2. The Spiritual Father’s own Disposition.

“If we had taken thought, we would not have been condemned,” writes the Apostle.

Three quarters or, perhaps, nine tenths of our sins, mistakes and even of our crimes occur

because people do not want to stop and think before speaking or acting. Anyone who

does not work on himself does not know what enormous significance for the soul and for

living sensibly lies in cutting oneself off, if only for a moment, from the surrounding

vanities and concentrating one's thoughts and conscience on what the Lord requires of

one in given circumstances or at a given time.

And so, when you are about to hear peoples' confessions, and have invoked the

help of divine grace, if you concentrate your thoughts on what you have read here — if

you remember how you yourself came to confess your sins, how severe your own

struggle with your passions and how lamentable your falls — then you have already done

much good to your flock. There is no doubt that you will say compunctionate and soulshaking

words, if not to all of your spiritual children, then to many of them, words which

you would not have said if you had not carried out this advice of mine, unsophisticated

though it may seem. You will ask, “Can making such a small effort really bring about

such great results as giving a moral shaking to several of my neighbors, for whom Christ

was crucified; or even making them repent and change their whole lives? And all this

now, when religion is universally despised and nobody even wants to respect bishops:

how can I, an ordinary, insignificant priest, hope that my words will have such power?!”

Try it and see, is my answer, and do not be astonished. Is it difficult for a

millionaire to make a whole village happy and rich by a single stroke of his pen on a bank

cheque, or for a village elder to give out a hundred bushels of flour to the starving by

giving a single brief command? But you are spiritually rich, very rich, even if you

yourself are neither wise nor holy; you are rich not through your own spiritual strength,

but through “the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophesy; with the laying on

of hands of the presbytery” (1 Tim. 4:4). Your words are not powerful of themselves, but

the soil, the earth on which your spiritual seed is falling, is fertile. This fertility has been

cultivated by centuries of Church life; although Church life has been shaken in our days,

it still bears in itself the traces or reflection of the countless spiritual feats, struggles and

sufferings of the society that educated the Christian and his family, and also by his own

efforts, even if not very constant, to overcome evil and implant good and faith in his

heart. And now, in accordance with the Church’s teaching, he looks upon you as God’s

herald, as a prophet, and he supplements the value of your words and thoughts from his

own uplifted state and his faith, as if he were listening to the words of God. And this is

almost how it really is. If you have taken this man’s grief and struggle upon yourself, if

you have loved him and abased yourself before the Lord in your heart, and called in

prayer on the help of His grace, then even though you be a sinful pastor, the words of the

Lord will be fulfilled in you: “It is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which

speaketh in you” (Mt. 10:20). This is not to be understood in the fully supernatural sense,

that the priest receives each time a special revelation from God which by-passes his own

head and heart; but in the sense that the grace of God, invoked in humble prayer by him

who is accomplishing this great mystery, enlightens his soul with spiritual love and

compassion towards those repenting, and then, as St. Tikhon of Zadonsk says, addressing

himself even to zealous lay people, “love seeks out the words which can be of use to your

neighbour and this does not require great learning — it requires only remembering (about

God and one’s conscience).”

This is why we remain deeply convinced that the principal condition for fruitful

spiritual direction consists in being convinced that it is not our wisdom that enlightens

our spiritual children and strengthens them in good intentions, but the grace of God,

enlightening their souls and your own soul, as you are an intermediary between them and

God. If I could instill such a conviction and feeling into the- priestly reader, I would

consider my guidance quite adequate and even finished, in view of the words of St.

Tikhon which have just been cited. If we still continue our talk about confession and even

touch on the question of its outward order, then this is primarily so that the priestly

reader, after examining the matter in detail, should thus find an even stronger stimulus to

fill his own soul with zeal to attain the spirit of faith, humility and compassionate,

pastoral love towards penitents.

Nevertheless, it requires great persistence to convince spiritual fathers to embark

on this inner struggle, and even so, unfortunately, they often remain unconvinced; for to

the same degree that this ascetic task of being a spiritual father is great, holy and fruitful

— to that same degree do evil temptations distract our souls from it. First we will

consider those which come not from our evil will but from faintheartedness and

inexperience. Here is the first thing that an inexperienced priest will tell you in reply to

the idea that he can have a profound influence on the souls of penitents: “Half the people

coming to confession are used to doing it as a burdensome and boring social convention;

when social convention ceased to require this, especially since the time of the Revolution,

the majority of them also ceased preparing for Communion, and of those who still carry

out this custom, all hut a minority do it just out of habit. Saying words of love to them

and giving them fiery exhortations is just the same as pouring water into a sieve.” I do not

agree with you, dear brother, but I will not argue with what you have said. Of course, it

would be too bold to claim to convert to a life of virtue all those who receive the

sacrament of confession from you. But read the Book of Acts. Did the preachers of

conversion to God manage to make all the inhabitants of the towns they visited believers

in Christ without exception? No, they concentrated their attention and feelings on the few

who did believe and then imparted to them the word of God and also their own soul (1

Thess. 2:8). Of course, those who heard them were people of other faiths, not their flock,

their spiritual children, as the Christians who come to you for confession are. But I would

like to convince you that if you receive even a few humble sinners into your soul as a

lather, exhort them with a voice of sympathy and love in the name of God and teach them

to struggle spiritually, then even that will be a greater moral feat in the eyes of God and

the Church than all the other things you do to serve Him. If you are the active secretary of

a diocesan council, the manager of a candle factory or take part in the administration of a

seminary, all these respected labors are worth nothing in comparison with returning even

one soul from the path of perdition into the way of salvation. In theory of course you

yourself agree with this; but unfortunately, with the majority of priests these worldly or

semi-worldly matters take up much more, not only of their time, but also of their heartfelt

concern and diligence than does caring for that which is dearer than the whole world —

the human souls which have been entrusted to them.

You are afraid of being repulsed by the people you try to exhort? Begin with

those from whom you can expect a different attitude; just begin — just work on yourself,

as I have written here, and approach this mystery with good will and prayer. If only God

would let you taste that spiritual sweetness with which you could repeat the words of the

father in the Gospel: “For this my son was dead and is alive, was lost and is found” (Lk.

15:32). You will do just as much good to him spiritually as you are doing to yourself.

Like a young woman who has given birth to her firstborn, you will find completely new

feelings in your soul — feelings hitherto unknown to you and unseen by worldly people

— abundant waves of the holy feelings of love, compassion for people, exultant

glorification of the Savior, and hence boldness for the holy faith and readiness to bear

everything for the truth of Christ. Then you will understand, even if you did not

understand it before the day of your ordination, that a priest is not an ordinary Christian,

not an ordinary person, but a co-participant in the redemptive feat of Christ, bearing in

his own soul the multitude of souls that has been entrusted to him. Then you will

understand that the grace of the priesthood which has been given to you is not just “the

right to perform Church services,” but a definite moral gift, a special virtue of spiritual

love, of which St. John Chrysostom, defining the essence of the priesthood, says:

“Spiritual love is not born of anything earthly; it proceeds from above, from Heaven, and

is given in the mystery of the priesthood, but the assimilation and maintenance of this gift

also depends on the strivings of the human spirit.” I have quoted these words of this

Church Father more than once in my writings, for they set a seal with great precision on

everything that has been written above.