Confession – St John’s Adult Education

St. Augustine Quotations

In his homily last Sunday, Father Gabe talked about the importance of St. Augustine of Hippo. I thought this compilation of some of his most well known quotes organized into broad topics might be a good way of helping us more deeply connect to this great saint.

Life and Wisdom

“Habit, if not resisted, soon becomes necessity”.

“Patience is the companion of wisdom”.

“It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels”.

“Become what you are not yet.”

“In doing what we ought we deserve no praise, because it is our duty”.

“Free curiosity is a greater encouragement to learning than frightened compulsion.” (Conf 1,14)

Love and Character

To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek him the greatest adventure; to find him, the greatest human achievement”.

“It matters not as much how much you know, but how much you love.”

“You can judge how much progress you are making by the degree to which you prefer the common good to your own individual interests”.

“Love has hands to help others”.

“Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation”.

“If you are to be filled with what is good, then you must pour out what is evil”.

“The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works”

Humility

“Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility.”

“Let us, you and I lay aside all arrogance. Let neither of us pretend to have found the truth. Let us seek it as something unknown to both of us. Then we may seek it with love and sincerity, when neither of us has the rashness or presumption to believe that we already possess it.”

“I watch over you by virtue of my office, but I also wish to be watched over by you. I am a pastor for you, under the Pastor. From that position I address you as one who teaches, but with you I am a disciple in the school of the one Master”.

Interiority

“Return to yourself. Withdraw from all the din. Look inside yourself to find a pleasant, private corner in your consciousness…” (Sermon 52,22)

“Always examine yourselves without self-deception, without flattery, without buttering yourselves up. After all, there is nobody inside you before whom you need feel ashamed, or whom you need to impress. There is someone there, but one who is pleased with humility. Let Him test you. And you, too, test yourself.” (Sermon 169.18)

“Late have I loved you, O Beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you. For see, you were within and I was without, and I sought you out there. Unlovely, I rushed heedlessly among the lovely things you have made. You were with me, but I was not with you.” (Confessions 10,27,38)

“When teachers have explained, using words, all those subjects which they profess to teach, even the science of virtue and wisdom, then the ones we call pupils consider within themselves whether what they have heard is true. This they do by gazing attentively at that interior truth, so far as they are able. Then it is that they learn, when within themselves they discover that what has been taught is true…” (The Teacher 14.45

“You are closer to me than I am to myself.”

“Let me know myself that I may know You.” (Soliloquies 2,1,1)

Community

“Honour God in each other.” (Rule 1,8)

“Before all else, beloved, love God and then your neighbour, for these are the chief commandments given to us.” (Rule 1,1)

“God does not demand much of you. He asks back what he gave you, and from him you take what is enough for you. The excesses of the rich are the necessities of the poor. When you possess more than you need, you possess what belongs to others.” (On Psalm 147.12)

“Friendship should not be bounded by narrow limits…. It extends beyond those to whom we owe affection and love, even to enemies, for whom we are commanded to pray. There is no one in the human race to whom we do not owe love, even if not out of mutual love, at least on account of our sharing in a common nature.” (Letter 130.13)

“I admit that when I am wearied by the scandals of the world, I abandon my whole self to the love of friends. I find rest in their love and I can stop worrying, for God is in that person to whom I abandon myself and with whom I feel secure and find rest. Their friendship eases my fear, fear about the incertitude of tomorrow that stems from human fragility…”(Letter 73:10)

‘In an orchestra there are many different instruments. But all are tuned so carefully and played in harmony that the audience only hears one melody. This must be our ideal: to be one orchestra for the Lord.’ (On Psalm 150,8)

Restless Search for Truth

“You have made us for Yourself, O Lord and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” (Confessions 1,1)

Truth conquers and “the victory of truth is love.” (Sermon 358,1)

“Let our searching be such that we can be sure of finding and let our finding be such that we may go on searching.” (The Trinity 9.1,1)

We “understand in order to believe; we believe in order to understand.” (Sermon 43.9)

“Every illness of the soul finds its medicine in the Scriptures.”

“Accordingly, dear reader, whenever you are as certain about something as I am go forward with me; whenever you stick equally fast seek with me; whenever you notice that you have gone wrong come back to me; or that I have, call me back to you.” (The Trinity 1,5,1)

Ongoing Conversion

“It is necessary for a person to let themselves be seized by the Word and change their life.”

