Once a famous Moscow priest was asked how our confession in church is accepted by God? The priest replied that confession is accepted by the priest, not God. But God needs our repentance. And it is very important when a person can see his sins himself and tell them in confession. But does everyone know what in themselves they need to “take up arms” against?
This book will help all those who are preparing for the Sacrament of Confession and would like to bear the worthy fruits of repentance.
When compiling and preparing the text, material from the book of Archpriest Vasily Mikhailovsky “Full Confession” was used.
- First Commandment 7
First commandment
I am the Lord your God; May you not be blessed or except Men.
(I am the Lord your God; you shall have no other gods besides me.)
Repent, Christian, what sin you have committed against this commandment.
1. Do you have firm faith in the Word of God and the teachings of the Holy Church and do you have any doubts about the truth of the holy faith set forth in the Holy Scriptures?
2. Do you allow the idea that there is no afterlife at all?
3. Do you turn to God in prayer in every matter, hoping for His help?
4. Do you thank God for everything from a pure heart? Don't you sometimes grumble, condemning the works of His creations and His Providence?
5. Did you reveal your doubts about faith to others with the intention of creating the same doubts and unbelief in them?
6. Did you lose faith in God’s Providence when you saw how evil triumphed and virtue was oppressed? Didn’t he admit the thought or say: “Why am I more sinful than others? Why do unbelievers prosper while believers suffer tribulation?”
7. Have you ever been an atheist, or have you not sympathized with atheists in your soul?
8. Did you blaspheme the name of God, the Mother of God or the saints?
9. Are you guilty of the sin of heresy, or sympathy with heretical or sectarian teachings?
10. Did he sometimes approve of schismatic, unauthorized meetings outside unity with the Orthodox Church?
11. Have you ever experienced cowardice or despondency, or even despair in your salvation with the loss of all hope in God’s mercy due to any serious sins you have committed?
12. Do you know the truths and commandments of the Orthodox faith well and do you try to fulfill them?
13. Do you allow negligence in reading the Word of God? Are you trying to read the Holy Gospel, the works of the Holy Fathers and other saving books?
14. Do you allow yourself to be careless with the books of the Holy Scriptures? Do you read books that are contrary to the teachings of faith and good morals, and do you engage in such conversations?
15. Have you ever turned to wizards or sorcerers and fortune tellers of the future? Haven't you guessed yourself? Didn't he cast spells on the Bible and Psalms?
16. Have you sinned with some kind of superstition, for example, mixing herbs to protect against illness or misfortune, conspiracies of diseases, belief in an inevitable fate, in blind chance, in black, heavy, light days; the false belief that misfortune will happen from meeting a priest, or other superstitions?
17. Do you not have excessive faith in all dreams indiscriminately?
18. Have you lit candles for the repose of the living?
19. Aren't you too lazy to pray to God? Did you miss morning and evening prayers, before and after meals, before starting and at the end of any work? Were you overwhelmed by blasphemous thoughts during prayer?
20. Did not the creature love more than the Creator: father, mother, wife, husband, son more than God? Have you become addicted to anything to the point of forgetting God?
21. Did you not commit the sin of man-pleasing, that is, did you flatter someone or approve of their bad deeds?
22. Did you not trust in man more than in God?
23. Have you turned sacred words into a joke, a stupid meaning and blasphemy?
24. Did you reject obvious truth and assert anything against your conscience?
25. Are you not guilty of the sin of ingratitude to God for His countless benefits to you?
26. Have you allowed disbelief in the miracles that often occur in our lives and are performed by the power of God?
27. Have you sinned by holding a free opinion about Divine objects, contrary to the teaching of the Orthodox Church?
28. Have you sinned by having unrealistic dreams and building arrogant and happy plans for your life, as well as by stubbornly seeking imaginary happiness, without faith and without God?
29. Have you sinned by arrogance, that is, by relying on your own abilities, strength, labors, virtue or wealth, etc., and not on the mercy of God?
30. Have you sinned by being careless about your salvation in an unreasonable hope in God’s mercy?
31. Have you sinned by lack of devotion to the will of God, obedience to the orders of God’s Providence, by a stubborn desire for everything to be only according to your will?
32. Have you sinned by intolerance and grumbling in illness, misfortune, and in general, when God does to us not what we would like (for example, we often sin by grumbling about bad weather, which also depends on the Providence of God)?
33. Did you have a passion for any person or thing greater than the love for God?
The first commandment, prohibiting the aforementioned sins, obliges us to acquire correct knowledge of God, His will, to firmly believe in Him, to hope in Him, to love Him with complete devotion to His will, with gratitude, reverence and with filial fear, lest we offend Him in any way. something. Are you trying to expand these virtues in yourself?
Confession - what is it
The Sacrament of Confession, or Repentance, is one of the seven Sacraments of the Church. Each Sacrament is a great mercy of the Lord. And the more often a person professing Orthodox Christianity resorts to the Sacrament of Confession, the closer he becomes to God, the purer his soul becomes. But preparing for confession requires prudence.
In order to prepare for confession, a person taking his first steps in Orthodoxy needs to take an outside look at his life. It is useful to start by reading the Gospel, from one or two chapters, carefully considering what you read. Confession is a meeting with Christ, who forgives and loves each of us. Reading the Gospel is, to some extent, a way to get to know Christ.
The priest forgives the penitent's sins in the Sacrament of Confession
Preparing for Confession
What should you do before confession? Explore your life, find those actions from which there is a need to cleanse yourself through this great Sacrament. It is also useful to analyze your life through keeping God's commandments. These include the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament and the Nine Commandments of the New Testament (the Beatitudes). It will be useful to read the memo for the confession of St. John of Kronstadt and other works of the holy fathers, which can be found in any Temple.
