13. The Seventh Commandment.

It is hardly necessary to mention that a priest has to listen to the confession of sins

against chastity more than any other kind of sin, and give corresponding advice as to how

to struggle with it. In these times, when unbelief is triumphant and the faith is despised,

only people who want to save their souls come to confession.xviii Many, if not the

majority of these courageous souls who remain faithful to God and the Church, have

humbled themselves before the Lord, do not offend anyone, and try to do good. Such

Christians, who of their own accord are going towards God, are usually free from malice,

love of money and envy, but they are still pursued by temptations of the flesh, even in

monasteries and hermitages. If they are free from the enticements of female beauty and

alluring female society, then sinful desires make their appearance in the form of the

crudest animal lust, or if the Christian separates himself completely from women, as

temptation to secret and unnatural sins. These inclinations will not depart from such a

Christian, or even from an ascetic who struggles intensely with himself and hates the sin

from the very depths of his soul, ardently desiring to lead a perfectly chaste life. It is

futile to think that marriage completely frees people from this struggle. Even here one has

to restrain oneself, when one’s wife is pregnant or ill, or when one is temporarily

separated from her on business matters and so on; these occasions tempt both spouses

with thoughts of an illicit liaison with another person. Besides this there are various

forms of excess within the bonds of marriage. This is why there are more questions and

penances in the Trebnik concerning unchastity than there are about any other sin.

Let us differentiate between sinners according to the degree of their repentance

and the essence of the sins themselves. Let us begin with those who are tormented with

pangs of conscience but cannot resolve to admit their sin. This happens particularly often

if the priest knows them and takes them for honourable women, men, girls and boys.

Similarly, novices in convents are often ashamed to confess these sins to their spiritual

fathers; husbands and wives am ashamed to confess marital infidelity, girls and women

are ashamed to confess to abortions and also to unnatural sins, which are now extremely

widespread in all strata of society. Still, it is a greater sin to conceal sins at confession: as

we have already said, many guilty of this sin end their earthly life by suicide. There is

also another side to the evil of such concealment — until the Christian confesses his fall,

he will return to the sin again and again and gradually fall into total despair or, on the

contrary, into shamelessness and godlessness, and will stop coming to confession

altogether. So, however difficult it may be for a priest to ask questions about such things,

he must never let anyone depart from the confessional if he has grounds to suspect him of

concealment, until he has obtained a full confession. It is no pleasure for us to write these

lines or this chapter, but we are well aware how inexperienced priests are in their work,

what mistakes they make in evaluating sins and giving advice about struggling against

them, and so we are compelled to write about them; what can be said we will say directly,

and concerning the rest we will give references in the canons.

Thus, if a youth or girl tells you that he (or she) has not committed the sin of

fornication, then ask if he has not committed another sin, near to this, which also violates

the seventh commandment. At this point, not infrequently people become agitated, blush,

start breathing heavily and sometimes burst into tears. The lesser sins of this type are,

from a worldly point of view, objects of agonizing shame, but the greater ones,

fornication and adultery,xix are often things to boast about. Even Leo Tolstoy points out

these two phenomena in his Kreutzer Sonata.

Very, very many children are guilty of secret sins — catechism teachers in St.

Petersburg told me that seventy-five percent of all children have committed them: but,

when interrogating their spiritual children, priests must be very careful not to give any

information about the methods of performing such acts to children who are completely

innocent and ignorant of these obscenities. When children are already deeply wallowing

in such filthy habits, it can be seen in their faces. Their eyes are dull, their cheeks and

hands seem to be damp, and the center of the face, that is the lower part of the forehead

and upper part of the cheeks together with the eyes, seems to be almost dead, as if a grey

mask were covering the face of the child or adolescent.xx Sometimes they let themselves

commit these sinful acts without even knowing that it is a sin and will destroy their

health. Begin by asking them whether they read indecent books or like looking at dirty

pictures, whether they let their fingers touch what they should not, and so on. If the

adolescent, boy or girl, sees that you are speaking with sympathy, and not just in order to

scold or humiliate him, then he will probably forestall your further questions; even

though it torments him inwardly, he will not spare himself, but recount his sins to you.