“You can judge how much progress you are making by the degree to which you prefer the common good to your own individual interests.” (Rule 5,2)

“Hope has two beautiful daughters: their names are anger and courage. Anger that things are the way they are. Courage to make them the way they ought to be.”

“When the truth is eagerly sought, finding it produces greater enjoyment. Found, it is sought again with renewed desire.” (The Trinity 15,2,2)

“As pilgrims on the way, sing in hope, but keep on marching. Are we making progress in good works, in true faith, in right living?

‘‘Bad time, troubled times’, these people say. Let our lives be good, and the times will be good. We make our times; as we are, so are the times.” (Sermon 80,8)

Teaching and Education

“Teach that students may become their own teacher. Let us feed our pupils with the right food so that time will come when they will be able to provide their own food.” (Serm.155,3,3)

“The first subject students learn is the teacher. Teachers offer themselves for imitation. This is the essence of what people call teaching.” (De musica 1,6)

“Let our searching be such that we can be sure of finding, and let our finding be such that we may go on searching.” (De Trin.9.1,1)

“Take care of your body as if you were going to live forever; and take care of your soul as if you were going to die tomorrow.”

“Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.”

“God provides the wind, Man must raise the sail.”

“A thing is not necessarily true because badly uttered, nor false because spoken magnificently.”

“God is always trying to give good things to us, but our hands are too full to receive them.”

“God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.”

“If you believe what you like in the Gospel, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself.”

“Let us leave a little room for reflection and room too, for silence.”

A Modern Lent By Father Stephen Freeman

Few things are as difficult in the modern world as fasting. It is not simply the action of changing our eating habits that we find problematic – it’s the whole concept of fasting and what it truly entails. It comes from another world.

We understand dieting – changing how we eat in order to improve how we look or how we feel. But changing how we eat in order to know God or to rightly keep a feast of the Church – this is foreign. Our first question is often, “How does that work?” For we live in a culture of utility – we want to know the use of things. Underneath the question of utility is the demand that something make sense to me, and that I be able to ultimately take charge of it, use it as I see fit and shape it according to my own desires. Perhaps the fast could be improved?

Our modern self-understanding sees people primarily as individual centers of choice and decision. A person is seen as the product of their choices and decisions – our lives are self-authenticated. As such, we are managers.

Of course there are many problems with this world-view from the perspective of Classical Christianity. Though we are free to make choices and decisions, our freedom is not unlimited. The largest part of our lives is not self-determined. Much of the rhetoric of modernity is aimed towards those with wealth and power. It privileges their stories and mocks the weakness of those without power with promises that are rarely, if ever, fulfilled.

Our lives are a gift from God and not of our own making. The Classical Christian spiritual life is not marked by choice and self-determination: it is characterized by self-emptying and the way of the Cross.

When a modern Christian confronts the season of Lent – the question often becomes: “What do I want to give up for Lent?” The intention is good, but the question is wrong. Lent quickly becomes yet another life-choice, a consumer’s fast.

The practice of the traditional fast has been greatly diminished over the past few centuries. The Catholic Church has modified its requirements and streamlined Lenten fasting (today it includes only abstaining from meat on the Fridays of Lent – which makes them similar to all the other Fridays of the year). The Protestant Churches that observe the season of Lent offer no formal guidelines for Lenten practice. The individual is left on their own.

Orthodoxy continues to have in place the full traditional fast, which is frequently modified in its application (the “rules” themselves are generally recognized as written for monastics). It is essentially a vegan diet (no meat, fish, wine, dairy). Some limit the number of meals and their manner of cooking. Of course, having the fast in place and “keeping the fast” are two very different things. I know of no study on how Orthodox in the modern world actually fast. My pastoral experience tells me that people generally make a good effort.

Does any of this matter? Why should Christians in the modern world concern themselves with a traditional practice?

