12. The Sacrament of Mercy
The Spiritual
Father
Angela’s mum Sophia is very happy today. Her two older
beloved children; her daughter Christina and her fiancé John are with her. They came to tell her that, both of them together before
they get married, want to start a new spiritual life under the wise guidance of
Father Chrysostom.
Father Chrysostom is a good priest who lives
ascetically in a small monastery near their village. Both John and his beloved
Christina want to have the same spiritual Father and confessor, to whom they
will trust the spiritual path of their souls.
The whole village respects and appreciates this
reverent priest very much. The reputation of his virtue is the reason that so many
people from the surrounding villages, even from the capital, come to him in
order to consult with him, to confess their sins and so receive the forgiveness
of their sins. His
words are full of prudence and wisdom. He loves everybody, especially sinners, with such a
great love that he gives you the feeling that you are his own child. People rightfully feel that he
is a heavenly angel who spreads love, joy and serenity into their souls. When
you’re with him you feel that you are close to God. Many times, when he listens
to the people’s sins, he suffers so much that tears of compassion and mercy flow
from his eyes. Although his fatherly love is so obvious, everybody feels they
are covered by a motherly affection that makes them love and trust him.
Christina’s parents respect and love him very much. By his help and holy and wise teachings they have for
many years now walked the blessed path of their marriage with love and peace. Both of them owe him
their spiritual progress and their great love for God. Father Chrysostom,
seeing the simplicity of their souls and also the longing they had to love the
King Christ with all the power of their hearts, was leading them more and more
on the angelic path of divine love with grace and wisdom. Thanks to him both of
them have been living like angels on earth with joy and serenity and they
wanted the same thing for their children. So, John and Christina
decided to entrust the spiritual guidance of their souls to this holy priest
and confessor.
-Mum, I am very happy that we will go today together
with my John to confess to father Chrysostom!
-My Christina, I am also very excited that the Holy
Spirit enlightened you to have a common spiritual father and especially this
man of God. He is an
earthly angel whom our God sent us to guide us with wisdom and compassion to
the high mountaintops of holy virtues. I have learned so many things from this
holy man!
-Mum, could you tell us some of the wonderful words
you have heard from him, in order to help us to be better prepared for the
confession that we want to do?
- With pleasure my children!
The
greatness of the Sacrament of Repentance
Christina
was excited because she gave the opportunity to her mum to teach her once again
in her wonderful own way all those great things which were hiding in her
motherly heart. She loved her mum, not only because
she was a good mother and wife, but because she had a feeling in her heart that
her mum was a true holy mother. Her
spiritual kindness made her look like noble lady. Her simple, honest and
sincere attitude towards all people makes you feel that you have a holy woman
in front of you. If you want to start
a conversation with her, her words full of wisdom and love will help you to
realize what daughters of God are like. How much Christina wanted to
be like her!
-Mum, I would also like my John to listen to all these
nice words you were often telling me about the Sacrament of Repentance which were
helping me very much. As the time gets closer to the wedding with my John, we
are thinking that it would be much better to start our new life with the
decision not to hide anything from each other and to have a common spiritual
father and confessor. In that way we will be able to solve the problems better which
will occur and we will also have a common direction on our spiritual path.
-My Christina, what you have decided to do with John
is very wise. This will help you to fly very quickly, not only on the high
mountaintops of virtues, but also to the most beautiful desire of your soul, to
love with divine love, both of you as
one, our beloved King Jesus. There is no doubt that the first step of the ladder which will lift
you up into the arms and then into the heart of our Lord Jesus is the Sacrament of Repentance.
Little Angela, who was following silently her mum’s
conversation with her sister Christina until now, asked her mother for
permission to sit near them in order to get the benefit of her wise words.
-Mum, I also want to hear what you will say. May I stay
with you?
-Of course, my Angela! I also want you to learn about
this great mystery of love which is the Sacrament of Repentance, because in
that way you will be able to cultivate from now on, with the prudence of a grown
up girl, the wonderful gift which is given to all people by our heavenly
Father.
