repentance among the most diverse ascetics of piety. But in this case we will limit ourselves to the life of one of them - the holy righteous John of Kronstadt.
How to become the master of your destiny
This is what a man saw in himself in his declining days, who for several decades in a row celebrated the Liturgy daily, led many charitable and social projects, answered dozens of letters every day, healed the sick, consoled the suffering, helped the poor... In the soul of the holy righteous John of Kronstadt exactly such things sprouted the same germs of evil that each of us has. But he carefully monitored the cleanliness of his planet and immediately uprooted them as soon as he noticed that the roots of the next “baobab” were beginning to crowd his heart. Thanks to the saint’s diary entries, we now know exactly what instrument he used. Immediate prayer of repentance addressed to God is the most effective remedy against the countless number of sins that each of us constantly commits in our inner world. And you don’t need to wait for the next confession for this. Saint Theophan the Recluse directly said: “Concerning small sinful movements of the heart, thoughts, etc. <...> the following rule: as soon as something unclean is noticed, it should immediately be cleansed by internal repentance before the face of the Lord. You can limit yourself to this, but if your conscience is unclean, uneasy, then later at evening prayer remember this with contrition and that’s the end of it. All such sins are cleansed by this act of internal repentance.”
Drawing by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
A fleeting movement of the heart, a thought flashing through the head - it would seem, what trifles! But from them, precisely from them and from nothing else, all our actions grow, which form our habits, character, destiny - our whole life. And if we accustom ourselves to such internal discipline of thought, if we immediately condemn every sinful sprout in our heart in a repentant appeal to God, then gradually both in the sphere of actions and in the field of habits we will discover much more order and purity.
Just as a terrible mountain collapse sometimes begins with a small pebble, so distorted human lives often began their downward trajectory with a barely noticeable sinful thought. And only the one who carefully monitors each such mental “pebble”, even if it was involuntarily torn off, but has not yet managed to cause a crushing avalanche of sin, can become the true master of his destiny. Because catching one rolling pebble is much easier than later rebuilding a city destroyed by a collapse.
The design uses drawings by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
About Confession in Lent
Every time we enter Great Lent, when we hear prayers and chants of repentance at services, we must think about how we can change our lives and how to make sure that repentance for the past years is not fruitless, but that it bears real fruit in the future. our Christian life.
Repentance is necessary for every Christian. Repentance is turning our minds to God. When we come to confession, it is not enough to just list the sins - those listed in the evening prayers. Reading these prayers, we realize that we are guilty to one degree or another of all the sins named there. But confession should not consist of us listing our sins and calming down on that. During confession, you need to find the strength to stand face to face with God, to put yourself before the truth of God, before the court of love of a merciful God.
When preparing for confession, it is useful to re-read the Savior’s Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5: 3 – 7, 27) in order to understand how far we are from the ideal of life that the Lord gives us - not even an ideal, but a norm, for the words of Christ are the norm Christian life.
Then you should remember the Lord's Prayer - petition after petition. Is the Name of God sanctified in us, or, on the contrary, do we constantly offend Him with our deeds? Are we expecting the Kingdom of God? Are you ready to subordinate your will to God’s will, or is yours more precious to us? Do we accept our “daily bread,” the Bread of Life—the Body and Blood of the Savior? Do we leave debts to our debtors? Thus, putting ourselves in the face of God’s truth, let us prepare for confession.
True confession should transform our entire soul. Confession should never turn into a formality. Confession is a sacrament in itself, a sacrament of our reunion with God, from Whom we have fallen away because of our sins.
But how can we say in a few words the most important thing that separates us from God? Very often those who come to confession think that the more they say, the better. In this case, confession turns into a verbose story of a person about his actions - with details that are sometimes not at all relevant. We should not forget that many people have acquired the Kingdom of Heaven with just one word. The publican, who was praying, beating himself on the chest, uttered only one phrase: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” And the prudent thief on the cross said to the Lord just a few words: “Remember me when you come in Your Kingdom.” And both were justified by the Lord. As you can see, they didn’t need many words. In general, verbosity is unnecessary both in confession and in prayer, because the Lord knows in advance everything that we can say to Him. And He does not so much listen to our words as He listens to the movements of our heart and mind. In the end, the point is not in words, but in the fact that we come to God with a contrite heart and that confession regenerates us spiritually.
