An Invitation to Repentance
By Fr. Steven Kostoff
If Great Lent is a time to focus our minds and
soften our hearts, then our surest path to both is through
repentance. Thus, Great Lent is also an invitation to
repentance. For repentance means a "change of mind." The great
ascetic Fathers knew this well as they teach us: "God requires
us to go on repenting until our last breath" (St. Isaias); and
"This life has been given you for repentance. Do not waste it on
other things" (St. Isaac the Syrian). Building on this living
spiritual tradition, one of our great contemporary theologians,
Bishop Kallistos Ware, has expressed the meaning of repentance
with a width and breadth, and a height and depth that I find
rather exhilarating in its expansiveness and hopefulness:
Correctly understood,
repentance is not negative but positive. It means not self-pity
or remorse but conversion, the re-centering of our whole life
upon the Trinity. It is to look not backward with regret but
forward with hope--not downwards at our own shortcomings but
upwards at God's love. It is to see, not what we have failed to
be, but what by divine grace we can now become; and it is to act
upon what we see. To repent is to open our eyes to the light. In
this sense, repentance is not just a single act, an initial
step, but a continuing state, an attitude of heart and will that
needs to be ceaselessly renewed up to the end of life (The
Orthodox Way, pp. 113-114).
How often, when we "repent," do we simply look back
with remorse (and with regret and a good amount of guilt) at
what we have done wrong, and fail to look forward to what God
promises us through His saving grace. Of course, we need to feel
remorse--and "guilt"--for the sins that we do commit and which
may hurt and/or harm others. But the wonderful words of Bishop
Kallistos take us way beyond that into a future that is always
potentially hopeful because of the victory of Christ over sin
and death. To repent is thus to draw closer, or to return, to
our heavenly Father as He has been revealed to us in His beloved
Son, Jesus Christ, by the grace and power of the Holy
Spirit. This is "the re-centering of our whole life upon the
Trinity" that lies at the heart of repentance according to
Bishop Kallistos. Please inform me immediately if you have
discovered anything more positive than that!
If you will joyfully concede that point and if you
are still with me, then we can immediately apply our
energy together as we set off along the path of repentance. As
members of the Church we are all in this together--clergy and
laity alike. If, as the prodigal son, we have squandered the
gifts given to us by our heavenly Father; and if we are tired
and hungry after miserably failing to satisfy ourselves on the
food fit for pigs--the various "isms" of worldly wisdom
beginning, perhaps, with consumerism--then we can come to our
senses as did the same prodigal son, and return to the embrace
of our compassionate heavenly Father. If not, then we will be
doomed to singing along with that poor fellow in the song, who
endlessly shouts: "Can't get no satisfaction!"
The prodigal son, of course, is a character in a
parable, which is essentially a story, and not a historical
figure. Nevertheless, he is no less "real" because of this. In
fact, he is uncannily and uncomfortably more than "true to
life." If there are "Hamlets" and "Don Quixotes" out there among
us, then there also "prodigal sons" among us. A parable conveys
truth no less than the "facts." Paradoxically, then, the
prodigal son is simultaneously "no one" and "everyone." He is no
one because he is not a historical figure, and yet everyone in
that he represents all of humanity alienated from God.
For those of us who participate in the liturgical
and sacramental life of the Church with regularity, there still
does not exist any automatic protection from such alienation
from God. Surely, there is nothing lacking in the Church. The
fullness of grace and truth is found only in the Church. If we
have "ears to hear" and "eyes to see," then we will never be
misled into doctrinal, ethical or moral error. The very gift of
deification is bestowed upon us in the Church! Everything that
we encounter in the life of the Church communicates Christ to
us, and He is the Way the Truth and the Life. But this does not
guarantee that our minds and hearts will not wander off into a
"far country" and squander our God-given possessions in "loose
living." Without quite realizing how or why, we can, like
Dante the pilgrim, find ourselves lost in a "savage forest,
dense and difficult" and with seemingly no easy way out. And
then the same sense of dread comes pouring over us as we feel
lost and lonely.
If and when this happens, we too need to come to
our senses and return to our heavenly Father's embrace. For
indeed, God "desires all men to be saved and to come to the
knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim 2:4). And we cannot let our
membership in the Church--or any other position of worldly
status or recognition--blind us to our need to repent. For sheer
unattractiveness, can anything top a self-satisfied Christian?
We may not have to repent so much for what we have done wrong,
but for what we have not done right. Christ was not exactly
praising the older brother of the parable. His "correctness" had
clearly hardened his heart. The elder son's bitter complaint to
his father was "reasonable," and we cannot help but sympathize
with him as we recognize ourselves in his reaction (thus
precluding our condemnation of him); but he lost all sense of
compassion and forgiveness, and thus the capacity to rejoice.
Of all of the invitations we receive, the
invitation to repent from Christ Himself, has to be the most
attractive, hopeful and promising. It is issued on a daily
basis, but with the coming of Great Lent, its annual appeal is
very openly and widely declared in such a way that we can
neither miss it--nor afford to ignore it.
Fr. Steven C. Kostoff
Christ the Savior/Holy Spirit Orthodox Church
Cincinnati, Ohio |
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