Listen to him calmly and patiently; do not get indignant if you hear something

unexpected — mutual masturbation, sodomy, incest, bestiality. These things happen

when children or even adolescents do not know what is sinful and what is not. They see

what animals do and try to imitate them, and then, if they do not meet soon enough a

spiritual father who would be capable of hearing their confession, the sin weighs on their

hearts like a heavy stone. To begin with they will keep silent about it out of ignorance,

and later, after growing up and so acquiring self-love, they will simply be ashamed to

admit their stupid acts, but at the same time will think they are defiled for the whole of

their lives, and acquire a depressed and irritable cast of soul. But this is not the end of

their spiritual disaster: another thought tells them, “For better or worse you have already

committed sodomy or incest, so there is nothing to stop you committing lesser sins such

as fornication.” Thus the young soul wastes away, not having found any spiritual support.

And so, dear priest, when you find out what sin your spiritual child has committed

and he knows how bad it was, give him advice, taking into account whether he is near to

despair or, on the contrary, extremely unconcerned. In the first case point out to him from

the Trebnik that the sin which is habitual among children and adolescents, although

repugnant to God, is not punished by anything like the heavy penance for adultery. Also,

sins, even very serious ones, committed through ignorance when one is very young, are

not considered to be serious provided that they are not later repeated knowingly. Finally,

explain to them that the repulsive sin of sodomy, of which many almost innocent boys

and adolescents mistakenly consider themselves guilty, is far from being what they have

really committed half consciously or even quite unconsciously. They had probably fallen

into the sin mentioned in the 29th and 30th rules of the Nomocanon;xxi the more serious

one is mentioned in rules 28, 185 and 186, where the differing degrees of guilt are also

explained. Unfortunately even most priests do not know this, so they give people, such as

novices in convents, who have confessed to the lesser sin, the same penance which is

prescribed for the most serious one. Consequently, concealment of sins at confession in

women’s monasteries occurs not infrequently.

And so, when the young soul, stricken with shame and despondency, stands

before you after making his confession, console him as God helps you to — console him,

but also keep him from falling again. Tell him that you, or other elders, have known

many people who were long enslaved to a sinful habit, but in the end were completely

freed from it by the Mysteries of Repentance and Holy Communion. Say also that when

one is not yet grown up, it is not the human body which attracts one to sin, since it is not

yet mature enough for this, but rather the perverted fantasy of the soul. Therefore if he

turns his soul away from the sin and hates it, his body will not attract him to evil; but if

he lingers in his sin, then, when he is a grown man (or woman), he will prove to be bound

with doubly heavy bonds, since then the sexual demands of the body will be added to the

passionate desires of the soul. The sin will gain in strength, falls will become more

frequent, and God’s punishment will not be slow in coming, in the form of tuberculosis

or neurasthenia, incapability of leading a married life or even idiocy and epilepsy.

Impress pictures of this sort particularly strongly on those young people who live

among comrades of the same type and so take their sins very lightly. You must explain to

them that the sins, especially those of the flesh, which their conscience tolerates so easily

will not remain at their present level of sinfulness, but will draw them into worse ones

and even criminal offences. Neither those perverted people who corrupt children and lie

with animals, nor prostitutes nor inverts were born as such, but they fell by degrees into

the bottomless abyss of their iniquities. In their early youth they had committed the same

comparatively small sins as others of their own age who later lived as honourable people

and good Christians. What distinguished them from the latter was that they did not repent

of their falls, laughed at the warnings they were given and did not reproach themselves

for their sins. Later, after they had become hardened in their sins, they had to offer late

but fruitless repentance, in a body rotting with syphilis, as inmates of mental homes or as

drunkards, the dregs of society, incapable of any work, or finally as aged prostitutes,

thrown out of all homes and shelters for the poor. “Now, while you are still so young, it

will not be difficult for you to avoid this terrible fate if you will hate both your sins and

your frivolous attitude and start fighting with these habits, which are already in their

inception. Besides this, consider how attractive and beautiful is the type of person who

has not yet succumbed to these temptations. They have a fresh appearance, youthful face,

a bold and calm look in their eyes. How thankful they are to God that they overcame this

temptation in good time.”