Often in confession they talk not about their own sins, but about the sins of other people: son-in-law, mother-in-law, mother-in-law, daughter, son, parents, co-workers, neighbors. Sometimes the priest has to listen to stories with many characters, with stories about the sins and shortcomings of relatives and friends. All this has nothing to do with confession, because our relatives and friends will answer for their sins themselves, and we will have to answer for our sins. And if one of us does not have good relationships with relatives, colleagues, neighbors, then we must, when preparing for confession, ask ourselves the question: what is my
guilt;
how I
sinned?
What I
have done to make the situation change for the better, but didn’t? You should always first of all look for your own guilt, and not blame your neighbors.
Some perceive confession as an opportunity to communicate with the priest, ask him questions and get answers to them. Each priest approaches confession in his own way: one considers it his duty to give useful advice to the confessor every time, the other prefers to listen to confession in silence and only in special cases breaks the silence. It is important to remember that confession is not an interview with a priest, but a stand before God. The most important thing that can happen in confession is our meeting with God. And you can turn to a priest for advice outside of confession.
Sometimes people come to confession to complain about life. Something in life did not work out, a failure occurred, and a person comes to the priest to say how difficult it is for him. We must remember that a priest is not a psychotherapist, and a church is not the place where you should come with a complaint. Of course, in some cases the priest must listen, console, and encourage, but confession cannot be reduced to psychotherapy.
Sometimes a person comes to confession to argue with God, to declare that God is not sensitive enough to him, does not care enough about him, that God has not given him something. Some in confession complain about the lack of the tangible presence of God in their lives. It’s probably worthwhile, when preparing for confession, to think about the fact that it is not God who leaves us, but we who leave Him. If there is too little of God’s presence in our lives, it is not God’s fault: we ourselves are to blame, because we have not done everything possible to prepare the house of our soul for God’s infusion into it.
At confession, we need to talk about the main thing - about what separates us from God.
The condition for complete forgiveness is openness and sincerity of confession, determination to improve and start a new life. If a person conceals his sins during confession, or if his entire confession is reduced to an empty formality, or if he speaks only about the sins of other people, the Sacrament in this case does not occur at all, because that change of mind that should accompany confession does not occur in the person.
Each confession is an extremely important event for our spiritual life, because at confession God gives us the opportunity, even before the Last Judgment, to spend a few minutes at the Last Judgment and condemn ourselves before we are condemned by someone else: whether by people whom We have offended, whether by God, whom we have offended with our sins. The Last Judgment will be the moment when suddenly everything that we do not see in ourselves now will be revealed, when all the dirt that we have accumulated in ourselves will suddenly be revealed. Moreover, the Last Judgment will be the moment when it will be too late to repent, because repentance only makes sense when we can correct our lives, when we can make up for the evil committed with good. And in the Sacrament of Confession we are given the opportunity to experience - even if only for a brief moment - the experience of standing at God's judgment, when we are left alone with God. The priest in this case is only a witness, an intercessor for us before God.
To know what to talk about in confession, it is very important to take care of yourself from one confession to the next. Every morning, when we wake up, we should think about what the coming day has in store for us and pray that we will spend this day with dignity. Throughout the day, we must try to present ourselves before the court of God, to compare our lives with the Gospel, in particular, with the Sermon on the Mount and other words of Christ, with everything that we hear in church every time we come there. Every evening we should take a spiritual look back at the past day and remember which of our actions were worthy of God and which were not. And for all the good that we have done, we must thank God, realizing that without His help not a single good deed is done: if we managed to do something good, then the merit in this is not ours, but God’s, for “the Lord’s feet are people are corrected." And for all the bad things we have done, we will reproach ourselves and bring repentance.
We must bring this kind of one-on-one confession with God to Him every day. This is the same “everyday confession of sins” that concludes the evening prayers contained in the Prayer Book. Perhaps it is better to bring repentance in your own words, and not just list the sins written in the Prayer Book. Stand before God and say honestly, seriously, responsibly: “Lord, today I managed to do such and such, but I did not do such and such. I thank You for the good, but for the bad I repent and ask for forgiveness.”