-Mum, I know that I might not be able to understand
some things as my Christina and John can, but I will beg my beloved Jesus to
help me in this.
- My child, all of us have to beg our good God to enlighten us with the power of the Holy
Spirit, because without it no man can properly understand His Will and also
the ways of the salvation of our souls.
-Mum, you said earlier that the Sacrament of Repentance
is the first step of the ladder which will bring us into the heart of our God. Why
is it the first step of this ladder?
-Because, my Christina, without the Sacrament of Repentance
man's salvation is impossible. Because all humans are sinners and guilty in
front of divine justice, there is no other way and means to return to God after
Holy Baptism and be released from sin, apart from repentance and confession. If by Holy Baptism we become Christians, by Repentance
and Confession we find again the way to the Kingdom of Heaven and eternal life. It is
the only way by which the soul is purified from sin and so can live again in
the arms of God.
-Mum, when was this wonderful gift of God given to
man?
-After our Lord’s resurrection, the Holy Bible says, namely
in the gospel of John the Theologian, in the 20th chapter and verses 19 to 23;
when all the disciples of Christ were gathered together in a house because of
their fear of the Jews, our resurrected Lord appeared among them and gave them strength
and consolation. Then He also gave them the divine power for them to be
able, and later their successors, bishops and priests, to forgive the sins of
those people who will honestly repent for their mistakes, by the power of the
Holy Spirit. Those sins for which people
will repent and will confess to them
and later to their successors, bishops and priests, will be immediately erased
from the ledgers of the demons.
-When we commit sins, mum, are they recorded by demons
in their ledgers? Asked little Angela.
-Yes, my little girl. The demons in their effort to drive
more and more people into the gloomy hell, they first make people commit sins
and then they record them in their own ledgers.
-And why do they do it?
-As we have said before, my child, when a man dies and
his soul begins to rise to heaven, accompanied by his guardian angel, the
toll-houses of the souls appear to prevent the soul from being saved. To
achieve their aim in taking that soul from the hands of the angels in order to
lead it to hell, they take out their ledgers and start to list all the mistakes
and sins that the soul had committed during its life on earth.
-Do they achieve this, mum?
-They easily achieve
it with only those people who did not want to go to a spiritual father and
confess their sins, so that their guardian angel is able to erase them from the
ledgers. For this reason the Sacrament of Repentance is the most crucial
mystery for man’s salvation. At the time of confession we must all have deep in
our souls the feeling of the importance of this moment. It is the moment that heaven
is listening to us and our soul is being judged. It is somehow the representation of the moment when the soul passes by
the toll-houses, only that now we have the ability to erase an error or sin that
we have committed.
Different
kinds of excuses
-Mum, when we confess our mistakes in front of the icon
of our Lord doesn’t our good God forgive us? Angela continued.
-He always listens to us whenever we speak to Him
through our prayers about our sorrows, problems, anxieties, mistakes and sins
and whatever else troubles us. As our Father that He is, He takes cares of everything
with His infinite wisdom, however, since our mistakes and sins were the reason
for Satan to gain power and force over us, He wants not just to purify us but
also to release us from every influence and bond with which Satan managed to deviously
chain a soul.
The different kinds of passions and sins which we
unfortunately commit are pushing us more and more into the arms of Satan.
-So, mum, every time we commit a sin, is it an
opportunity for Satan to bind us tighter with his satanic bondage? Asked
Christina.
-Yes, my child, that's why the repentance of man for
his mistakes is not a simple case and a simple way to apologise for these. Your
desire to confess before God is the first realisation of the mistake that you have
committed and offended our good God. But the forgiveness
for these mistakes and especially the healing of our soul from the terrible effects
of sins requires the existence of a spiritual doctor who will diagnose the
causes which led us to this specific mistake and will give us the appropriate
treatment to cure it. Without a doctor no sick person can know by himself
what the right medicine is for its treatment.
