Protopriest Valerian
Krechetov
”How
should I tell the priest about my sins? Is a feeling
of repentance indispensable during confession? After
confession, should one expect a feeling of spiritual
relief, or lightness of soul? These beginners'
questions often remain troublesome even for very
experienced parishioners. Many of us are too
fainthearted to ”waste a priest's
time” with such ”simple and
insignificant” questions. In order to fill in
this gap about confession, such ”simple and
insignificant” questions were given by our NS
correspondent Dmitry Rebrov to the highly-respected
Protopriest Valerian Krechetov, the senior
father-confessor[1] in the Moscow
Diocese and head priest of the Church of the Protection
in the village of Akulovo, Moscow Province.
IS REPENTANCE AND FORGIVENESS OF SINS POSSIBLE
WITHOUT A PRIEST AS INTERMEDIARY?
– Father Valerian, how would you explain to
a church-newcomer what confession is and why it is
necessary?
– Once a professor at a theological academy gave my
father--also a priest--this question during an exam:
”Tell me, young batiushka[2], (and my father was
already in his fifties; he was 49 when he entered the
seminary), what does God do when he wants to bring
someone to Himself? My dad answered this way and that,
and the old professor agreed. Yet towards the end, to
get at the heart of the matter, he asked, ”And
what is the most important?” He himself answered,
”He sends a person spiritual heaviness and sorrow
of soul, so that the person will seek God, so that he
will realize that he cannot be delivered from that
condition by any earthly means.” And I think this
is very true! During his life, a person constantly and
inescapably runs into the consequences of his sins.
There is a saying, ”Live in such a way during the
day, so that at night your conscience won't
bite.” This is an expression of folk wisdom: it
is certainly true that one's sleep is disturbed
by impressions of what one did, said, or saw during the
day. It seems that everything has gone without
problems, but then one begins to ponder on some
incident or other, and hears a certain voice saying
something to him--the voice of conscience. Sometimes a
person, seeing that what he has done is irrevocable,
takes a terrible step: he decides to
”deliver” himself from this earthly life,
or he begins to drink. And thus a person falls into a
state even more ruinous than that from which he is
fleeing. All of this is but anesthesia; the person
can't cure the disease, but he gets rid of the
symptoms, or at least numbs himself to them. Searching
for a way out of this pain of soul also brings him to
see his need for repentance and forgiveness, one of the
basic causes compelling a person to go to Church and
confession.
– It is often asked, ”Why does a
person have to go to church and confess before a priest?
What's wrong with repenting alone, by yourself,
before God--at home, for example--without an
intermediary?
– If confession in a church isn't possible for
some reason, then it is possible
to confess this way, without an intermediary. But can a
neophyte hear when God says, ”Very good, I forgive
you?” Saint John of Kronstadt, when he sinned in
some way, would pray until he received forgiveness and
spiritual healingfrom God. But does a neophyte have such a
degree of communication with God?
People have a natural need for personal contact. But both
in relations with another person and in relations with
God, it is very important not only to be understood, but
also to have a visible sign that God or the other person
understands you. The Lord established it thus, that a
person receive His forgiveness through another person: a
priest. Whose soever sins ye remit, they are
remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they
are retained (John 20:23).
– When a person comes to confession,
sometimes the question arises: What kind of things
specifically should a person confess? Our conscience
doesn't seem to bother us, doesn't accuse us
of anything; we didn't kill anyone, didn't rob
anyone.
– Yes, the conscience accuses a person first of the
serious sins. But if the conscience doesn't say
anything, often that is because the conscience has opened
its mouth before, but the person stopped it up. The holy
fathers say that if a person goes from sunlight into a
dark room, he begins first to see big objects, then
smaller; if he lights a light, then he begins to see
everything. In the same way, a person who begins to keep
track of his inner life at first sees only the big sins,
then the smaller. Then grace gives him light so that he
can see his own sins, for this is what we ask God during
Great Lent through the prayer of Saint Ephraim the
Syrian.
Specifically of what sins one should repent is a
question of time. At first a person doesn't
understand or notice very much. But during the sacrament
itself … grace, the spirit
of God, begins to open up a person's ability to see
his sins. And the person, perhaps not even realizing
specifically how he has sinned, all the same
feels his sinfulness. Although the
confession of sins includes the idea of
comprehension;there is also a state of feeling when a
person realizes simply that he is sinful in comparison to
holiness; and this also is the action of grace. For
example…
My father was born in 1900, so the post-revolutionary
years came during his youth. There were all these new
currents of thought, this breath of ”freedom”
… and so he drifted away from the Church. His
mother, my grandmother, asked him during Lent if he
wouldn't go to Church and take Holy Communion. She
said, ”If you do, I'll bow down at your
feet.” ”Oh Mama, you don't have to do
that, I'll just go,” he answered, and went to
the church on the Arbat, to Father Vladimir Vorobiev (the
grandfather of Archpriest Vladimir Vorobiev, the current
rector of St Tikhon's Orthodox University). He got
in line for confession and had not a single thought about
repentance; he just stood there and looked at the pretty
girls. When his turn came, he knelt down, and to the
priest's question, ”Well, young fella, what do
you want to say?” my papa answered, ”I
don't have anything to say.” ”And why
did you come?” ”My mama asked me to.”