How then should you start fighting with these sins? — In varying ways,

depending on whether you sin by yourself, secretly from everyone else, or together with

some other person. In the latter case, first of all you must decisively and sharply cut off

all relations with your allies in sin. Inform them of this directly and openly, and be

prepared to put up with mockery and insults. They will soon give you up — for good —

since they will also be afraid of shame before society or punishment. When the soul has

offered repentance and been sanctified by the mysteries, is praying and desiring to lead a

pure life, it cannot return to its sinful deed at once, without preparatory, intermediate

steps.

“If you commit this sin by yourself, then above all you must fear its initial step.

The ascetics advise us unfailingly, morning and evening, to collect our thoughts, to recall

our own principal passion, our main hindrance to salvation, to hate it in the soul and, after

putting oneself into such a disposition, to say the following three times, consciously and

without hurrying: ‘Vouchsafe, O Lord, to keep me this day (or night) without sin’. And

on this day and during this night God will unfailingly protect you, if you said the prayer

sincerely and without wavering.”

We mentioned the “first step” of sin. What does it consist of? Of self-deception.

Sin would not dominate the soul of man if he had not been taught to take refuge in lying

to himself. This is why the devil is even called in the Word of God “a liar and the father

of lies.” This is so not only in the case of the corrupt habit we are now describing, but

also with even the smallest passionate habits as well as with drug-addiction and even

more so with drunkenness. A person who is subject to them struggles inwardly, but at the

same time deceives himself with thoughts such as: “I will not commit my foul sin today,

but I will just allow myself to bring it to mind in more detail: What was it like last time?”

Or “I’ll just let myself read that dirty little book once more,” “I’ll go and watch the pretty

girls pass by in the street this evening,” or “I’ll go and see such and such a cabaret show.”

All of this is dangerous and harmful even for a chaste soul, but a soul which has already

been infected by a sinful habit can only avoid succumbing to it again as long as it

resolutely keeps away from all temptations and does not reproduce around itself those

conditions in which it usually falls into sin. Thus, for some sinners it is the company of

certain people that is disastrous, while for others, on the contrary, remaining alone is

disastrous. When you are in a vigilant and virtuous mood, admit to yourself that such and

such thoughts, states of soul and body, objects, books, spectacles and sometimes even

smells will irresistibly draw you into sin and that you cannot fight with the latter if you

give yourself up to this first step: and that your decision to stop after this first step and not

go further is a self-deception, since you cannot stay on this step once you have stepped

onto it. In exactly the same way, one can only give up smoking or taking morphine by

thrusting these drugs away from oneself completely and refusing even to touch them.

However, even this is not enough by itself. In order to cleanse a soul which has

been choked up by a foul sensual passion, its energies must be devoted to better,

ennobling occupations — to work, physical or intellectual, which is inspiring. Then, one

must be surrounded by ennobling society or by the friendship of virtuous companions, or

a close and open relationship with an elder relative, perhaps one’s own mother. But, most

important of all, we must draw nearer to our Heavenly Father and seek His help through

prayer. In these circumstances, a spiritual father can hope for success if he advises the

penitent to buy a prayer book. In other circumstances no adolescent would obey you, but

in his grief and shame he will obey; if possible, give him the prayer book yourself. It is to

the point to add that members of the clergy often cannot imagine what it means for a lay

person to have a prayer book. Priests who come from clerical families are often under the

impression that a prayer book is just as indispensable in every home as a table and chair.

They should realize that in the vast majority of households of the cultured classes, and

also of villagers, there is neither a New Testament nor a prayer book, and that the latter is

a wonderful thing with a deep spiritual significance for our contemporary society, wildly

estranged as it is from the faith. Perhaps its owner will not pray from it every day:

perhaps whole months will go by without anyone in the family touching it, but if even a

few times in a year someone takes it in his hands and reads something from it, even that

will pour a beneficent light into darkened souls. And besides this, they will probably pray

from it from time to time, and in general come to know the Church’s prayers.