-I understand, mum, what you want to say. Even if we
confess our mistakes before the icon of Lord, His icon cannot talk to us in
order to forgive us or to advise us what we have to do to heal ourselves from
the poison of sin in our soul. We must always go to the spiritual confessors that
our church has appointed in order to confess our mistakes, to be forgiven and to
help us with spiritual healing.
-That’s
exactly right my child. That’s why our Lord, due to the critical damage of sin on
our soul, since it has the power to lead us into the gloomy hell, He established
the holy sacrament of Repentance, which can also be called the sacrament of His
utmost Mercy. It is
the most blessed Sacrament since through it God expresses His infinite love and
mercy to sinful man.
-But why, mum, do some people refuse to go to the
confessor and want to admit their mistakes only in front of the holy icon of
our Lord?
-The first excuse is the shame that they feel for their mistakes and the other one is the selfishness that lies in the depths
of their soul. They
feel shame that their reputation will be ruined in front of the priest, when
they reveal the mistakes they have committed and the satanic excuses they use
in order to justify their pride and they don’t easily allow them to go to the confessor
with humility. That’s
why they prefer the easy solution to tell them only to the icon of Christ, as if the icon itself can forgive you
or assure you that God forgives you! It is, my little girl, an insidious plot
of Satan to keep a sinful soul away from salvation. Our Lord was clear when He
was saying that He will forgive our mistakes only when we repent them and
confess them with humility and a remorseful heart to the confessors. Only by confession
can they be erased from the ledgers of the evil demons!
-Mum, you also mentioned some other satanic excuses which
people use in order not to go to the spiritual confessor. What are they?
-Well, some people say: "Why should I tell my
sins to the priest, since he is also a sinner?"
-What could we say to them? John queried.
-The Gospel says, my John, that there is no man who
does not commit mistakes and sins. That’s why everyone needs the holy sacrament of Repentance
whether they are laity or clergy. However, we have to remind those people who
by the cunning of demons say these words, of something very simple. It never
concerns us when we are sick and go to the hospital, whether the doctor who will
make the diagnosis of the disease and give us the necessary medicines for treatment,
is a saint or a sinner. What interests us is to be healed from our illness and to
be completely well! I'll tell you another example.
When, my child John, we take
a trip by any means of transport, we never check the morality of the driver. We
are just interested reaching our destination. Does it also increase or decrease
the nice smell of a rose when it is offered to us by a saint or a sinner? The
same happens with the priests, independent of whether they are saints or
sinners, whenever we go honestly to change our life and confess our mistakes
and sins; we get the forgiveness of our sins by the grace of the Holy Spirit. We
must never forget that, during the sacred moments of confession we don’t say
our mistakes to the priest, but to God Himself who is listening to us. It is He
who forgives us through the priest and cleanses us from every impurity of our
soul. But this doesn’t mean that we will not try to find the best spiritual
confessor who, except for the forgiveness which he will give us by the grace of
the Holy Spirit, he will also help us spiritually with his enlightened advice! Don’t we
do the same thing when we are sick? Don’t we try to find the best doctor?
-What strikes me, however, is that some people claim
that they have no sins, so they don’t need to confess, John went on.
-I have also heard them my John. I remember when I
encouraged someone to confess so that serenity would come into his troubled
heart, he told me: "What sins should I say to the priest, since I neither
stole nor committed adultery, nor killed nor harmed anyone."
-And what did you reply to him mum?
-What is written by the beloved disciple of our Lord
John the Theologian in one of his epistles: "If we claim that we have no
sins then we are deceived by Satan and the truth is not in us (John 1:8). The
Apostle James says: "We all commit many mistakes and sins" (James,
3:2). It is true, my child, that many times people do not to commit a great and
serious sin but some small ones that while we don’t pay any attention to them, they
have the power to destroy a soul. It reminds me of those people who were saved
from great diseases and died from a simple cold or flu which became pneumonia. Therefore,
all people should be careful with the great as well as with small mistakes and
sins.