The priest was silent for a little while, and then
answered, ”That's very good, that you listened
to your mama.” He covered my father with his
epitrachelion[3] and began to read
the prayer of forgiveness. ”What happened to me
next, I don't understand to this day,” my
father told me later. ”I began to sob; tears came
out of my eyes as if from a spigot. And when I got up
and returned to my place in the church, I didn't
look at anyone, anyone at all. The world had become
completely different for me.” From that time on,
my father began to go to Church. Then by the Providence
of God, he was sent to prison, where he was in the same
prison cell with holy confessors of the faith. After
prison he became a clergyman.
THE SINS WHICH WE SEE MOST OFTEN IN OTHERS ARE
ALSO IN US
– Are there any aids to help prepare for
confession?
– One could advise a person to read something
written for this purpose; there is a good book by Father
John Krestiankin, ”Experience in Preparing for
Confession”[4], and some other
material; but here we find a complication: there have
appeared some enumerations or lists of sins in which we
find a certain ”relishing” or
”savoring” of the sins. And one must be
very careful with such lists, since they sometimes
function like a kind of textbook of sin, or manual of
sins; because there are listed there such sins that a
person not only never did but never even thought of.
One should not read a list detailing the sins of the
flesh, because it soils the soul. As for the other
kinds of sin, it's better simply to pay attention
to your inner state. For example, when we see a
weakness in someone, the very fact that we notice that
weakness means that that sin is also in us. You
remember the ”mote” in someone else's
eye and the ”beam” in your own? What
is it, this mote? A mote grows into a log, and a log is
a passion. The mote is a sin; that is, a concrete
manifestation of that passion. But if we do not know
what kind of tree it is, or what kind of log, if we
don't even know that they are harmful, then we
will never suspect what the mote is all about. As it is
now expressed, ”Everyone understands things
according to the degree of his depravity.” And so
we notice in another person specifically that sin, we
understand specifically that passion, which is
in us ourselves.
– Some people are disturbed that
forgiveness, it turns out, is so easy to receive. A person
sins, then repents, then sins again, then repents …
and over and over? Without any repentance?
– Why do you say that? Who told you such a thing? At
confession, sin is forgiven; but even so, a person still
has to bear the consequences of his sin. The classic
example is the repentant thief who was crucified on the
cross beside Christ. He repented, and the Lord said to
him, Today you will be with Me in Paradise.
Nothing unclean can enter into Paradise, so we know that
the Lord has already purified him and forgiven him his
sins; nevertheless, he remained hanging on the cross! And
if that weren't enough, the Gospel tells us that the
soldiers then broke his legs (cf. John 19:32). A person
all the same has to bear consequences for his sins,
although certainly not to the degree he deserves to
suffer.
– Many Christians, although they confess
every week, nevertheless remain sinners, in no visible way
differing from everyone else. Furthermore, they repent
over and over again of the very same sins. It turns out,
does it, that confession hasn't helped
them?
– Nothing of the sort. He who constantly labors over
himself already differs from other people. Regarding the
very same sins, even the Apostle Paul was given a
thorn in the flesh, some kind of pain, suffering,
or trial, so that he would not get puffed up. As they say,
”Until the last breath, even up to the gates of
Paradise, the battle with sin goes on.” St Mary of
Egypt repented, but for another 17 years she struggled
fiercely with sin!
– Is it necessary to have a feeling of
repentance during confession? Some people simply list
their sins without any visible emotion. Is this also
okay?
– The importance of the struggle with a sin is not
simply that a person names it, but that the sin becomes
disgusting and repulsive to him or her. When we were on
Mount Athos, a priest asked one of the spiritual fathers,
”Why does it happen that we repent, have Holy
Communion, and then go out and commit the same sins
again?” The elder answered, ”It is simply
because pain of heart has not yet outweighed and
overpowered the sin!”
If you simply enumerate sins, with no pain of heart, that
means that you don't have an inner battle with sin.
Repentance obviously includes acquiring an inner feeling
of repentance. And this feeling is from God—you
can't give orders to your heart. But sometimes,
simply naming your sin at confession is a labor unto
blood.