If a person repents in this way every day, he will not have the question of what to say in confession. It happens that they say: “Father, I don’t know what to say, I live like everyone else, I have no special sins, I haven’t killed anyone. Of course, there are sins - who is without sin in our time? “But they’re everyday things, mostly little things.” If a person says this, it means he is spiritually blind. Such a person needs to pray in the words of St. Ephraim the Syrian: “Lord, grant me to see my sins.” In fact, there are no trifles in spiritual life: every sin separates us from God, even the most seemingly insignificant one.
There is a good story on this topic in the Ancient Patericon. A certain elder was visited by monks: one of them had one grave sin, while the others had many minor sins. The elder said to the man who had one grave sin: “Go to the river bank, find a large stone there and bring it here.” He found a large stone and with great difficulty brought it to the elder. Then the elder said to him: “Now go and put this stone in the very place where it lay.” Of course, it was not difficult for the monk to find the place where the large stone lay. And to those who had minor sins and who believed that they lived like everyone else, because they didn’t do anything special, didn’t kill anyone, the elder said: “Go, pick up small pebbles on the shore.” When they brought the pebbles, he said: “Now go and put each pebble in the place where it lay.” And the monks, naturally, could not remember where the pebbles were. It so happens that it is easier for a person who has committed one great sin to put his internal affairs in order than for someone who commits many “minor” sins.
In fact, all of our sinful darkness consists precisely of such petty sins that fill our lives - petty lies, petty theft, petty deceit, petty malice. Sometimes we think that these are not even sins, but only “individual shortcomings.” But confession is not the moment when we should look back at others and compare ourselves with them: are we better than them, worse, or like everyone else. The Pharisee looked around at others and thought that he was better than many. But the publican did not look back at anyone - he only peered into the depths of his soul and lamented before God. Maybe in some ways we are better than others, but this is not what should be discussed in confession. We must talk about how we have sinned against the truth and love of God, because this is exactly what we will be asked about at the Last Judgment.
So, Lent is a time when we have the opportunity to reconsider and change our lives, when we can make peace with God and our neighbors. And this reconciliation comes not only through verbal confession of our sinfulness, but through those deeds that we contrast with previous sins. It is no coincidence that the hymns of Great Lent say: While we fast, brethren, physically, we also fast spiritually: let us loose every bond of unrighteousness... we will rip off every unjust charge, we will give bread to the hungry, and we will bring the bloodless poor into their homes...
This is where true repentance lies. For if during confession we repent of not giving alms, and then, leaving the church, we pass by a beggar, then what was the point of confession? And if we confess that we are quarreling with close relatives, and, having returned home after the Liturgy, we quarrel with them again, then why did we confess?
We must come to confession with the desire and determination to get rid of sins. Of course, being realists, we understand that it is impossible to get rid of all sins at once, that sometimes it takes years to overcome even a minor sinful inclination. But this should not make us give up. Each confession is a new chance, a new opportunity to reconsider your life and start it over again.
St. Seraphim of Sarov said that the whole difference between a great saint and a great sinner lies in determination. A saint is a sinner who has made up his mind
to improve my life and followed this path.
Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect
, says the Lord (Matthew 5:48). And we must repent of our imperfection, that our life is so far from the gospel ideal. It is for such repentance that Great Lent was given to us.
Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeev)
***
To help the penitent
Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov
I confess, I, a great sinner (name), to the Lord God and our Savior Jesus Christ and to you, honorable father, all my sins and all my evil deeds, which I have done in all the days of my life, which I have thought even to this day.
Sinned:
He did not keep the vows of Holy Baptism, he did not keep his monastic promise, but he lied about everything and created indecent things for himself before the Face of God.
Forgive me, honest father.
Sinned:
before the Lord with little faith and slowness in thoughts, from the enemy everything against faith and the Holy. Churches; ingratitude for all His great and unceasing benefits, calling on the Name of God without need - in vain.
Forgive me, honest father.
Sinned:
lack of love for the Lord below fear, failure to fulfill His and Holy will. commandments, careless depiction of the sign of the cross, irreverent veneration of St. icons; did not wear a cross, was ashamed to baptize and confess the Lord.
Forgive me, honest father.
