The Bishop
of San Francisco & the West
650 Micheltorena St.
Los Angeles, California 90026-3629
Telephone: (323)
913-3615 Facsimile: (800) 323-6921
THE SACRAMENT OF PENANCE
Now, during the Fast, there are many opportunities to experience the
wonderful, grace-filled and grace-bestowing Mystery, or Sacrament, of Holy
Penance. As we all learned, either while growing up or in our being
catechized before entering the Church from other religious bodies (or from
unbelief), the great Sacrament of Confession is the event whereby a
Christian presents himself or herself before God, represented by a member
of the Church ordained by God for just such purposes, namely, a Priest of
the Church, and acknowledges publicly his or her weak belief, or even
unbelief, and all the events, thoughts, and actions he or she has
committed which opposed Christ's teachings, especially those of the
Beatitude "Commandments," sins against God, against one's
neighbor, against one's own self, i.e., our self as God would have it be,
and then, after this confession and with a firm intention to no longer
commit such sins, with God's help, receives from the Priest, who has the
power to bind and loose received via the Apostles and their successors in
the Church, Absolution. "Absolution" is actually expressed by
the Priest praying that the Lord God "may forgive, through His Grace
and love of mankind, all thy sins." This prayer is guaranteed its
effectiveness by the aforementioned bestowal: "whatsoever you loose
on earth will be loosed in heaven." The Priest also, as a simple
human being and member of the Church, adds his own personal forgiveness
(as every Christian is bound to do: "forgive one another your
trespasses"), in the current recension of the prayer used in Churches
in the Russian and Slavic tradition, with these words, "And I, an
unworthy priest, through the power given unto me by Him, do forgive and
absolve..." We are thereby empowered to go forth forgiven, refreshed,
cleansed, as in a second Baptism, into renewed life. Preferably, but not
necessarily, we are able to partake of the Holy Mysteries (Sacrament) of
the Body and Blood of Christ as a first event in this new life. These
Mysteries were termed by the early Christians the Medicine of Immortality,
and they are, on a grand and very vast spiritual scale, "just what
the (Heavenly?) Doctor ordered" for us.
There was a time, not long past, when both these Great and Saving
Mysteries had fallen into desuetude. Due to a legal minimum having been
established in some places, such as the notorious injunction of the
Russian Emperor Peter the Great's "Spiritual Regulation," that
an imperial subject must confess and commune at least once a year, at
Pascha, combined with the sinful tendency of all sinners, such as we are,
to do the minimum only (if we can only find out what it is!), many
Christians failed to avail themselves of such great gifts to the Church as
Confession and Communion as often as was spiritually healthy, or even, we
can say, appropriate to the Orthodox person. (Nevertheless, there was
never a time when representatives of the hierarchy and other leading
clergy, such as St. John of Kronstadt, did not exhort the Faithful to more
frequent Confession and Communion, but the ancient enemy of mankind,
Satan, was successful in keeping many, many Christians away from something
actually essential to a Christian life: FREQUENT Confession and
Communion.)
In our time, part of the problem was addressed: frequency of Holy
Communion. However, the other part was not only neglected, it even got
worse in some places. The eminent Archpriest, theologian, and teacher,
Father Sergius Bulgakov, once described this disappearance of the
Sacrament of Confession from the Serbian and Greek religious scene as
"the loss of religious culture." Yet, many of his own students
may have, unwittingly, contributed to the present sad state where in some
places there is no real Sacrament of Confession at all, but only the
exercise called "General Confession," which is, of course, no
Confession at all, no matter the mental and verbal gymnastics which its
well-meaning defenders as such may now display. "General
Confession," a beneficial exercise whose time is probably long past,
was described by the late great teacher, Archpriest Alexander Schmemann,
and implemented by the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church in America, as a
practice which IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR INDIVIDUAL CONFESSION, yet it
became just that in the lives of individual Christians and even whole
parishes.
Some of the pious were even led to believe that there was some relation
between this innovative exercise called "General Confession,"
and the mass Confessions conducted by St. John of Kronstadt. NOTHING OF
THE SORT! In the practice of mass Confessions conducted by St. John of
Kronstadt, all, according to witnesses and participants, said or, in many
cases, shouted aloud all their individual sins. That is, the Christians
who participated in this mass Confession did not speak their sins ONLY in
the presence of an ordained Priest in the relative seclusion of the Office
of Confession, but in the presence and hearing of their friends and
neighbors and strangers standing beside them in Church!
The exercise of General Confession was instituted and is practiced in
our own Parish until now. As has been stated on more than one occasion
from the Amvon and in this monthly bulletin, it is to be used by those who
are going to Confession frequently, as means of making more meaningful and
complete the practice of the Sacrament of Confession which all should be
accomplishing during the Great Fast. It should be merely the prelude to
the opening of the individual heart before the Priest when the individual
comes to receive Absolution at the end of the General Confession. (There
are, of course, those who will have gone to Confession and Communion on
the morning of the day on which General Confession is conducted, and for
these, to be sure, it would be considered appropriate to merely receive
the Prayer of Absolution and the ensuing blessing of the Priest to receive
Holy Communion. All others are exhorted to take advantage of the great
gift of peace and healing being offered to them and to confess at this
time their individual sins.)
Dear brothers and sisters, we live in the last years of the twentieth
century since the coming of our Lord, God, and Savior, Jesus Christ in the
flesh. Our Lord preached of sin, repentance, perfection, holiness,
forgiveness, love, humility, self-denial, obedience, and more. Our Church
maintains all these teachings as they were received from Our Lord through
the holy process called Holy Tradition, that is, from Him, through the
Apostles and their successors until now. While many who are outside the
Church through false teaching have gone from distortion of what our Lord
preached to ignoring it, the Church still has the same teaching and the
same Sacramental Life as was established by Him. You and I not only live
in the richest society yet seen on our planet, and in the more prosperous
part of that richest society, but we have been given the great possibility
of real Life within that Holy Tradition that comes from the God-Man
Himself, Jesus Christ. Let's own up to our failure and failures in being
grateful children of our Heavenly Father. Let's not keep the Holy Mystery
of Penance locked away, or rather locked outside the house in which we
live. Let's not treat one of God's greatest Gifts to us, the Gift of the
Father to the Prodigal Son as He runs to meet us halfway when we confess
our sins, as a spoiled child with too many toys treats a toy hoarded in a
closet to be dragged out to be shown to visitors as one of our
possessions, but one we no longer have a use for.
+Bishop TIKHON
APRIL 1994
Newsletter of the Holy Virgin Mary Cathedral Los Angeles, CA
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