4. The Outward Arrangement of Confession.

It is difficult to arrange confession any better than it is now in the majority of Orthodox

parishes — where four or six hundred persons’ confessions have to be heard in one day,

and confession takes place only during five or eight days out of the whole year.¹

Spiritual fathers will confirm this and say, “It certainly is difficult: indeed, it is

quite impossible. In the first year of my service as a priest I tried to increase the number

of days for confession, but my parishioners just didn’t take any notice.” I am ready to

believe you, dear brother: the customs of village life are very tenacious and the peasant is

bound in his way of life by a multitude of things in his life as a farmer and as a family

man. He and his family will not change these if the new batiushka² limits himself to

making an announcement at the beginning of the period of preparation for Communion

that those who wish to take Communion may come to confession both on Tuesday and on

Wednesday. The exhortation of your parishioners to come to confession not only on the

four or seven Fridays of the Great Lent and on the eve of the Annunciation should not be

left till four days before the actual confession. No, start as early as the Feast of the

Nativity of the Saviour to tell your parishioners what significance an unhurried

confession of their sins and a talk of ten or even five minutes with their spiritual father

have for the soul. Explain in advance that there is no necessity whatever of going to

confession on the eve of Communion or of taking Communion unfailingly on a Saturday.

Read to them from the Lenten Triodion that, “Those who are overburdened with work

take Communion during Lent at any Presanctified Liturgy and on Sundays.” If not many

people take advantage of that which you have explained to them during the first Lent,

then later those who came to confession not on Friday, but earlier, will tell the others how

compunctionate it was to reveal their soul before their spiritual father, how “It was just as

if batiushka had taken a heavy weight off my shoulders, and taught me how to get away

from sin.” The following year, or even at the next fast — i.e., St. Peter’s fast or before

Dormition, many others will follow the example of these Christians. And now that people

have recognized you as an experienced and edifying spiritual father, you will acquire in

their eyes the right to assign days and times for confession according to your own

discretion, provided only that you announce them well in advance and then appear

punctually at the appointed days and times to hear confessions.

Each time you must precede confession with a detailed and inspiring sermon, or

even more than one. In the first one, exhort people to sincere repentance before God and

to a sincere confession of sins before their spiritual father. In the second one, which you

will deliver at the reading of the prayers of the rite of confession, recall what penances

were prescribed by the Church at the Ecumenical Councils and read out several of them

from the Trebnik (for fornication seven years exclusion from Communion, for adultery,

fifteen years, for not keeping the fasts, two years). Then read the words of the

Nomocanons³ in the Trebnik⁴ by which it is permitted to reduce the penances on account

of tearful repentance, fasting, almsgiving or tonsure into the monastic order, and explain

that without these conditions — i.e., without great contrition of heart and ascetic

struggles — the sins of perhaps the majority of those standing before you would prevent

them being allowed to take Communion. If contemporary pastors dare to take upon

themselves the responsibility before God of admitting them to Communion, then it is in

view of the general corruption of Christian morals and the Christian way of life, which

has made the struggle with sin incomparably harder for the sons of the Church than t was

before, when there was a general zeal for salvation, when people stimulated each other to

moral struggles and were ashamed of their sins before each other. Now society’s attitude

to sins and virtues is exactly the opposite, and so it is already necessary somewhat to

soften the requirements of the book of penances, but only within certain limits, lest the

priest should also burn in the same flames as the sinners he had unlawfully admitted to

Communion, as is said in rule 183 of the Nomocanon. In general, read without fail in this

sermon the words under the headings “He says to him…” and “Pay attention also to

this…” (three paragraphs), which are in the chapter “Exhortation from a Spiritual Father

to his Spiritual Child”; at this point also read without fail the concluding instruction under

the heading “How Spiritual Fathers Should Dispose those Confessing to them,” which is

based on the rules of the First and other Ecumenical Councils and on the seventy–fifth

chapter of Matthew Vlastaris⁵. Then, in order to avoid misunderstandings, remind those

standing before you of the self-evident truth, that, even if a priest has the great daring to

admit great sinners to Communion when they have offered sincere repentance. he still has

absolutely no right to do the same for those Christians who do not admit some notorious

sin of theirs to be sinful, or even admit that it is sinful hut do not express any

determination to stop it, desiring to continue in their sinful state — for example, of illicit

cohabitation. Absolution of sins and communion of the Holy Mysteries have sense only

on condition of a resolution to get out of one’s criminal, sinful state and correct one’s life.

Without this condition, Communion will only be a new and serious sin, both for the

sinner who does not wish to correct himself, and for the priest who has admitted him to

Communion. Therefore, those who continue in illicit cohabitation, or a so-called civil

marriage, should not be admitted to Communion until they have separated from their

concubines, realizing that this is what they are.

Try to give Christians Communion not only in the Great Lent, hut also in the

others, and in the Great Lent, not only on Saturdays, but also on Wednesdays, Fridays

and Sundays, and on the Annunciation and on Polyeleos days⁶ when the Presanctified is

appointed. Either do it this way, or else persuade them to confess not only on the eve of

Communion but also on the preceding days. Then at confession your heart will not have

that uneasy feeling: “however shall I manage to dismiss before nightfall all the four

hundred people who have come to confession?”

Also try to ensure that the person coming to confession unfailingly hears the

confession prayers and the exhortation printed in the Trebnik: “Behold, child, Christ

stands invisibly before you….”⁷ Of course, all this should really be re-read to each person

who comes, but since it is impossible to do this, these prayers should be read after the

service for all those who are preparing for confession, and since not all those corming to

confession are in church by then, these prayers should be repeated several times as new

groups of people enter the church during the course of the whole day. Further, if a whole

crowd of people is waiting in line for several hours in the church or near the church, it is

profitable for some respected parishioners or seminarians to take turns reading either

patristic counsels from the Synaxarion, or lives of saints deliberately chosen beforehand,

or — and this is especially profitable — the Sermon by St. Cyril of Alexandria on Death

and the Dread Judgement, which is in the combined Psalter and Book of Hours⁸. When

this sermon is read during the blessing of many people after vespers on Forgiveness Day⁹

(which lasts about two hours), a large number of the people do not leave church even

after the blessing, but listen with tears to the awesome words of the saint. With such

compunction Christians also listen to the life of St Mary of Egypt on the eve of the

Thursday of the fifth week of Lent. These things should unfailingly he read in Slavonic

and in a somewhat singing tone, so that the listeners can make out the words.

The great number of people confessing does not make it possible to read the

preliminary confession prayers for each of them individually, but unfailingly read over

each of them the most important prayer “Lord God, the salvation of Thy servants...,” and

stop thinking that the essential prayer of the mystery — which is the only one read by

virtually the majority of priests — is the following: “The Lord and God Jesus Christ." ¹⁰

This prayer was introduced into our order of confession quite recently, less than three

hundred years ago; neither the Creeks nor the Edinovertsi¹¹ have it, but it came to us from

the Roman Catholics. Of course, now it should be read also, but even more so must that

prayer which the Universal Church of Christ established from patristic or even apostolic

times be repeated over each person.

Besides this, explain to people on each confession day that they must unfailingly

read or reverently listen to the entire rule of Prayers before Holy Communion, ¹² and

afterwards all of the Prayers of Thanksgiving, without which Communion will be unto

judgment and condemnation, as it was for Judas. Do not expound these thoughts as if

they were your own, but read them from the “Instructive Notice” in the combined Psalter

and Book of Hours, and from St. Simeon the New Theologian on tears during

Communion. ¹³

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