What is at stake in the modern world is our humanity. The notion that we are self-authenticating individuals is simply false. We obviously do not bring ourselves into existence – it is a gift. And the larger part of what constitutes our lives is simply a given – a gift. It is not always a gift that someone is happy with – we would like ourselves to be other than we are. But the myth of the modern world is that we, in fact, do create ourselves and our lives – our identities are imagined to be of our own making. We are only who we choose to be. It is a myth that is extremely well-suited for undergirding a culture built on consumption. Identity can be had at a price. The wealthy have a far greater range of identities available to them – the poor are largely stuck with being who they really are.

But the only truly authentic human life is the one we receive as a gift from God. The spirituality of choice and consumption under the guise of freedom is an emptiness. The identity we create is an ephemera, a product of imagination and the market. The habits of the marketplace serve to enslave us – Lent is a call to freedom.

A Modern Lent

Thus, a beginning for a modern Lent is to repent from the modern world itself. By this, I mean renouncing the notion that you are a self-generated, self-authenticating individual. You are not defined by your choices and decisions, much less by your career and your shopping. You begin by acknowledging that God alone is Lord (and you are not). Your life has meaning and purpose only in relation to God. The most fundamental practice of such God-centered living is the giving of thanks.

Renounce trying to improve yourself and become something. You are not a work in progress. If you are a work – then you are God’s work. “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in” (Eph 2:10).
Do not plan to have a “good Lent” or imagine what a “good Lent” would be. Give up judging – especially judging yourself. Get out of the center of your world. Lent is not about you. It is about Christ and His Pascha.
Fast according to the Tradition instead of according to your own ideas and designs.This might be hard for some if they are not part of the traditional Church and thus have no fasting tradition. Most Catholics have differing rules for fasting than the Orthodox. If you’re Catholic, fast like a Catholic. Don’t admire other people’s fasting.

If you’re Protestant but would like to live more traditionally, think about becoming Orthodox. Short of that, covenant with others (family, friends) to keep the traditional fast. Don’t be too strict or too lenient, and if possible keep the fast in a manner that is mutually agreed rather than privately designed. Be accountable but not guilty.

Pray. Fasting without praying is called “the Fast of Demons,” because demons never eat, but they never pray. We fast as a means of drawing closer to God. Your fasting and your prayer should be balanced as much as possible. If you fast in a strict manner, then you should pray for extended periods. If you fast lightly, then your prayers may be lighter as well. The point is to be single – for prayer and fasting to be a single thing.
To our prayer and fasting should be added mercy (giving stuff away, especially money). You cannot be too generous. Your mercy should be as invisible as possible to others, except in your kindness to all. Spend less, give away more.

Eating, drinking, praying and generosity are very natural activities. Look at your life. How natural is your eating? Is your diet driven by manufactured, processed foods (especially as served in restaurants and fast food places)? These can be very inhuman ways of eating. Eating should take time. It is not a waste of time to spend as much as six hours in twenty-four preparing, sharing, eating and cleaning up. Even animals take time to eat.

Go to Church a lot more (if your Church has additional Lenten services, go to them). This can be problematic for Protestants, in that most Protestant worship is quite modern, i.e. focused on the individual rather than directed to God, well-meant but antithetical to worship. If your Church isn’t boring, it’s probably modern. This is not to say that Classical Christianity is inherently boring – it’s just experienced as such by people trained to be consumers. Classical Christianity worships according to Tradition and focuses its attention on God. It is not there for you to “get something out of it.”
Entertain yourself less. In traditional Orthodox lands, amusements are often given up during the Lenten period. This can be very difficult for modern people in that we live to consume and are thus caught in a cycle of pain and pleasure. Normal pleasures such as exercise or walking are not what I have in mind – although it strikes me as altogether modern that there should be businesses dedicated to helping us do something normal (like walking or exercising), such that even our normal activities become a commodity to consume.
Fast from watching/reading the news and having/expressing opinions. The news is not presented in order to keep you informed. It is often inaccurate and serves the primary purpose of political propaganda and consumer frenzy. Neither are good for the soul. Opinions can be deeply destructive to the soul’s health. Most opinions are not properly considered, necessary beliefs. They are passions that pass themselves off as thoughts or beliefs. The need to express them reveals their passionate nature. Though opinions are a necessary part of life – they easily come to dominate us. Reducing the need to express how we feel about everything that comes our way (as opposed to silently weighing and considering and patiently speaking what we know to be true) is an important part of ascesis and self-control.