Sinned:
he did not preserve love for his neighbor, did not feed the hungry and thirsty, did not clothe the naked, did not visit the sick and prisoners in prison; The law of God and St. I did not learn the traditions of my fathers from laziness and negligence.
Forgive me, honest father.
Sinned:
church and cell rules by non-compliance, going to the temple of God without diligence, with laziness and negligence; leaving morning, evening and other prayers; during a church service - he sinned by idle talk, laughter, dozing, inattention to reading and singing, absent-mindedness, leaving the temple during the service and not going to the temple of God due to laziness and negligence.
Forgive me, honest father.
Sinned:
daring to go to the temple of God in uncleanness and touch every holy thing.
Forgive me, honest father.
Sinned:
disrespect for the feasts of God; violation of St. fasting and non-keeping fast days - Wednesday and Friday; intemperance in food and drink, polyeating, secret eating, disordered eating, drunkenness, dissatisfaction with food and drink, clothing, parasitism; one’s own will and reason through fulfillment, self-righteousness, self-indulgence and self-justification; not properly honoring parents, not raising children in the Orthodox faith, cursing their children and their neighbors.
Forgive me, honest father.
Sinned:
unbelief, superstition, doubt, despair, despondency, blasphemy, false worship, dancing, smoking, playing cards, fortune telling, witchcraft, sorcery, gossip, commemorating the living for their repose, eating the blood of animals.
Forgive me, honest father.
Sinned:
pride, conceit, arrogance, vanity, ambition, envy, conceit, suspicion, irritability.
Forgive me, honest father.
Sinned:
condemnation of all people - living and dead, slander and anger, malice, hatred, evil for evil, retribution, slander, reproach, deceit, laziness, deception, hypocrisy, gossip, disputes, stubbornness, unwillingness to give in and serve one's neighbor; sinned with gloating, malice, malice, insult, ridicule, reproach and man-pleasing.
Forgive me, honest father.
Sinned:
incontinence of mental and physical feelings; spiritual and physical impurity, pleasure and procrastination in unclean thoughts, addiction, voluptuousness, immodest views of wives and young men; in a dream, prodigal night defilement, intemperance in married life.
Forgive me, honest father.
Sinned:
impatience with illnesses and sorrows, loving the comforts of this life, captivity of the mind and hardening of the heart, not forcing oneself to do any good deed.
Forgive me, honest father.
Sinned:
inattention to the promptings of one’s conscience, negligence, laziness in reading the Word of God and negligence in acquiring the Jesus Prayer. I sinned through covetousness, love of money, unrighteous acquisition, embezzlement, theft, stinginess, attachment to various kinds of things and people.
Forgive me, honest father.
Sinned:
condemnation and disobedience of spiritual fathers, grumbling and resentment against them and failure to confess one’s sins to them through oblivion, negligence and false shame.
Forgive me, honest father.
Sinned:
unmercifulness, contempt and condemnation of the poor; going to the temple of God without fear and reverence, deviating into heresy and sectarian teaching.
Forgive me, honest father.
Sinned:
by laziness, relaxation, love of bodily rest, excessive sleeping, voluptuous dreams, biased views, shameless body movements, touching, fornication, adultery, corruption, masturbation, unmarried marriages, those who performed abortions on themselves or others or persuaded someone to do so gravely sinned great sin - infanticide. He spent his time in empty and idle pursuits, in empty conversations, jokes, laughter and other shameful sins.
Forgive me, honest father.
Sinned:
despondency, cowardice, impatience, murmuring, despair of salvation, lack of hope in God's mercy, insensibility, ignorance, arrogance, shamelessness.
Forgive me, honest father.
Sinned:
slander of one's neighbor, anger, insult, irritation and ridicule, non-reconciliation, enmity and hatred, discord, spying on other people's sins and eavesdropping on other people's conversations.
Forgive me, honest father.
Sinned:
coldness and insensibility in confession, belittling sins, blaming others rather than condemning oneself.
Forgive me, honest father.
Sinned:
against the Life-giving and Holy Mysteries of Christ, approaching them without due preparation, without contrition and fear of God.
Forgive me, honest father.
Sinned:
in word, thought and all my senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch - willfully or involuntarily, knowledge or ignorance, reason and unreason, and it is not possible to list all my sins according to their multitude. But in all of these, as well as in those unspeakable through oblivion, I repent and regret, and henceforth, with the help of God, I promise to take care.
