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= P^Fkqp=Mbqbo=^Ka=M^Ri=Loqelalu=`Ero`E + = = p^fkqp=mbqbo=^ka=m^ri=loqelalu=`ero`e NEWSLETTER About Confession August, 2011 Saints Peter and Paul Orthodox Church A Parish of the Orthodox Church in America Archpriest John Udics, Rector 305 Main Road, Herkimer, New York, 13350 Parish Web Page: www.cnyorthodoxchurch.org Saints Peter and Paul Orthodox Church Newsletter, August, 2011 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS We asked people for questions so we could put together a Question-and-Answers Newsletter (there are now 400 questions, but you can always submit your own!). The first question we received was this: “Father, I have a question about Absolution. How many times can I receive Holy Communion before I have to go to Confession again?” The answer to this question is just as complicated as the question itself, and since it’s such big problem in our Orthodox Church today, we thought it’d be best to devote this entire issue of Questions and Answers to the answer. The answer to that one simple question looked more and more like a book. Father’s favorite critic pointed out that nobody would read such a long document. With lots of editing and re-arranging, we think it’s become less bookish and more readable. The best way to read this is to start at the beginning and go through to the end: it’s a little long, you need not read it in one sitting. In any case, we hope that this ‘little’ article will help to answer some of the questions that people have about the Sacrament of Penance. 1) Father, I have a question about Absolution. How many times can I receive Holy Communion before I have to go to Confession again? In order to answer your question, which covers a lot of different ground and seems to show that there are questions about Absolution, Confession, the frequency of receiving the Sacraments, and so on, I think it’s best to give an explanation of what Confession is, how it got to be that way, and then to explain what the Church today says about Confession. But if you can’t wait, skip to the answer to question ‘I’. A) What is Confession? Confession, or by its proper name, The Mystery of Repentance, or The Sacrament of Penance, is the Sacrament in which we confess our sins, and express our sorrow for having fallen out of God’s grace. And, having promised to try to better our lives, we receive, through the laying-on-of-hands of the bishop or priest, the pardon, forgiveness, and the washing away or absolution of our sins. Confession is also where we come for advice about how best to live our life and how to fight sin and temptation. There are three elements necessary to a good confession: Repentance, Confession, and Thanksgiving. Repentance comes when we become aware of sin and see how it poisons our hearts and separates us from God. When we begin to feel the enormity of sin, we feel contrition and sorrow. Second is confession, when we begin to hope for forgiveness and we desire to ask God to remit our sins, to heal our souls, and sacramentally to purify us. Already feeling God’s mercy, we remember that we have hurt others, and we ask them to forgive us, and we forgive them. One fruit of this repentance and confession is the desire to turn away from wickedness, to turn toward goodness. Third is thanksgiving. Once we feel God’s mercy and know His saving forgiveness, we are strengthened in our desire to change our life, we become more determined to turn away from sin and be led toward God. Through the joy of this reconciliation with Christ and with others, we start to know reparation and renewal in Christ. We fulfill this thanksgiving in the Eucharist, where the Body and Blood of Christ, which washes away our sins and heals infirmities, pours out. One fruit of our thanksgiving is our active and expressed desire to do good for others where we have done evil in the past, to heal where we have wounded, to soothe where we have irritated, to do kindness where we have been cruel and hurtful, to use our energy to build where we have destroyed. Repentance has to come from our hearts and be sincere. Is it enough to confess out of fear of the Last Judgment? Confessing out of fear is a good beginning, but the real repentance has to be because we love God, feel cut off from Him and want to return to Him. Once we admit to ourselves that we’ve done wrong, we make the next move which is to try to correct any hurt or damage. We must turn from our wickedness and want to live. We must feel repulsion when we look at our sinful lives and at our continual failure to live as perfect a Godly, Christian life as we can. We can come to this realization if we say our daily prayers and make the daily examination of our conscience that those prayers contain. Looking back at the day just past, we can examine our memories and look for the things we did that 2 Saints Peter and Paul Orthodox Church Newsletter, August, 2011 could have been done better. We can look at the things we did that we can be ashamed of and at the things that were cruel, heartless, thoughtless, inconsiderate, and maybe even criminal. And we must make a beginning of asking God to forgive us, sincerely praying that God will listen to us, will open the eyes of our souls so that we can see clearly what things are sinful so that we can be moved to repent of them. Next is the Sacrament proper. We prepare for it by remembering the examination of conscience in the daily prayers in the prayer book, and by trying to remember the things that we did that we are going to confess. The Sacrament itself begins with the Trisagion prayers (Holy God through the Lord’s Prayer), followed by troparia of repentance (which the priest says as part of his entrance prayers every time he serves Liturgy). The priest will advise us how to confess and will say that we should confess everything and hold nothing back. We then confess our sins, as well as we can remember them. The priest will give advice concerning the correcting of our lives and how to fight the sins we have confessed. Then Father will advise us about how to complete our Confession, through prayer and maybe certain acts of penance. The next prayer is the actual prayer of absolution, which means washing away. Two prayers are commonly used: first, a prayer which begins, “O Lord, God of the salvation of Thy servants...” and then, in the Greek tradition one which begins, “It was God who pardoned David through Nathan the Prophet...”, or in the Russian tradition, one which is a translation from the Latin and which contains the phrase “And I, His unworthy priest, through the power given to me by Him, forgive and absolve Thee...” Sometimes, both are used. Finally, there is the response we must make after Confession. We thank God that He has heard our confession and has given us freedom from our sins, and we must start to fulfill the penance that the priest has given us. Some penances include repaying any debts we may have caused by our sin. Some penances are not very complicated. Other penances are more difficult, and take time to complete. In either case, a penance is given to us for our betterment, and as a means of teaching us to repent and to feel as sorry as we should for the sins that we’ve committed. There’s nothing we can do to make ourselves worthy of God’s grace and mercy, and nothing we can do to earn forgiveness. We can’t ‘even up the score’ with God. Penances can’t satisfy God or remove His righteous wrath. The prayer of absolution says that God does not desire the death of a sinner but rather that he should turn from his wickedness and live. Once we’ve turned back to God by Confession, we must not forget that we now have to start to live the way we should: not just passively avoiding further sins, but actively doing good. Turning away from our sins and illnesses, like the tenth leper, we return to God giving thanks. We thank God privately in our hearts through our prayers, and in our actions by changing our lives, and in the Church in the Eucharist. Having been previously separated from God by our sins, we now re-unite with the community of Faith, led by the Holy Spirit. B) Was there Confession in the Old Testament? One of the prayers of absolution begins, “It was God who pardoned David through Nathan the Prophet, when he confessed his sins....” That certainly indicates that the ideas of repentance, confessing and forgiveness existed in the Old Testament. After becoming aware of his sins and being moved to repentance, the Old Testament man would confess his sins and would take the appropriate sacrifice to the Temple so that the priest could offer the sacrifice according to the Law and the sins could be atoned for. Also, there were Holy Days when the High Priest would offer sacrifices for the sins of the entire People of God. The feeling of guilt for having sinned, and the desire to get back into God’s favor was very familiar to the Old Testament.
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