I could well imagine that a modern person, reading through such a list, might feel overwhelmed and wonder what is left. What is left is being human. That so much in our lives is not particularly human but an ephemeral distraction goes far to explain much of our exhaustion and anxiety. There is no food for us in what is not human.

And so the words of Isaiah come to mind:

Ho! Everyone who thirsts, Come to the waters; And you who have no money, Come, buy and eat. Yes, come, buy wine and milk Without money and without price. Why do you spend money for what is not bread, And your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, And let your soul delight itself in fatness (Isa 55:1-2).

“Let your soul delight itself in fatness…” the irony of Lent.

Humble Repentance or Paralyzing Guilt – Homily Fifth Sunday of Lent

By Father Philip LeMasters

Whenever we experience guilt and shame because of something we have done wrong, we need to ask ourselves a question. Do we feel that way because we are sorrowful that we have disobeyed God or because we cannot stand being less than perfect in our own eyes or those of others? The first kind of humiliation is spiritually beneficial and may lead to repentance, but the second kind is simply a form of pride that easily paralyzes us in obsessive despair. At this point in our lives, most of us probably experience some mixture of these two types of shame. As we grow closer to Christ, the first must increase and the second must decrease.

When we wonder if there is hope for the healing of our souls in this way, we should remember St. Mary of Egypt. She stands as a brilliant icon of how to repent from even the most shameful sins. Mary experienced a healthy form of guilt when her eyes were opened to how depraved she had become through her life of addiction to perverse sexual pleasure. Through the intercessions and guidance of the Theotokos, she venerated the Holy Cross at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and received Communion on her way to decades of ascetical struggle in the desert. When the monk Zosima stumbled upon her almost 50 years later, he was amazed at her holiness. He saw this holy woman walk on water and rise up off the ground in prayer, but like all the saints she knew only her own sins and perpetual need for the Lord’s mercy.

Perhaps what makes St. Mary of Egypt’s story such a beautiful icon of true repentance is that she was genuinely humble before God. She was not sorrowful for her sin out of a sense of wounded pride, obsessive self-centered guilt, or fear of what others thought of her. Instead, she said earnestly to the Theotokos “Be my faithful witness before your Son that I will never again defile my body by the impurity of fornication, but as soon as I have seen the Tree of the Cross I will renounce the world and its temptations and will go wherever you will lead me.” And she did precisely that, abandoning all that she had known for the long and difficult journey that led to the healing of her soul. Her focus was completely on doing whatever it took to reorient her life toward God, to purify her desires so that she would find true fulfillment in Him.

Today the Orthodox Church calls us all to follow her example of repentance, regardless of the details of how we have sinned in thought, word, and deed. By commemorating a notorious sex addict who became a great saint, we proclaim that no sin is so shameful that we cannot repent of it. An honest look at our lives, as we should all take during Lent, dredges up shame and regret in various forms. St. Mary of Egypt reminds us to accept humbly the truth about our failings as we confess our sins, call for the Lord’s mercy, and do what is necessary to find healing. Her example reminds us not to be paralyzed by prideful obsessions that block us from being freed from slavery to our passions. Even her depraved way of life did not exclude St. Mary of Egypt from acquiring remarkable holiness. If she did not let a perverse form of pride deter her from finding salvation, then no one should be ashamed to kneel before Christ in humility. The Savior did not reject her and He will not reject us when we come to Him as she did.

In today’s gospel text, James and John related to Christ in a very different way, for they wanted the best positions of power when He came into His Kingdom. The Lord challenged their prideful delusions by reminding the disciples that humility, not self-exalation, is the way to life eternal. He said “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” How shocking that today we celebrate honest, humble repentance from a woman with a truly scandalous past while some of the men closest to Christ in His earthly ministry think only of getting worldly power for themselves.

Perhaps the key difference is that St. Mary of Egypt got over obsession with herself. Instead of assuming that she was “damaged goods” for whom there was no hope, she humbly died to self by taking up her cross. Indeed, her repentance began in the context of venerating the Holy Cross at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The rest of her journey required profound faith, sacrifice, and courage. To undo with God’s help the harm that she had done to herself through years of debauchery must have been incredibly difficult. But sustained by the Lord’s mercy and the intercessions of the Theotokos, that is precisely what she did over the remaining decades of her life.

