The Mysterion (Sacrament) of Repentance and Confession (Part II)

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.

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THE MYSTERION (SACRAMENT) OF REPENTANCE AND CONFESSION (Part II)

The Two Dimensions of Repentance

Divine Initiative

Repentance is not a self-contained act: it is a passing over, a Pascha from death to life, a continual renewal of that life. It consists of a reversal of what has become the normal pattern of development, which is the movement from life to death. To experience this reversal in repentance is to have tasted of the glory and beauty of God: it is the mark of man's presence before God in the abundance of His mercy. "Set Your compassion over against our iniquities, and the abyss of Your lovingkindness against our transgression." It is the awareness of God's beauty that makes one realize the chasm that separated one from His gratuitous grace. The initiative belongs to God, but presupposes man's active acceptance, which is a way of perpetually receiving God within the heart, of God, being embodied within man, of Divine Incarnation. Here God calls man, and man, responds to God and in doing so gains salvation and life abundant: "sorrow working repentance to salvation not to be repentant of" (2 Corinthians 7:10). In repentance it is man's total limitation and insufficiency that is placed before God, not simply particular wrongdoings or transgressions.

The "dialectic" of beginning and end underlying repentance is important...To repent is not merely to induce a restoration of lost innocence but to transcend the fallen condition. Indeed, the greater the fall, the deeper and more genuine the repentance and the more certain the resurrection. Man is "enriched" by his experience even if it has been crippling and tormenting. The Holy Fathers of the Church appear to express greater love - almost a preference - for the more sinful person, inasmuch as thirst for God increases in proportion to the experience of one's debasement and abasement (Romans 5:20).

The word for "confess" in Greek (εξομολογούμαι, ομολογώ) does not bear the contemporary meaning peculiar to it. When we say "confess" we imply that we accept, recognize, or witness an event or fact. But this is not the original meaning. The point is not of admitting, more or less reluctantly, a hitherto "unrecognized" sin, but an acceptance of and submission to the Divine Logos/Word (exomologesis) beyond and above the nature and condition of man. It is this Logos, the Word of God, that man seeks to regain, or rather to commune with. To confess is not so much to recognize and expose a failure as to go forward and upward, to respond from within to the calling of God. Created in the image and likeness of God, man bears before himself and in himself that image and likeness. In repenting he does not so much look forward as reflects and reacts to what lies before and beyond him.

However, repentance is also a way of self-discovery: "Open to me the gate of repentance." Metanoia is the gateway to oneself, to one's fellowman, and to heaven. It leads inwards, but it also leads outwards by leading inwards. The word ceases to rotate the self and begins to gravitate towards the other - the divine and the human other. Sin has the opposite effect. It blocks the way both inwards and outwards. To repent and to confess is to break out of this restriction, "to accept with joy," in Saint Isaac the Syrian's words, "the humility and humiliation of nature," to transcend and to recover oneself. The world thereupon ceases to rotate around "me" and begins to gravitate towards the other, centering on God. Then, everyone and everything no longer exist for me but for the glory of god, in the joy of the resurrection. One is then able to comprehend more clearly the positive dimension of even sin, suffering, death, the devil, and hell. Then, one discovers the depth of love crucified, the presence of the Lord in our midst - even "when the doors are shut" (St. John 20:19, 26). One is not, however, demanded to love God from the outset, but rather to know "that God so loved the world that He gave his only Begotten Son" (St. John 3:16). Nevertheless, the love of God is implicit in His very nature. God, Himself is the Archetype of Divine Love. When Saint John the Theologian says that "God is love (Agape)" (1 John 4:8, 16), love is seen as an established ontological category of both divine and humanity in His Likeness. In fact, the beauty and loving freedom of the human person is, in the words of Saint Nicholas Berdiaev, God Himself. It is He, "the Creator of all...Who out of extreme erotic love moves outside Himself...burning with great goodness and love and eros." It is He Who is "the fullness of erotic love." And it is this supreme love that moved God to create human nature in His Image and Likeness. "As Lover, He creates; and as Loved, He attracts all towards Him". "As a mad Lover He desires His beloved human soul," says Saint Nilos. "Herein is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us (1 John 4:10). (Source: Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America)

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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 (Ministry)
The sinner and unworthy servant of God

+Father George