You, honest father, forgive me and release me from all of this and pray for me, a sinner, and on that day of judgment testify before God about the sins I have confessed. Amen.
The end and glory to God.
Sins confessed and resolved earlier should not be repeated in confession, for they, as the Holy Church teaches, have already been forgiven, but if we repeated them again, then we need to repent of them again. We must repent of those sins that were forgotten, but are now remembered.
“Sins mourned, confessed and resolved are no longer in us, or on us. They are also like branches cut off from a tree: when they loved sins, they were living branches on the tree of our life and fed from it; when we turned away from them, began to hate them, repented and confessed, by this action we cut them off from ourselves. At the moment of resolution they fell away from us” (St. Theophan the Recluse).
The repentant is required to:
Consciousness of one's sins. Condemning yourself in them. Self-accusation before the confessor. Repentance is not only in word, but also in deed. Repentance is correction—new life. Contrition and tears. Belief in the forgiveness of sins. Hate past sins. The fight against sin attracts the grace of God. Sins shorten our lives.
***
Teach me, Lord, to cry, so that crying is not considered a sin. My tears are February slush, My conscience is trampled snow.
Will the rays of Your grace enlighten my lukewarmness? Teach me, Lord, to cry. Teach repentance.
D. Kuchinskaite
ADDITIONAL READING IN THE DAYS OF LENT:
- Collection of readings for Lent. Part 1.
- Collection of readings for Lent. Part 2.
Is confession over the Internet acceptable?
Is confession over the Internet acceptable?
Are Orthodox Christians allowed to confess via the Internet? If yes, then in what cases? Is extreme shame in front of a priest a sufficient reason: when for months you cannot decide to tell nasty things and everything grows like a snowball? Marina, St. Petersburg.
Hello Marina. Confession is a Sacrament in which a Christian confesses his sins and, with visible forgiveness of sins from the priest, is invisibly absolved from them by the Lord Jesus Christ. Visible resolution is accompanied by a prayer of permission with the placing of an epitrachelion on the head of the penitent. Before confession, the priest reads a prayer, which contains words addressed to the confessor: “ Behold, child, Christ stands invisibly, accepting your confession. Do not be ashamed, do not be afraid, and do not hide anything from me, but without hesitation, you have done everything, so that you may receive forgiveness from our Lord Jesus Christ. Behold, His icon is before us, and I am a direct witness, and I testify before Him with all things, as you said to me, if you hide anything from me, you will be a sinner. Take heed, since you came to the doctor’s hospital, so that you do not leave unhealed .” These words reveal the Sacrament of Confession. In confession, the priest acts only as a witness of your repentance, while the confession itself is brought to Christ, Who invisibly remains next to the person confessing. The priest acts as a witness, not in the same sense as one acts as a witness in court. This is a witness, like at a wedding, this is a witness of joy: this is the bottom to which a person can fall and this is the bottom from which he was raised by the grace of God.
If you translate the last words of the above prayer into Russian, they will sound like this: “ Remember that you did not come to the hospital in order to leave it unhealed .” You don’t consult, say, a dentist by phone or online chat, do you? According to the teachings of the Church, sin is primarily a disease. If we want to be healed from this disease, we must open the spiritual wounds and not hide them under bandages. What happens to a deep cut if you just cover it with a rag? If the cut is not treated and treated, it will eventually begin to fester and serious complications will develop. It's much the same with the soul. The longer you delay confession, the more sin parasitizes the spiritual wound and the more difficult it will be to heal.
I want to draw your attention to the words of the prayer - “Behold, His icon is before us, and I am exactly a witness, and I will all testify before Him, as you have spoken to me . The rite determines the requirements for the Sacrament. Firstly, it is an icon (cross, Gospel) which is an image and evidence of the presence of God. Secondly, your confession must have a witness. And thirdly, it is said, “ Speak to me as often as possible .” Not “write to me” or “print to me,” but rather speak, that is, say. This is emphasized by the direct speech of confession of sins.