Today, so near the end of Lent and only a week from Palm Sunday, we see that this is the path we must take also. In order to follow it, we must not be paralyzed in prideful shame about anything we have said, thought, done, or otherwise experienced or participated in at any point in our lives. Instead, we must have the brutal honesty and deep humility of St. Mary of Egypt, a woman with a revolting past who became a shining beacon of holiness. That is how she found healing for her soul and it is how we will find healing for ours also. The good news of this season is that the Lord makes such blessedness possible for us all through His Cross, His descent into Hades, and His glorious resurrection on the third day. But in order to participate in the great mystery of His salvation, we too must get over our pride, accept His mercy, and actually repent. If St. Mary of Egypt could do that with her personal history, we can too.

Great Lent And The Mystery of the Cross & Resurrection – Short Reflection

By Archimandrite Zacharias from his book ’At The Doors of Holy Lent’

Great Lent is a taste of death in the Name of God, for the sake of our reconciliation with Him, for the sake of His commandment. The little death that that beast, our ego, endures through fasting, through voluntarily bearing shame in the mystery of confession, by shedding streams of wretched tears for our dire poverty and inability to render mighty love unto the Lord; this death places us on the path of Him Who said: ‘I am the first and the last: I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore.’(Rev 1:17-18). This begets in the heart the faith that, ‘If we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him: Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over Him.’ (Rom 6:8-9). Then on the night of the Resurrection, we sing with boldness the hymn: ‘Yesterday, O Christ, I was buried with Thee and today I rise again with Thy rising. Yesterday I was crucified with Thee: do Thou Thyself glorify me, O Saviour, in thy kingdom.’ Our minor taste of death leavens in the heart and, upon hearing the good news of the Resurrection of Christ, it becomes an explosion of joy, initiating us into the mystery of His descent into hell and ascension above the Heavens.

The Church is preoccupied with only one matter: the Cross and Resurrection of Christ. Saint Paul was consumed by the desire to set forth before his disciples the image of Jesus Christ, ‘and Him crucified’ (1 Cor 2:2). In other words, his concern was to impart to them the knowledge of the mystery of the Cross and Resurrection of Christ, knowing that whosoever walks the way of the Cross will also enter into the presence of the Risen Lord. The Church institutes as a commandment that we should go through this period with spiritual tension for the renewal of our life. She travails to see her children assimilated through obedience into the mystery of the Cross and Resurrection of Christ.

Why is the Great Canon done in its entirety in the 5th week of Lent

Remember to check out the Great Canon Resource Page as you prepare

By Fr. Sergei V. Bulgakov

At Matins on this day the Canon of St. Andrew of Crete is read in its entirety once a year, which was read in four parts on the first four days of the first week, and the Life of St. Mary of Egypt is read after the Sessional Hymn (Kathisma). According to this feature of the Thursday Matins it is called either the St. Andrew of Crete or the St. Mary of Egypt Thursday.

In the Canon are collected and stated, all the exhortations to fasting and repentance, and the Holy Church repeats it now in its fullness to inspire us new strength for the successful end to Lent. “Since”, it is said in the Synaxarion, “the Holy Forty Day Lent is drawing near the end so that men should not become lazy, or more carelessly disposed to the spiritual efforts, or give up their abstinence altogether,” that this Great Canon is offered. It is “so long, and so well-composed, as to be sufficient to soften even the hardest soul, and to rouse it to resumption of the good, if only it is sung with a contrite heart and proper attention”. And the Church Typikon (Ustav) orders the Great Canon to be read and chanted slowly and “with a contrite heart and voice, making three prostrations at each Troparion”.

For the same purpose of abstinence and strength, and attention to repentance is the reading of the Life of the Venerable Mary of Egypt. According to an explanation of the same Synaxarion, the Life of the Venerable Mary also “manifests infinite compunction and gives much encouragement to the fallen and sinners”, representing itself to us as a paradigm of true repentance, and an example of the unutterable mercy of God. It serves as the continuation of the Canon of St. Andrew of Crete and a transition to the order of the following Sunday. Reading the Canon of St. Andrew and Mary of Egypt on the Thursday of the Fifth Week was established from the time of the Sixth Ecumenical Council.

