Saint Anne Orthodox Church

 Today, St Nektarios of Aegina is helping us once again to understand the importance of repentance and confession.
 
Beloved Christians! God is in need of nothing. He is in need of no one because He lacks nothing. Therefore, do not offer foreign prayers and supplications in order to satisfy the Divine Righteousness that has been offended by you, in order to propitiate the enraged God. By these alone you benefit nothing. Have you sinned? Do you feel the burden of sin? Does your conscience reproach you? See to it that you are alleviated. See to it that you extinguish the reproach of your conscience. The spiritual father is the only physician. Request the medication rather than prayers and supplications. But even if you ask for these, still, do not overlook the medication.  Just as when we fall ill, as the Apostle James teaches, we ask for the prayers, but we are also anointed with the oil (Jas 5:14). Similarly in this case, seek the medication, ask the holy men to pray in your behalf, while also praying with them. The prayers of those who pray with you should be an expression of your fervent desire to propitiate God. However, the payment and the prayers of others will be of no benefit to you if you are negligent, because you have in no way improved yourself morally.
 
Beloved, we are about ethical rebirth. We are speaking about Christian conduct. We are specking about a virtuous and modest way of life. This is about intimacy with God. We are talking about perfection and holiness. Because having become such persons, we become participants of eternal life.  Therefore, if we do not struggle, we have accomplished nothing. Then, the prayers of the spiritual fathers are useless, the supplicatory cannons of the salaried are useless, the forty –day Liturgies are also useless, when they are performed on behalf of an unrepeated person who has not propitiated God and who still lives in sin. We are saved through contrition of the heart and true confession.
 
Confession also demands the discovery of a proficient and experienced physician. Behold what a holy father says concerning this unavoidable necessity: “Just as people do not reveal their physical ailments to everyone or to just any ordinary person, but to them who are experienced in treating such diseases, similarly the confession of sins should be made to them who are able to provide treatment.” Therefore, we must be careful to search for experienced physicians who are capable of healing the wounds of the heart who has been injured by sins. This is an urgent matter due to the sharp character of the wounds and the various passions. It is a pressing concern due to the impeding danger. 
 
Regarding the importance of repentance and confession, St Theognostos says: We will not be punished or condemned in the age to be because we have sinned, since we were given a mutable and unstable nature. But we will be punished if, after sinning, we did not repent and turn from our evil ways to the Lord; for we have been given the power to repent, as well as the time in which to do so. Only through repentance shall we receive God’s mercy, and not its opposite, His passionate anger. Not that God is angry with us: He is angry with evil. Indeed the Divine is beyond passion and vengefulness, though we speak of it as reflecting, like a mirror, our actions and dispositions, giving to each of us whatever we deserve.