If the feelings of the young sinners we have just been describing are distressed

and dispirited, then to the same degree shameless and far from feelings of repentance are

the relations of somewhat older youths with loose girls or dissolute women of more

mature years who tempt them into sin. We have already mentioned that among students,

such moral falls occur at the same time as their loss of faith. Among the youth of the

countryside they are accompanied by a falling-off of piety and outbursts of blasphemy

and, in recent years, by such bold denials as with students. Let us examine this grievous

link between unchastity and unbelief more attentively. When the male organism matures,

a feeling of self-satisfaction is aroused in the young man. This is strengthened by the

change in the youth’s social position: He becomes an independent member of society —

a student; or, as a senior schoolboy, he is preparing to become one — to enter this totally

uninhibited group of youth. In student society he feels like a bridegroom — he is no

longer under the constant supervision of his parents, he earns some money for himself. In

general, his conditions of life favour the development of a feeling of self-satisfaction. The

newly aroused sexual passion on its part has also something in common with this feeling,

and now he wants to live without any restriction; mentally he says to himself, “Rejoice, O

young man, in thy youth, . . . and walk in the ways of thine heart and in the sight of thine

eyes.” But the words which follow in Ecclesiastes will be revealed to him by the voice of

his conscience even if he has never read them, and will cause him intense irritability and

will arouse a feeling of enmity against God and against religion. Here are these words:

“But know, that for all these things God will bring thee into judgement” (Ch. 11, v.9).

Admittedly, it is not so much the future judgement that terrifies and angers him, as an

awareness that his sins are forbidden, condemned by both God and his parents and elders,

and that they are punished often by nature itself in the form of venereal diseases, which

threaten their victims with physical deformity as well as madness. However, because of

his triumphant self-satisfaction he is not at all inclined to be penetrated with awareness of

his guilt and sinfulness, and so he finds himself in opposition to God, the Church, the

priest, his elders, the convictions of society and decency. This gives birth to nihilism

among the intelligentsia and hooliganism among the simple people. To suppress the voice

of their conscience more successfully, young people turn to drink, foul language and

sometimes even blasphemy, as well as an insolent attitude towards their elders, in order

to defend themselves on all sides from the stirrings of conscience. But the most valuable

service to sin is rendered by books which deny the truths of our holy faith and mock

them. Together with books and pictures and immoral shows, and aided by comradeship

with utterly dissolute and unbelieving people, these instruments of self-stupefaction are

yet another reason why young people are forgetting the way to God’s Church and their

spiritual fathers. But this is not all. The Revolution has created yet another means for

finally putting one’s conscience to sleep: inflicting brutal punishment, torture and

mockery of innocent people together with crudely blaspheming against the holy things of

the Church and the prayer of believers. Although these ghastly crimes horrified the whole

world, there were still plenty of people eager to carry them out, inspired, no doubt, by

nothing other than the desire to silence the voice of their conscience, mercilessly flogging

them, and be freed of it forever. It is this incentive which, although sometimes almost

unrecognized, compels young men and women as well as older people avidly to seek out

and read everything that is printed against God, the Church and God’s commandments,

and angrily to turn away from every book or talk offered to their attention in defense of

the truths of faith. So it is not surprising that young people listen with such confidence

and without any proof to their more self-confident friends and even doctors who have lost

their conscience and say that acts of lust are inescapable necessities for a physically

mature person, and that if these demands are not satisfied one will become ill or go

insane.

But if any like-minded youth, speaking self-confidently and authoritatively, has

his eyes opened to his real spiritual state, full of self-deception and the lowest

motivations, he will not even listen to all that you have to say, but will interrupt you with

crude abuse or sneering derision. What should a spiritual father do with him? Of course,

it is certainly not possible or profitable in all circumstances even to start a conversation

with him about matters of faith and conscience. But here we are primarily considering

talks at confession. These “lambs for the slaughter” will not come to confession at all

unless it is with repentance, spurred on to it, for example, by illness which is the scourge

of dissolute living, or else in a state of severe spiritual conflict, horrified by some atrocity

they have committed or by a misfortune or disaster, such as the suicide or infanticide of a

girl they have deceived, or through fear of some legal punishment, or under the influence

of a freely awakened conscience, or, finally, in special circumstances such as getting

married or going off to war. In all cases of this sort the profligate youth or girl who has

gone astray will have become morally sober to a certain extent and so be capable of

listening to and taking to heart what you say, if it is full of love and compassion.

