St. Michael Russian Orthodox Church

October 18, 2009

And Jesus said: "Whoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me." These are simple words from the Savior of mankind. They were intended by Jesus to be very easily understood. And they were very easy to understand except in our time.

We have decided as a society and as individuals that there is no reason to deprive ourselves of anything at all, no matter if it is good or otherwise. W e have made up our minds that it is all fair game. We used to know what sin was. We knew that it was something that we did deliberately that was done against a concrete law given to us by God to guide our lives. That came from a time when humanity knew who God was and just what it was that He expected from His creation, meaning us.

Over the last several decades things have changed. Our relationship with God is one of those changed things. People have forgotten the concept that when sin was committed by us, meaning that we deliberately ignored and violated God's given law that we are required to acknowledge that fact, that we are also required to repent of that sin. Repent means to ask for God's forgiveness and to seriously promise God that we will not only not commit that sin again but also that we will most sincerely try not to sin at all again. You may remember that, in the life of the early Church, confession was indeed a rare occurance. The early Church expected her people to take the new life in Christ in a most serious way. The Church and perhaps even more importantly, the people of that Church fully expected that people would live without sinning. Was that expectation actually realized? For the most part, yes it was.

But, because the devil never sleeps, even some of those early Christians fell into serious sin. It was for precisely this reason that Jesus Christ, on the night of the first day after His resurrection came and stood in the midst of His disciples and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit: whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven and whose sins you retain they are retained". Just what was Jesus doing for us? He knew that people, being people, would manage to sometimes spoil their perfect relationships with their Creator by committing sins. Jesus was establishing the sacrament of Confession to restore these spoiled relationships. When you go home today, look in the 20th chapter of Saint John's Gospel you can find it all right there. This great sacrament has existed among for almost two thousand years. The idea of confessing before a priest came about for very practical reasons. We know that it is God to Whom we confess our sins and it is God Who forgives our sins, but just what is the part of the priest in this. The priest stands as a witness before God of everything we say and he is the source of advice and guidance in avoiding sin in the future. He also assures us of God's forgiveness for all of the sins we confess.

Brothers and sisters! It is time for all of us to take the words of Jesus Christ seriously and to really prepare ourselves for a cleansing Confession. This can be done in several ways. It all begins with us making a review of those things we know we have done that have been displeasing to God. We can come to Church earlier on Sunday so that the priest can give us the time we need or to come in at another time so that we can have time for Confession and maybe to ask some puzzling questions and hopefully get some useful answers.

I said earlier that Confession was a rarity in the time of the early Christian Church, but because of the confusion of modem life and the fact of the open and universally observable work of Satan on all sides frequent Confession is not only a good idea but a spiritual necessity for the followers of Jesus Christ.