Confession is only the beginning of repentance;
repentance is the backbone of one's whole spiritual
life. Regarding the prayer which the priest reads at
confession (the priest usually reads the beginning of the
prayer at the start to everyone together, but the end of
the prayer to each person individually). ”I
forgive and remit…” Thus begins the concluding
part, and includes the words, ”…give him/her
(the person confessing, whose sins are being remitted by
this prayer) the image of repentance.” What was
before that, you ask? He or she has clearly already
repented, yet we priests immediately read,
”…give him/her the image of repentance!”
This is in order to show clearly that immediately after
our confession, a new level of repentance begins.
Do you remember how the Apostle Peter in the Gospel fell
at the feet of the Saviour and said, Depart from me;
for I am a sinful man, O Lord (Luke 5:8)? This too is
a repentant state, which my father also experienced that
time when he felt the grace of God!
– When some people come to the Church, they
totally change their lives after their first confession.
Some, on the contrary, hardly change at all, continuing to
live in their sins as before. On what does this
depend?
– It depends on one's determination,
one's resolve. One needs to ask for God's
help, for firm resolve, and also for patience. About 40
years ago we were talking with Father John Krestiankin (he
was still young then), and he asked if I had read these
words of the Apostle James: If any of you lack wisdom,
let him ask of God (James 1:5). He asked me,
”What kind of wisdom do you think this is? The
wisdom of Solomon? No, it is patience!”
Patience is a spiritual art, a spiritual science. And
through
patience a person can truly be
delivered from sin.
– Sometimes after confession there comes a
feeling of spiritual relief or lightness of soul, and
sometimes not. What does this mean? Should one expect such
a feeling after every confession?
– If there is such a feeling, glory be to God. But
one should not expect it, or wait for it. It will not
necessarily appear; and if it doesn't, that means
that one should keep working, that in the battle with sin
one can never relax. In general, one should not expect
spiritual states, and certainly not seek them. If such
states are granted—good; but one shouldn't
expect them. Actually seeking or pursuing such
spiritual or emotional states is categorically forbidden.
If you do not feel spiritual lightness or emotional relief
after confession, that does not mean that God has
not accepted your confession. One of the incidents of the
holy fathers goes like this: A certain man repented all
the time, genuinely, but all the same was still not
delivered from a feeling of heaviness; the fathers of the
monastery began to pray for him, ”O Lord, he repents
so sincerely; why have You not yet forgiven him?”
And the answer came, ”I forgave him long ago, but
this suffering is necessary for his salvation.”
– How much detail should a person go into
when describing his sins at confession? Is it enough to
simply list them, or is it necessary to tell the priest in
detail??
– Unfortunately, if each person described everything
in detail, confession might last till evening. Sins of the
flesh, in particular, should not be told in detail. Also
regarding this kind of sin: when a person explains about
the circumstances, in my experience, there is often an
element of self-justification. Other people sometimes
start to retell their whole workday; they have brought me
at times entire notebooks. If you start to describe what
you have done over the last week or month, then you end up
with a whole novel!
The most important thing is not the details but the
struggle: if one has named a sin, he should also wrestle
with it. If there is not a real battle with sin, then all
the details in the world won't help.
Protopriest Valerian
Krechetov was born in 1937 into
the family of the repressed[5] accountant and
afterwards priest Michael Krechetov. The future Father
Valerian graduated from high school in 1959 and then
was accepted at the Moscow Forestry-Engineering
Institute. Three years after graduation, he followed
the example of his father and entered Moscow Seminary.
He was ordained a priest on January 12, 1969, and in
1973 graduated from Moscow Theological Academy. During
his long years of service as a priest he was able to
get to know many outstanding pastors, including Father
Nicholas Golubtsov, Father John Krestiankin and Father
Nicholas Guryanov. At present, he is the senior
father-confessor of the Moscow Diocese and head priest
of the Church of the Protection in the village of
Akulovo, Odintsovski District.
[1]father-confessor
(dukhovnik in Russian): in this context, the
meaning is not simply ”spiritual father”,
but an experienced spiritual father and priest who has
been granted by his bishop the right to confess other
priests in that diocese; these confessions customarily
take place during a fasting period such as Lent.
[2]Batiushka:
an endearing term for a priest or monk; and respectful,
old-fashioned word for one's father. Accented on
the first syllable:
”batiushka.”
[3]Epitrachelion:
a vestment which hangs as a stole from the neck of a
priest, and is placed on the penitent's head when
the prayer of absolution is said; it is the one
indispensable vestment for all priestly ministrations.
[4]In Russian this book is
entitled Opyt Postroenia Ispovedi, the printed
version of a series of talks given at Pskov Caves
Monastery during Great Lent to help people prepare for
confession.
[5]repressed
(in Russian repressirovanni): a victim of
political repression; this usually includes years of
suffering in a concentration camp.
Interview with Archpriest Valerian Krechetov
Source: Neskuchni Sad // http://www.nsad.ru/index.php?issue=48§ion=8&article=1045
17 / 10 / 2008
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