We shall not develop in any more detail what we have already said about the

connection between unbelief and dissolute living — now we shall speak of how to

struggle with the latter. First of all, the sinner must be convinced that debauchery is not

an essential necessity for a human being. Every priest knows a considerable number of

people who have preserved their virginity until marriage and who did not get married

until they were considerably older than the person confessing was when he lost his

innocence. Priests also know people who have preserved their virginity until death and

were still perfectly healthy.

The concept of “the needs of the body” is extremely vague, and the border line

between them and simple lust is extremely difficult to fix. Let us take, for example, a

need which is quite undisputed — that of food. The power it has over one is very closely

connected with one’s convictions. A prisoner can be starved to death in three or four days

if he is locked up without food, but those who fast of their own tree will can go for a

whole week or more without eating. A person’s ideas about undernourishment and

sufferings from undernourishment will also be determined by whether he is used to eating

well and without his wishes being thwarted, and without being prepared, or even wishing

to struggle in prayer and fasting.

We must distinguish sufferings caused by the body itself from sufferings which

come from the realm of the soul, from dissatisfaction or anger at being unable to obtain

what is pleasant, according to one’s choice and desires . . . The second type of suffering

is incomparably harder to bear than the first type, even when the purely physical

sufferings are negligible. If physical suffering makes itself felt, but the person

acknowledges that it is legitimate and profitable to bear it, then his suffering is not at all

severe, it is hardly felt at all and soon passes away of its own accord. You put on a

“mustard plaster”xxii and it seems to be burning your whole skin, but since you know that

it will make you better by evening, you will not be tormented in your soul by these

sufferings, but will be prepared to keep it on for longer. Suppose, on the contrary, that

you have a headache, the children are disturbing you by loud talking and, besides this,

you are extremely irritated by their inconsiderateness. It will seem as if your head is

about to split open with pain, and the growing feeling of anger, which would cause

suffering by itself, appears even greater when added to the sum of unpleasant sensations.

But then those who are causing the irritation suddenly remember that they are disturbing

you, become ashamed of themselves and approach you kindly, asking for forgiveness.

They touch your heart with their purity and gentleness and cheer you up so that you can

hardly feel your headache any more.

If purely physical sensations and needs are closely connected with the desires and

moods of a person’s soul, then sexual life is far more closely connected with them. Why

is it that this desire, apparently so strong, will desert even the healthiest and youngest

men when they are in deep grief or extremely worried or preoccupied by something?

Thus it is not so much in the body, as in the soul. Of course, a person who is used to

following his every desire, without rules for distinguishing lawful desires from unlawful

and impure ones, giving himself up to foul and pleasure-loving fantasies and seeking out

everywhere impressions that will stimulate them — such a person, of course, considers

sexual passion a most oppressive demand, and takes dissatisfaction of his lust as a terrible

suffering. But surely a vain person hardly suffers less if he does not obtain his stars of

glory at the expected time. Are we then going to say that receiving stars of glory is a

human need? And so it is not virginal life; but depraved fantasies and refusal to be

reconciled with some deprivation which are the real causes of these sufferings,

supposedly physical, which the fornicator uses to justify his depravity. But do virgins

who are chaste in the soul really not undergo any sufferings? It is possible that they

sometimes feel a certain heaviness in the head, but all this easily passes deep sleep, if the

person’s soul remains free from subjugation impure desires and is filled with the wish to

preserve purity of conscience at whatever price in terms of privations.

By explaining these truths to penitents a spiritual father will benefit them

considerably even if he does not manage to prevent them from falling into sin again,

since he will at least have made them aware of the sinfulness of their life and put an end

to the unconcerned and self-confident disposition they were in previously. In addition, it

is essential to point out to them that those who have relations with prostitutes are helping

to bring about the slow moral and physical death of these unfortunate creatures.

