18. Particular (Individual) Sins.

Sometimes a new spiritual father finds it difficult to enumerate sins; i.e., he simply

cannot remember the most important and most frequent falls into sin. Unfortunately,

although they often have the service books before their eyes, our theologians and clergy

rarely favour with their attention that part which is printed in red ink, nor even the part

printed in black except the prayers themselves, and they never read a good half even of

these.

A full enough list of all possible sins can be compiled from the following parts of

the Trebnik and prayer book: 1) The rite of confession; 2) The evening prayer to the Holy

Spirit; 3) The last of the evening prayers, “I confess to Thee, the One God worshipped in

Trinity...”; 4) The fourth of the prayers before Holy Communion, “As if standing before

Thine awesome and impartial judgement seat;” and 5), lastly, a pamphlet entitled A

General Confession of Sins by St. Dimitry of Rostov. This last contains the most detailed

and well thought out list. Of course, a spiritual father cannot question every parishioner

about each of these sins, but he can read through the list beforehand and then choose

which questions to ask, adapting himself to the age, sex and attitude of the person

confessing. Not long ago (in 1914) the Kiev Caves Monastery published a separate

pamphlet in very large print called The Order of Confession, which contains both the

above mentioned work of St. Dimitry and the full rite of Confession, and also other

questions which may be put to penitents. This pamphlet can perfectly well be used in

place of the above mentioned sources.xxxv

Before turning to instructions for the curing of individual sins, let us ask ourselves

what to do with those Christians who recognize that their sins are reprehensible, but put

off struggling with them indefinitely. Although they are not completely cast down into

stony insensibility like those impenitent sinners about whom we wrote earlier,xxxvi they do

not wish to struggle with their sins yet, thinking or even declaring aloud that they will

still manage to repent. Even when people’s minds are not dominated by a persistent,

conscious attitude of this sort, the vast majority still have such an attitude concealed in

their subconscious and may be dominated by this. It results in an unconcerned attitude in

which they return again and again to their foul deeds, and in the complacent feeling with

which they come, although not often, to God’s church and even to confession. They do

not seek to justify themselves in any way, but seem to be convinced that under no

circumstances will they be deprived of eternal salvation, but will without fail correct their

lives some day and somehow. It is almost exactly these characteristics that our literary

classics, in the persons of Pushkin, Turgenev and Leo Tolstoy, ascribe to those in whom

they wish to depict the principal type of Russian intellectual. Even among the simple

people there are not a few such types, especially those who have left the patriarchal

family life and made contact with new conditions of life. What needs to be instilled into

such people? The fear of God? Sometimes (although, of course, not always), it is

sufficient to cite the following statement from St. Cyril of Alexandria’s homily

“Concerning the Departure of the Soul and the Second Coming” (in the combined Psalter

and Book of Hours — The Service Psalter): “Those who say, we shall sin in our youth

and repent in our old age, are tempted and deceived by the demons, for as they are

sinning voluntarily, they shall not be vouchsafed repentance, and in their youth shall be

reaped by the sickle of death, as Ammon, the King of Israel, who angered God with his

evil designs and foul thoughts.”

It is useful to corroborate this with an example from life around us. I, for example,

have known several Lutherans who were favourably disposed towards our Church, but

were putting off Holy Chrismationxxxvii until retirement or terminal illness; this decision

being prompted by the devil who deluded them with the fear that it would be said of them

that they had converted out of self-interest(?!) They all died without managing to get out

of the clutches of their heresy. The same thing often happens with Christians who have

resolved to receive the monastic tonsure, but gradually put it off year after year. In

ancient times pagans wishing to become Christians fell into the same error and similarly

died without repentance. St. John Chrysostom and other contemporary Church Fathers

condemned and exhorted these people with particular persistence. Besides this, it must be

impressed upon those who are putting off a decisive correction of their lives that the

desire to repent and the fear of God will not grow if they postpone their conversion. On

the contrary, these will grow dim, and at the same time new passions will be born and

will grow in their carefree hearts, like thorns choking the wheat. The soul becomes

hardened and callous, and even if it is not taken from the body in its youth, after tarrying

over repentance while still young, in its old age it will cleave even more avidly to the

allurements of this life and will become altogether inaccessible to resolute repentance.