The heart’s
mistakes
-Mum, what are really the most dangerous sins for our
soul? Asked Christina.
-Man, my little girl, consists of two parts, the
material body and the intangible and immortal soul; and so the mistakes which he makes sometimes concern
the one part and sometimes the other. Of course, since our body is visible, its
mistakes are more easily perceived, for example, the carnal sins of man. On the
contrary, the war of Satan against the soul is not easily understood by man, so as a result of
this, the wound which is caused by sin is deeper and more hidden. It's like when
you bleed. When the
bleeding is external, the wound is visible and the doctor can easily heal it. But when the bleeding is
internal the diagnosis is difficult, and then man can even die very quickly. For this reason, the heart’s
mistakes are much more dangerous than those of the body. That’s
why when we commit a carnal sin we repent faster and more easily, while with insidious mistakes
of the heart it is very difficult to repent and often we don’t repent at all.
-Mum, all of us know more or less the mistakes of the body,
Christina said. All of us know how great the sins of murder, abortion, drugs, theft,
immorality and various other carnal sins are. I would like you now to help
us to better understand the mistakes of the heart, but also the way by which we
will be protected from them.
-Our soul is expressed, my Christina, through the mind and the heart. However, we can never know what someone has on his mind and in
his heart, if God hadn’t given us the great gift of speech. Through words we learn what someone has on his
mind and in his heart, but at the same time, we also show to people what we
have in our soul. Man’s mouth is somehow the gate to his soul. So someone who
wants to keep his soul safe from any influence of Satan, should take care of these
three things more than anything else; first his mind,
then his heart and then his tongue.
-What should we be careful of with our mind mum? Asked
Christina.
-First of all not to be selfish and think that we are better
than other people. This creates pride in our soul and makes us have contempt
for others. Sometimes this selfishness is obvious, so it can be more easily
uprooted. Other times, however, it is hidden and it is more difficult to detect.
That's why hidden selfishness is more dangerous because it is quite difficult
to uproot.
-How do we know whether we have selfishness?
-First
an obvious sign of pride in the soul is when someone always wants his own way with stubbornness and anger even if it is
obvious that it is wrong. Secondly
a sign of this evil selfishness is jealousy
and envy which are created in our
soul against our fellowmen. These two things have such a destructive power which
is expressed with the third and
most terrible sign of our selfishness which is criticism. The first sign
grows easily in our mind, the second one in our heart and the third one with
our words.
-Mum, why is criticism more terrible than the other
two?
-Because the first two may exist in a soul due to
weakness, so he is struggling to uproot them, while criticism is the final aggressive movement of a soul against a fellow
human being which can destroy him. That’s why our people have a very important saying:
"The tongue has no bones but it can break bones." The apostle
James says in the first chapter of his epistle that: "Whoever thinks he is a religious man but doesn’t control his tongue,
deceives himself and his religion is worthless” and in the third chapter of
his epistle he notes the following, equally significant: "If a person does not make mistakes with words, he is a perfect
man, able to control his whole being. The salvation of our soul depends on our words, as the
Spirit of God says: "By your words I will vindicate you and by your words I
will criticise you." Didn’t our Christ also say to us clearly, "do
not judge others, so you will not be judged "?
The
poison of the excuse
-I can’t imagine, mummy, that the tongue and the
thoughtless words we say could be the greatest problem on a correct spiritual
path!
-It is an even greater problem, my Christina, when, instead
of repenting for the different kinds of mistakes we committed, we use it now to
start making excuses. All of us ignore
that the excuse we use to vindicate ourselves and so to justify our mistakes
and sins is the most effective poison which is used by Satan to punish our soul.
Do you know, my child, how many people go to confession and instead of saving
themselves they get punished even more?
-How can this be, mum, since the reason we go to
confession is to cleanse ourselves from our sins?