Kontakion in Plagal of the Second Tone

My soul, my soul, arise. Why are you sleeping? The end is approaching, and you will be confounded. Awake, therefore, that you may be spared by Christ God, Who is everywhere present and fills all things.

“Lord I Believe ; Help My Unbelief”- Homily for 4th Sunday of Lent

Father Phillip LeMasters

Sometimes we stand before God with more doubt than belief, with more despair than hope. Sometimes our worries and fears increase; the joy of life slips away and we feel rotten. Maybe it’s our health, the problems of our loved ones, stress about a busy schedule, or other matters at home, at work, or with our friends. We are sometimes simply at the end of our rope.

If you feel that way today or ever have in your life, you can begin to sympathize with the father of the demon-possessed young man in today’s gospel reading. Since childhood, his son had had life-threatening seizures and convulsions. With the broken heart of a parent who has little hope for his child’s healing, the man cries out, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.” Christ’s disciples had lacked the spiritual strength to cast out the demon, but the Lord Himself healed him. We can only imagine how grateful the man and his son were for this blessing.

And imagine how embarrassed the disciples were. The Lord had referred to them as part of a “faithless generation” and asked how long he would have to put with them. He told them that demons like this “can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting,” spiritual exercises designed to strengthen our faith and to purify our souls. Not only were the disciples unable to cast out the demon, they could not even understand the Savior’s prediction of His own death and resurrection. At this point in the journey, they were not great models of faithfulness.

In fact, the best example of faithfulness in this story is the unnamed father. He wants help for his child, and he tells the truth about himself. His faith was imperfect; he had doubts; his hopes for his son’s healing had been crushed many times before. He said to Christ, “If you can do anything, have compassion on us.” In other words, he wasn’t entirely sure if the Lord could heal his son. All that he could do was to cry out with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.”

And in doing so, he showed that he had the spiritual clarity that the disciples lacked, for he knew the weakness of his faith. Still, with every ounce of his being He called to the Lord for mercy. He received it and the young man was set free.

If we have taken Lent seriously at all this year, we will have become at least a bit like this honest father when our struggles with spiritual disciplines have shown us our weakness. When we pray, we often welcome distractions; and it’s so easy not to pray at all. When we set out to fast from food or something else to which we have become too attached, we often become angry and frustrated. When we try to forgive and be reconciled with others, memories of past wrongs and fears about the future often overcome our good intentions. We wrestle with our passions just a bit, and they get the better of us. We so easily do, think, and say things that aren’t holy at all. We put so much else before loving God and our neighbors. Lent is good at breaking down our illusions of holiness, at giving us a clearer picture of our spiritual state. And often we don’t like what we see.

If that’s where you are today, take heart, for Jesus Christ came to show mercy upon people like the father in our gospel lesson. That man knew his weakness, he did not try to hide it, and he honestly threw himself on the mercy of the Lord. He made no excuses; he did not justify himself; he did not complain. He did not hide his doubt and frustration before God. He did not wallow in wounded pride, obsess about his imperfections, or worry about what someone else would think of him. Instead, he simply acknowledged the truth about his situation and called upon Christ with every ounce of his being for help with a problem that had broken his heart.

We don’t know how religious this man appeared to anyone else. Perhaps his fasting had been his many years of selfless struggle to care for his son; perhaps his prayers had always been focused on the boy’s healing. But we do know that this man, in humility and honesty, received the mercy of Jesus Christ when he called to Him.

With whatever level of spiritual clarity we possess, with whatever amount of faith in our souls, with whatever doubts, fears, weaknesses, and sins that beset us, let us all follow his example of opening the wounds of our hearts and lives to the Lord. Jesus Christ heard this man’s prayer; He brought new life to his son. And He will do the same for us, when we fall before Him in honest repentance, knowing that our only hope is in the great mercy that He has always shown to sinners like you and me whose faith leaves a lot to be desired.

If we need a reminder of the importance of taking Confession this Lent, this gospel passage should help us. Christ did not reject a father who was brutally honest about his imperfect faith, but instead responded to his confession with abundant grace, healing, and love. He will do the same for each of us who stand before His icon with the humble plea for forgiveness, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.” There is no better way to prepare to follow our Savior to the agony of the cross and the joy of the empty tomb.