My beloved spiritual children in Christ Our Only True God and Our Only True Savior,
CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST! HE WAS, IS, AND EVER SHALL BE. Ο ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΕΝ ΤΩ ΜΕΣΩ ΗΜΩΝ! ΚΑΙ ΗΝ ΚΑΙ ΕΣΤΙ ΚΑΙ ΕΣΤΑΙ.
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LEARNING REPENTANCE FROM SAINT MARY OF EGYPT
by Father John Konkle
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From the Sunday of the Publican and Pharisee to Great and Holy Saturday when our Lord lies in the tomb, our journey to Pascha is a continuous movement of repentance. Great and Holy Lent is often called the school of repentance -- the place where we learn how to repent. What is repentance? It is first and foremost a turning toward Christ even as the journey through Lent is the journey towards Holy Pascha. Repentance is a return even as the Prodigal Son returns to his father's home.
On this last Sunday of Great and Holy Lent, before we enter the festal days of next weekend followed by Great and Holy Week, the Church offers us the truly beautiful image of repentance in the person of Saint Mary of Egypt. Her life embodies the turning away from self-destructive sin and toward life-giving union with Christ. We will now consider five characteristics of repentance that are manifest in her life.
Confession of Sins
Saint Mary was from Egypt, where she spent seventeen years of her youth as a harlot. As she recounts her life to the holy monk, Zosimus, her story is largely a simple confession of her sins. This is the first characteristic we learn from her repentance: she simply states her sins. She offers no excuse for them; she blames no one. Interestingly, she does tell stories about her life, but her stories are not supplied in order to explain away her sins. When we tell stories about our sins, we're inevitably telling them because we want to be understood, to have our misdeeds qualified, to excuse ourselves, or to blame others for our wrongdoing. Stories, when we're describing our sins, are dangerous because they are a way in which we soften the blow of our irresponsibility.
Saint Mary, however, far from excusing her actions, explains how deep sin penetrates her soul. She not only participated in these acts of harlotry for an extended period of time, but she confesses that she had totally embraced this desire. She had no interest in living a different type of life, no interest in turning away from these desires (passions), no interest in battling against them. And, even worse, her desire was not only for her pleasure, but she even delighted in being a temptation to others, a stumbling block for them, and the occasion of their downfall and destruction. We see, then, that when Saint Mary recounts stories, they are to reveal the depths of her sin. If she was going to tell stories, it wasn't to lessen the significance of her guilt but to take responsibility for her sins and for their destructive consequences in the lives of others.
Contrast her approach with that of Adam and Eve. When God comes to them and says did you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that I told you not to eat of, Adam says: "The woman you gave me"--and that was true, God gave Eve to Adam--"she gave me of the fruit,"--that was also true. "And I ate it"--that was true too. Adam made three claims, and yet he did not repent. His first two statements comprise his story to explain away his responsibility by blaming others. It's as if he said: "God it's your fault, if you wouldn't have given me this woman, I wouldn't have eaten the forbidden fruit. And it's her fault; if she wouldn't have tempted me, I would never have disobeyed You." So, Adam, in hiding behind these words, even true words, attempts to minimize his responsibility. "Yes, I ate the forbidden fruit, but it's not really my fault." This is not repentance.
What's so powerful about Saint Mary's story is that she did nothing to hide the shamefulness of her early years. If we're ever really going to feel compunction and sorrow, Godly sorrow, for our sins, we have to strip away those stories that we hide behind, that we tell in order to make our sins excusable, understandable, acceptable, normal. This, then, is the first point: our repentance must be an honest and straightforward confession of our sins, without excuse, without explanation, without any qualification that detracts from accepting complete responsibility for what we've done.
Responsibility to God
Saint Mary, being mired in this extreme sensuality, sees a large crowd of people leaving Egypt on boats to travel to Jerusalem. Wondering what's happening, she boards one of the boats, on which she delights in bringing about the fall of many more men. She arrives in Jerusalem only to discover that these people are on a pilgrimage to the Feast of the Elevation of the Cross. Up to this point, she has expressed no interest in Christianity, and has lived in blatant rebellion to it; but now she is curious. She tries to follow the pilgrims into the church, and our Lord, through the intervention of His Mother, prevents her. Let us sum up her attempts to enter the church in this way: God is the One Who reveals our sins to us. Jesus Himself tells us that He is going to send the Holy Spirit to convict the world of its sin, of its unrighteousness. This is precisely what Saint Mary experiences as she attempts to enter the Church: the awareness of her sins--not by looking at herself, but by God revealing them to her.
When God comes to Adam and Eve, He asks them a question, whether they had eaten the forbidden fruit. It's not as if He didn't know. But, like a Good Shepherd in search of his lost sheep, God initiates with them to offer them the opportunity to stop hiding. Similarly, God comes to Cain and asks where is your brother? God sends Nathan the Prophet to David to tell him a parable to reveal to him his sin. God sends Jonah to the Ninevites. God sends Saint John the Baptist to the people of Israel. God always finds a way to initiate in our lives, to show us our sins--so that we can return to Him and be healed.
We often try to figure out our sins, entering into a self-analysis. Sadly, this pious effort of self-evaluation often severs us from simply responding to God's piercing our conscience. There are two defects to this way of thinking. First, we are relying on our own wisdom and insight, not realizing that God knows us way better than we know ourselves. We need His view of us; He doesn't need our view of ourselves. Second, when we start analyzing ourselves, we are inevitably talking to ourselves instead of talking to God. Yet it is God Who heals us and frees us from our sins, not ourselves, and so it is to Him that we need to express them.
Responding to what it is that God shows us about our lives is really the core of confession. Etymologically the word 'confession,' homologein in Greek, is 'to say the same thing', 'to agree.' To confess our sins to God is to agree with Him in response to what He says to us. God says, "Did you eat of the tree of forbidden fruit?" We say "yes." We don't give complicated stories that deflect from this simple truth. "Where's your brother?" "I killed him." We don't answer, "Am I my brother's keeper?" Why is God continually revealing our sins to us? Because sins are simply our turning away from Him, choosing communion with the things of creation instead of the Creator Himself, preferring the gift over the Giver. God showing us our sins because He's calling us back to Him. He wants us to return to our true home. God is not trying to make us feel discouraged or despondent; nor is He trying to punish us. He is rather trying to free us from the self-inflicted punishment of trying to live apart from Him, and from the despondency that accompanies that departure. He longs to be with us; He is Emmanuel, God with us. It is when we engage in self-analysis that we beat ourselves up and sink into this realm of discouragement and despondency. But God is relentless in trying to raise us up from our sins, to draw back to Him. So, this second characteristic of repentance is that when God shows us our sins we simply say, "Yes, Lord, I did it; heal me, free me from the passions that give rise to this sin." We only need to be responsive to what He shows us, without excuse, without blame, without explanation. This is how we are received back to His presence. (Source: The Burning Bush, A Monastic Journal. Dormition of the Mother of God Orthodox Monastery, Rives Junction, MI)
(Next: Extreme Measures)
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"Glory Be To GOD For All Things!"--Saint John Chrysostom
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With sincere agape in His Holy Diakonia,
The sinner and unworthy servant of God
+Father George