The most undesirable type of confession occurs when a person, who may be free

of offences and perhaps of coarse passions also, nevertheless approaches it without bitter

reproaches of conscience. Such a person says to himself, “It is impossible to live

sinlessly. I have sinned and, of course, I will sin, not on purpose, but through weakness,

but it can’t really be otherwise. Why should I be particularly grievous over the sins I have

committed, when I know that tomorrow I shall start doing just the same things? I don’t

deny the mystery of Holy Communion, but I receive it only out of obedience to Christian

doctrine; I do not openly feel any benefit for my soul, and probably never will feel any.

Everything that is condemned in the Gospel I accept to be a sin: I am not lying when I

answer the priest “Sinful,”xxxviii but I think that if these two mysteries did not exist I

would probably be no better and no worse than I am now, receiving them every year or

four times a year.” Many people feel like this, although they do not all express such an

attitude openly, and not all of them would be able to, especially the uneducated. In

pointing out this attitude to confession, we are not contradicting what we said at the

beginning of our counsel to spiritual fathers: those who come to confession receive their

words as the words of God, and a Christian is never so receptive to good influences as he

is during the minutes of confession.

This indifferent and dismal attitude is formed in a layman’s soul because of the

inexperience of his spiritual father, who has been unable to awaken pangs of conscience

in him, nor make him aware that he is a terrible sinner before God and his neighbors.

From what has been said above, it follows that this awakening is attained by revealing to

the sinner his dominating passion, which he often — one may even say, in most cases —

does not even suspect to be in himself. But a long confession would be necessary for this,

and as yet the facilities for such confessions have not been organized, so the spiritual

father often has to restrict himself either to listening to the penitents’ own admissions, or

to asking questions about individual sins. How can he awaken a deep feeling of guiltiness

in the penitent, and a firm resolve to start struggling with himself and concern himself

about the salvation of his soul? Indeed, this is especially difficult if the person has not

deliberately committed any criminal act, but still does not positively strive towards God

and virtue.

In situations like this a spiritual father will be fulfilling his task if he opens the

penitent’s eyes to those sins which he does not notice or consider to be at all important,

but which really cause much evil to his neighbors or are strictly condemned by the

teaching of Christ. Passing on now to the consideration of individual sins, we suggest that

it is with sins of this sort that the pastor should begin his questions. What exactly are

these questions to be?

To begin with, when the penitent declares that he is a believer, the priest can ask

him, “Have you hidden this because of false shame and fear before people? You know,

during the time of the martyrs those Christians who renounced the faith of Christ and did

not confess the Lord Jesus Christ, from fear of tortures and death, were excommunicated

from the Church for twenty years. However, those who acted thus not out of the danger

of the death penalty, but because of earthly consideration or from fear of mockery, were

excommunicated for their whole lives and were only received back into the Church and

given Holy Communion at the very end of their lives, or passed their days in constant

lamentation over their denial, like the Apostle Peter, who poured out tears of repentance

every time the cock crowed during the night, throughout the whole of his life.

‘Whosoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this generation . . .’.”

Of course, if the priest personally knows the person who has come to confession,

and knows that he has committed this particular sin, his question can be more insistent

and he can talk at greater length about it. But even if he does not know the penitent and

the latter does not of his own accord remember any occasions when he directly and

intentionally concealed his faith and represented himself as an irreligious person, the

priest can still explain to him that these formidable words of Christ refer not only to those

who directly renounce the faith, but also to those who are ashamed to confess it. Those

who conceal from their acquaintances that they go to Church and prepare for Communion

by prayer and fasting are guilty of this sin, as are those who are ashamed to make the sign

of the cross before eating or when passing a church, not wanting people to know that they

are believers. It is useful to remind him that the Moslems say even more prayers when

they are among “unbelievers” (e.g. on the decks of ships). They pray with special zeal

when the passengers heap ridicule on them, for they consider that bearing this mockery is

a feat especially pleasing to Allah.

If all this is said with love, so that the sinner understands that the priest wants not

to abase him, but to open his eyes to the state of his own soul, it will make him stop and

think. It besides this, he admits that he concealed sins at previous confessions — either

this particular sin or others, as a consequence of either false shame or extreme negligence

and forgetfulness — then the priest’s exhortations will probably lead even a frivolous

soul out of its sinfully carefree state, and this will be the beginning of the change of the

person’s whole inner life. He will come to understand that he is a great sinner, that he has

forgotten his Redeemer and is more worthy of condemnation from God and people than

is a person who is ashamed to admit his relationship to poor parents or other relatives and

has thus deserved general contempt.