-My child, when someone commits a sin Satan makes him believe
that it wasn’t his fault but someone else led him to do it. It is
the moment that the hidden selfishness of man is activated with the help of the
devil, the satanic defense of excuse.
So this man, instead of admitting his mistake and taking full responsibility
for the sin that he committed by his will, he begins making excuses.
-But, mum, this is not a true repentance, is it?
-Of course not, my little girl. It is not repentance
but a cause for man’s soul to be punished even more, because he turned the
sacrament of repentance from a mystery
of remorse and blessing into a mystery of vindication and conviction of his
soul. At this holy
sacrament we should not say anything else except for our mistakes and sins. It is the moment when the whole of
Heaven is open and ready to
accept the remorseful heart of man and not to hear the
problems that trouble him. We entrust our various problems into the hands of
God through our daily prayers. My children, when we go to
confession, we must not lose the sense of how critical it is, because according
to the confession that we are going to make we either will be saved
or condemned by
our Creator. It is the moment that our soul is judged. And to repeat, it is a representation of the
moment when the soul passes through the toll-houses,
but this time he has the ability to erase the mistake or sin he committed. Who will dare to lie before God and demons or to deal
with another soul by judging it? Do you know what is going to happen if we commit this mistake
and instead of apologizing from our
heart for our mistakes, we
start making excuses and judgments?
-What is going to happen, mum? Little Angela asked anxiously.
-My spiritual
father told me that at that time two terrible things happen
to this soul. First, he forces his own God to turn away from
him because instead of crying
with a remorseful heart for his mistakes
and apologizing, he comes with daring and audacity to offend
his brother. He criticizes and condemns him in front of the priest and the whole of Heaven through cheap
excuses. Secondly, this soul
gives Satan the right to rule over it, due to
the excuses and criticism that he made
against his brother. So this soul, instead
of leaving the confessional vindicated by God, leaves condemned and with more demons than
he came with. Therefore, my beloved children, when you go to confession tell only
your own mistakes without excuses and criticisms
against any one else. Then God will accept your apology
and will erase all your sins from the
ledgers of the demons. Never forget that God will forgive you accordingly to the repentance that you will show for your mistakes
and not just about what you will say to
your confessor. That’s
why it is necessary to observe the three steps of repentance before going to
confession. Each one of them is a blessing from
our good God.
-What are these three steps mum? Asked Angela.
-The first step
of repentance, my Angela, is the awareness of the mistake we
committed. Our conscience
which our good God has
given us is a great and precious gift to every
human soul and also helps us a
lot in this. Our conscience is
somehow the voice of God in our souls. It shows us our mistakes and encourages us towards
virtue. Therefore, we should never ignore its advice and silence it with our
indifference. It helps us to move
to the second step of repentance
which is to stop the mistake we committed. The third step is to correct the mistake we have committed,
in case we treated someone unfairly
or slandered our
brother. The bitterness of injustice and
slander does not allow a soul to rest in the arms of God and so to find its lost
peace and serenity. That’s why, in this case, a simple apology is not enough for a sinful soul to be forgiven, if he doesn’t previously humble himself and doesn’t specifically confess the slander with
which he discredited his brother. By keeping these
three steps of repentance, which someone could also call them the three steps
of blessing; the repented soul is able to turn to the confessor priest to complete
the great sacrament of mercy of our good God, with a remorseful heart for his
mistakes. In this fourth step our God Himself through the priest forgives His child's
soul and returns it to His divine fatherly embrace.
-All of us would like to thank you, our sweet mummy,
for all these beautiful things you have told us and helped us to understand
this great gift of God which is the sacrament of Repentance. Tonight my John
and I will write down all those mistakes we have committed, so that tomorrow we
will go to our good spiritual father Chrysostom and under his holy stole will
get rid of all those little thorns from our soul. Allow
us, mummy, to give you a kiss of love from the depths of our heart to show you
how much we love you and how much we thank our good God for the sweet mummy He
gave us!
