Saint Anne Orthodox Church

One of the main characteristics of Orthodox Spirituality, very often ignored or misunderstood, is the call to sanctification. Called from ignorance to knowledge – and therefore to faith and repentance – we human beings enter upon a cycle of learning and progress in which the further we advance, the further we reduce the void of our previous deficiency. In this light the Christian life is nothing else but a divine call to become aware of our sinfulness, to oppose it, and fight with it. The entire sacramental life of the Church, starting with Baptism and culminating in the Eucharist can be summarized as a call to repentance and sanctification. The road that leads to sanctification and perfection in Christ is repentance, since we “all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). As one ascends the ladder of repentance, so one encounters the gradations of sanctification. This is the definition of true repentance: that a man regains the divine grace that was lost through sin, or of which he was deprived by living far from faith and knowledge of God. The regaining of grace is not something partial but the totality of adoption, which Christ grants to the faithful through His Church.

Faith, divine fear, the fervor that results from these things and strict obedience to the commandments, controls the passionate part of the soul, which is thus turned in its entirety towards God, because, in the words of the Apostle, “what is mortal is swallowed up by life" (2 Cor. 5:4). This holy struggle is the duty of all humans as rational beings, in which nature requires them to stand firm. Infringing these terms reduces rationality to the position of the irrational and unnatural. For man not to sin and to act righteously is a law of nature and in consequence a duty.

Understanding the divine call to repentance, sanctification and salvation as the very first step on the spiritual path, understanding what God is asking from us, will lead us to the right spiritual attitude. Then, worship in Church, personal prayer, the holy sacraments of Confession and Communion, the practice of fasting and so on, will become precious sources of divine grace and life, molding our whole existence in the light of the Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition.

This lesson is based on the teachings of Elder Joseph the Hesychast.