3. The Influence of Confession.

Here is a penitent, after humbly confessing his sins, listening to the gentle voice of his

spiritual father, filled with love and reverence: “The Lord forgives those who repent; He

is close to your soul and wishes you victory over your sin more than you do yourself, just

as you wish your children to be strengthened in good more than they themselves do.

When the struggle begins in your heart, remember that your Guardian Angel is following

the vacillations of your soul with anxious grief; take pity on your own soul. You can see

that even I am sad for you, and God loves us so many times more than we love each

other. If you yourself do not repulse His help, He will not give you over into slavery to

your former passions. Call upon Him in time of temptation, sign yourself with the sign of

the Cross, turn your gaze away from the temptations, keep away from people who incline

you towards evil or irritate you, and then you will be a victor over your invisible

enemies.” With words like these, gentle though they are, the spiritual father has already

deeply moved the soul of the penitent, which was shaken even before that. Renewed in

spirit he returns to his everyday occupations after communing the Holy Mysteries and his

whole household notices that something special has happened to him, changing his

disposition and, indeed, his life itself.

He himself will probably share with others the holy feelings which were wafted

upon him by the pastor’s heartfelt exhortations. He will feel the most heartfelt gratitude

and love towards the latter, and will begin to advise everyone to go to that priest for

confession. Nevertheless, we are obliged to fulfill our duty irrespective of the success or

failure of our exhortations, as the Lord said to the prophet Ezekiel (Ch. 2). But you have a

blessing to succeed. When you have heard people’s confessions once or twice, or even

just the confession of one person, new spiritual children will come to you one after the

other. One will come to you at home and weep over his spiritual wounds, or ask

consolation for the woes afflicting his soul; another will ask for confession in church,

even outside the usual time. The news about the warm-hearted, loving and reverent pastor

will rapidly spread, not only throughout the village but also through the local town, and

may God grant that you manage to respond to all these entreaties for spiritual healing that

are put before you.

“What? In our Bolshevik times, when zealous pastors are reviled, driven out and

killed?” Even in our time murderers are murderers and atheists are atheists, but there are

still incomparably more who believe and pray than there are atheists, and they will nestle

close, probably more fervently than before, to the footstool of a pastor who treats their

confession not as a sounding board but as a loving and compassionate father — a pastor

such as we are all obliged to be who have received the grace of ordination and so should

feel like St. John the Apostle: “There is no greater joy for me than to hear that my

children are walking in the truth” (3 Jn. 4). Of course, the pastor will not be free from

clashes with unworthy children, with sons of disobedience, even when performing the

mystery of confession, but your soul should be filled with joy over the children of

obedience, and repeat the words of the psalm (50), “I shall teach Thy ways to the lawless

and the Godless shall return to Thee.” You will not convert all the iniquitous, for even

the blood of the Lord was shed “for many,” and did not draw all to the Crucified One,

and the Apostle Paul said, “I am made all things to all men that by all means I might save

some” (1 Cor. 9:22). This is true, but even so the obstacles to your worthily fulfilling

your vocation as a spiritual father are not in people, not outside you, but in you yourself

— if you do not want to make a start with this holy work, as the Lord commands.

“Of course, you are right,” many spiritual fathers will answer me. “Of course, if I

were a saint, if I could irradiate my heart with such sympathy towards people and such

faith. I could probably attain, with the assistance of God’s grace, everything that you are

talking about. But we haven’t been taught that; my soul is callous, I can hardly ever pray

with warmth and compunction, and to acquire such evangelical love for people from

whom you constantly hear insults and offences — this is beyond my strength and I have

never even thought that such a disposition was obligatory for me; nor do my brat her

priests or relatives ever speak about that.”

I expect answers like this from many sincere pastors — perhaps even from the

majority — but their woe is not in this, nor is the woe of their flock. If you make such an

admission in a spirit of self-reproach, if you say these words with a contrite heart, this is

already victory (Mk. 9:24). The other possibility is terrible: it is terrible if you say such

words with haughty contempt and mockery of man’s repentance, of your neighbour’s

soul; if it is with humble grief over yourself, then “a broken and contrite heart God will

not despise” (Ps. 50:19) and “the Lord is near to the contrite in heart and saves the

humble in spirit” (Ps. 33:19). The more profoundly you become aware how far you are

from that spirit of all-embracing love and compassion with which Christ’s pastor should

be filled, the more you lament over your hard-heartedness, the nearer is God’s grace to

you and the more accessible is your soul to radiant illumination. A thought will suggest

words of despondency to you: “Well, how are you, an unfeeling, self-loving and irritable

man, to take to heart the sins of others as if they were your own and crucify yourself

before God together with all the people confessing, when you are weary with labouring at

confession for a whole day? Just listen to the sin and read the absolution and it is quite all

right if you do not do anything more.” But you must rep1y to the thought, “Suppose

that’s what I really am like, suppose I am not capable of taking the correct attitude to this

high pastoral duty, and for the majority of my spiritual children turn out to he just a

formal witness of their repentance. Even so I will do as much as I am able, that is, as

much as the Lord helps me to do. And now I am going to begin by humbly entreating

Him to bring me to my senses and teach me to soften my heart and bestow upon me the

spirit of compassionate love and guiding wisdom, in order to teach my spiritual children

how to struggle with sin. In addition to that I will try in good time also to organize the

outward arrangements for confession so as to be able to give as much time as possible to

each of the faithful; and I myself will learn from the Holy Fathers about guiding the

human soul in its struggle between good and evil.”

If you made a firm resolution like this, then sooner or later you will become an

excellent spiritual physician for the faithful. Only hold to this resolution and do not give

in to despondency when impatience, irritability and tiredness rise up in your soul and

begin tempting you against God’s work. If at first you speak sincerely, in a fatherly and

brotherly way, with even a few out of many, and then offer to God sincere repentance

that you were not a spiritual father for all of them; then you will come to the next

confession already more mature spiritually, with a more softened soul, with clearer faith

in the grace-given strength of God, and thus you yourself will gradually grow into a

perfect man, and your spiritual children into the fullness of the stature of Christ.