Similarly, adulterers and seducers bring misfortune on entire households and are often

guilty of infanticide or abortion, which is treated the same as infanticide by the rules of

the Ecumenical Councils and for which the guilty woman and other people involved are

doomed to deprivation of Holy Communion for from ten to twenty years. If this crime

has now become fashionable, this does not in any way lessen its guilt.

The field of possible warnings and advice to fornicators is, of course, very wide,

as these sins destroy the soul of man, making him cold and unconcerned about loftier

questions and aspirations; they also destroy both the family and society. To enumerate all

these disasters in full would be impossible, and even without that we have spent a very

long time on this question. One thing we must add is that unrestrained single people

should be advised to contract a lawful marriage. When they object and refer to their

precarious financial position, point out that licentiousness does more to ruin people than a

family does, and that even if one has to undergo poverty for the sake of a family, a pure

conscience is more valuable than a self-centered prosperity poisoned by debauchery.xxiii

A spiritual father must even more persistently make spouses who are unfaithful to

each other and deceive each other ashamed of themselves and bring them to their senses.

They should be reminded of the words of Christ: “As ye would that men should do unto

you, so do ye likewise unto them”xxiv. Would such people be pleased if their spouse were

as unfaithful to them as they are to their spouses? However natural it might seem to ask

such a question of one’s conscience, in fact adulterers and adulteresses rarely put it to

themselves. Equally rarely do they think of the corrupting influence their deeds will have

or are already having on their children: children who have lost respect for their parents

often almost entirely lose the ability to distinguish between what is permitted and what is

sinful, what is honourable and what is dishonourable, and grow up to be scoundrels and

villains. The terrible words of our Savior about those who offend one of “these little

ones” are well known.xxv

Concluding our discussion about fighting with this sin, let us consider how one

should answer a sinner who asks how to free himself from it. All that was said about

struggle with secret sins and those of youth should be recalled here, as all this can also be

applied to grown people. Let them also stop believing in worldly stories and novels,

according to which illicit love for another person’s wife, for example, or another person’s

husband or a close relative is represented as a kind of involuntary possession with which

it is supposedly impossible to struggle. All this is a lie, and all these “love-affairs” are the

fruit of a corrupted or idle imagination which was unknown to our ancestors, who were

not educated from novels, but from sacred books. It is necessary to fill one’s soul with

different, better things, to love Christ, the homeland, studies, school and how much more,

to love the Church, one’s parents and one’s companions in the work to which one’s life is

dedicated, and to choose as a companion for one’s life a woman with whom one can form

a marital union and bring tip children. “Consider all other love inadmissible if you want

to save your soul; and if you have an inclination to save your soul, then fight against it

resolutely. First of all, immediately put an end to any such acquaintanceship,

unconditionally and forever. In order to rescue oneself from an already rooted passion it

is necessary to move to a different place, leave one’s teaching duties, not answer letters

and occupy one’s hands with intelligent work, having one’s parents and friends around

one.” These, of course, are the most general principles of struggle with oneself, but

circumstances can be so varied that the resolution of difficulties of this sort has to be left

to the discretion of the priest himself.

In any event a priest must explain that, according to canon 72 of the Sixth

Ecumenical Council and the 52nd Nomocanon, mixed marriages are absolutely unlawful,

as are marriages within the forbidden degrees.xxvi It is true that brides and grooms of this

sort have little respect for the Church canons, but they should be warned that marriages

like this are extremely unstable and, especially in recent times, often end in divorce — as

soon as there is any quarrel or misunderstanding between the spouses, they come to

realize that their marriage is illicit. It is only a deep awareness of the holiness of the

marital bond that compels the spouses to yield to each other’s wishes and so preserve

their union. But when the husband and wife realize that their union is not sacred and is

even cursed by the Church, there will, of course, be no motive left for the preservation of

their union once their feelings for each other have waned, after the inevitable quarrels,

and the spouses have become a burden to each other. However, if a priest is respected by

the couple, he can persuade the heterodox spouse to become Orthodox without too much

difficulty: after explaining to them in general terms the reasons why he should do so, it

can then be pointed out how impossible it is to bring up children in customs and

convictions foreign either to their father or their mother.