Online confession is a practice completely unacceptable in the Orthodox Church. God established this sacrament and should we change it? Of course, there are situations when a person is near death and there is no priest nearby, then he is allowed to confess over the phone. Such a case occurred in the practice of Metropolitan Veniamin (Fedchenkov). General Bünting, who was in mortal danger, confessed to Vladyka over the phone. But, as you can see, this is allowed only in extreme situations and cannot possibly happen in everyday practice.
Now the Church has made great concessions for Christians. The very first thing is that now confession is performed not before the entire Christian community, but before God and the priest. It is said in the Holy Scriptures about the first Christians - “ Many of those who believed came, confessing and revealing their works ” (Acts 19:18). You see, it does not say that Christians brought papers to confession or sent letters, but they came and confessed, revealing their affairs. Likewise, they came to John the Baptist to confess their sins and prepare for the coming of Christ.
It should be said that shame before confession is natural for a repentant person. Only proper shame should be before God, and not before the priest. If you do not feel ashamed before God, but are only ashamed to open your soul before the priest, then this indicates a very dangerous spiritual state. In this case, it is all the more necessary to rush to confession, despite all the fears and shame. The Prophet Ezra describes the spiritual state of a repentant sinner - “ My God! I am ashamed and afraid to lift my face to You, my God, because our iniquities have become higher than our heads, and our guilt has increased to the heavens ” (Ezra 9:6). As you can see, with the correct spiritual structure, a person is ashamed first of all before God, and not before people. If you do not have such shame, then all the more you need to communicate face to face in order to bring you into the correct spiritual state with advice and spiritual guidance.
Of course, confessing sins can be very bitter and very shameful, but it is vitally important to do so. Father Valentin Mordasov said: “ To be ashamed to reveal sins in confession is out of pride. Having exposed themselves before God with a priest as a witness, they receive peace and forgiveness .” What's wrong with having a priest witness your confession? If you repent, he will only rejoice and glorify God. Yes, and Christ will rejoice greatly, He Himself said: “ I tell you that there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance ” (Luke 15:7).
It is only difficult to confess when there is no repentance. Then the demon approaches the person and begins to instill false shame, and the person may even hide his sins in confession or keep silent about something. The Holy Fathers have these words: “ Some out of unbelief, others out of little faith, others out of false fear, others out of false shame, hide their sins in confession and think that it’s nothing. But this is not nothing at all. The Lord forgives only those who approach confession with contrition of heart and confess all sins without exception; and he condemns those who hide them, just as the priest says before confession to the repentant: “If you hide something from me, you will become a sinner.” Therefore, brothers, be frank in confession and do not hide anything. And then only the Lord will forgive you. » Prologue in teachings. Teaching before the Baptism of the Lord.
You are talking about extreme shame in front of a priest. I assure you that in our time there are no such sins that the priest would not hear in confession. Moreover, the fathers taught that the more shame a person has before confession, the brighter the confessed sins burn in this shame.
When confessing, firmly believe that all the sins you have committed and of which you repent will certainly be forgiven by God. The psalm says, “ I revealed my sin to You and did not hide my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and You have taken away from me the guilt of my sin ” (Ps. 31:5).
Try to gather courage and come to Confession.
I sincerely wish you God's help.
Anatoly Badanov, administrator of the missionary project “Breathing Orthodoxy”
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Diaries of a Saint
When it comes to saints, we often think of them as some kind of higher beings who are alien to the temptations and weaknesses of an ordinary person. In the depths of our souls, we are inclined to explain all their exploits and achievements as universal: “Well, that’s why they are saints...” However, the entire history of the Church testifies to the exact opposite logic of people gaining holiness: that is why the ascetics became saints because they struggled with their temptations and weaknesses. And one of the most effective tools of this struggle was for them immediate repentance in the depths of their souls before God for every sinful thought, for every evil movement of the heart. You can fully realize this by reading the dying diaries of John of Kronstadt, a righteous man who was recognized as a saint by millions of Russian people during his lifetime; a miracle worker who healed the hopelessly sick and even raised the dead. It would seem that here is a genuine celestial being who has already acquired the Kingdom of Heaven on earth! And suddenly it turns out that almost until his death, the same sins and passions that each of us can see in ourselves took place in the soul of this amazing man. However, the Kronstadt shepherd treated them completely differently from us. Here are just a few entries from this diary for 1908. They hardly need any comment and talk about the practice of immediate repentance much more than any explanation.