Saint John of Kronstadt: “I told the Lord my sins with contrition of heart - and they melted away; sighed, regretted his sins - and they are gone.”
The Christian understanding of confession and repentance is expressed in a parable once told by the Monk Paisius the Holy Mountain. One day, several monks from the monastery of the Great Martyr Panteleimon came to the elder. They asked him:
- Elder, explain to us what repentance is?
Elder Paisios spoke with them for a long time. But they could not understand what the essence of repentance was. Then the elder said this:
– Blessed fathers, imagine: a little boy was forbidden to take candy without permission. And when he was left alone, he took the candy and ate it. After that, he comes to his father and says: “Father, forgive me, I ate candy.” The father, of course, is upset, but at the same time he is happy, strokes him on the head and says: “It’s okay, son, I forgive you.” But the boy does not run to play, but says to his father: “No, father, forgive me - I ate candy. But I didn't want to do it." In response, his father strokes him even more, presses his head to himself and says: “I forgive you, my dear, never do that again.”
But in response, the son clings to his father and shouts: “Father, I ate candy, I will never do that again!” Tell me, brothers, what is father doing? Then the father takes him in his arms, hugs him, kisses him and says: “My son, how I love you!”
This, blessed fathers, is repentance. And this is how the Lord acts in repentance.
Using the Commandments of the Old Testament
Preparing for confession is impossible without analyzing your life according to basic moral principles. Let us consider, as an example, those falls that occur when we deviate from the seventh commandment of the Old Testament: “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”
In this commandment, God makes man understand that adultery is a grave sin. A person becomes whole and complete in marriage. The family is a home Church for a person, in which the husband is a priest, the wife is a deacon, and the children are the people of God. For a person, a family is not just a collection of people, it is his flesh and blood. The violation of this commandment violates the integrity of the family and destroys the human soul.
In addition, sins against this commandment include: extramarital cohabitation, frivolous relationships with persons of the opposite sex, desecration of the soul with unclean and depraved thoughts, lusts, and touches. The soul is also desecrated by sinful songs, passionate dancing, jokes, foul language, and drunkenness. All of the above is a crime against this commandment. It is important to analyze your life before your first confession according to the seventh commandment. After all, many stumble in this passion at a time when they were still far from the Church.
It is important to understand that any sin that has taken place in our lives can be cleansed in the Sacrament of Confession. The Lord has the power to cancel any sin, to make it as if it never happened. We must rely on His mercy.
How to prepare for Confession and Communion
The Sacrament of Communion was established by Christ Himself during the Last Supper before His death on the Cross and commanded the apostles to always receive communion for the sake of the memory of Him and life in eternity: “He who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood has eternal life, and I will resurrect him on the last day.” . Christ said that in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, bread and wine will constantly be miraculously transformed into His Body and Blood, and the people who eat (taste) them will be united with Himself. The Church blesses us to prepare and receive communion at least once a year: preferably about once a month.
To prepare for the Sacrament, through preparation for communion and confession, called in Church Slavonic fasting, includes reading special prayers, fasting and repentance:
- Prepare yourself by fasting for two to three days. Limit the variety in food, give up meat foods, preferably meat, milk, eggs, unless you have a serious illness and are not pregnant.
- Try, when you have prepared, to read the morning and evening prayer rules constantly and with attention during these days. Read spiritual literature.
- Prepare yourself by giving up noisy entertainment and visiting places of active recreation.
- In a few days (you can do it in one evening, but you will get tired), read from the prayer book or online the canon of repentance to the Lord Jesus Christ, the canons to the Mother of God and the Guardian Angel (there is a text of the prayer where they are connected), as well as the Rule for Communion (it includes yourself a small canon, several psalms and prayers).
- Make peace with people if you have serious conflicts.
- It is better to attend the evening service before the Liturgy, for which you will come to receive communion. You can confess during it, if Confession will be carried out in the temple, or come to the temple for morning Confession.
- Prepare yourself with the so-called liturgical fast - before the morning Liturgy, do not eat or drink anything after midnight and in the morning before communion.
How to prepare for confession for the first time
You need to prepare yourself for the Sacrament of Holy Communion and Confession, which take place in church.
Confession before Communion is a necessary part of preparation for it. No one is allowed to receive Communion without Confession, except people in mortal danger and children under seven years of age. There are a number of testimonies of people who came to Communion without Confession - after all, priests sometimes cannot track down this great sin. They say that the Lord punished them with sorrows after communion for their insolence.
During Confession in church, a person names his sins to the priest after preparing at home - but, as it is said in the prayer before confession, which the priest will read, this is a confession to Christ Himself, and the priest is only a servant of God who visibly gives His grace. We receive forgiveness from the Lord: His words are preserved in the Gospel, which Christ gives to the apostles, and through them to the priests, their successors, as the power to forgive sins: “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive, they will be forgiven; on whomever you leave it, it will remain on him.” This is why it is so important to prepare properly.
In Confession, we receive forgiveness of all the sins that we named while we were preparing, and those that we have forgotten. Under no circumstances should you hide your sins! Especially the first time, remember them well when preparing. An adult can remember all his sins from childhood at his first Confession.
It is also forbidden for women to come to Communion during menstruation and immediately after childbirth: young mothers are allowed to receive Communion only after the priest has read a prayer for cleansing over them. You will need to prepare a second time if women's days began suddenly.
