"Open to me the doors of repentance..."
At the very threshold of Great Lent, let us reflect on one of the most important aspects of Christian life.
"Open to me the doors of repentance..." This is the only hymn that unites both the pre-Lent period and Lent itself. This Maslenitsa (Pancake) week is the last of the preparatory weeks before Great Lent, where repentance will be central to us. But what exactly is repentance?
If we pay close attention to the Word of God and the works of the Holy Fathers, we will see that the bridge between a person who has fallen into the abyss of sin and the God who saves them exists solely through one gateway, known as repentance. It is not a regulated protocol of external actions but an inner sacrament of the soul’s return to God. That is why the Holy Fathers teach that repentance is a lifelong endeavor – a constant, unceasing state of the inner person. However, throughout history, it has taken on a variety of forms.
Repentance did not emerge in the New Testament Christian Church out of nowhere. It was a continuation of a particular Old Testament tradition, though we do not know much about it. The Bible provides examples of the penitential lamentations of the Old Testament righteous ones (Judges 10:10; Psalm 50; Ezra 9, and others) long before the Saviour’s coming into the world. Often, repentance was accompanied by fasting, wearing sackcloth, sprinkling ashes on one’s head, or tearing one’s garments. During a purification sacrifice, the sinner would confess their sins and then lay their hands on the sacrificial offering placed on the altar (Leviticus 1:4).
The last prophet who stood at the junction of the Old and New Testaments was John the Forerunner of Christ.
He was a great preacher of repentance, preparing the people for God’s coming into the world. The practice of repentance introduced by John the Baptist, through the immersion of the penitent in water, had no direct parallel in the Old Testament. Some Church Fathers suggest that John the Prophet not only listened to the sins of those who came to confess but also imposed penances on them and permitted only the worthy to undergo the baptism of repentance.
As we read in the Gospel, Christ delegated the authority to forgive sins to His disciples: “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (John 20:23). Even the future great Apostle Paul, after receiving revelation on the road to Damascus and turning to Christ, was only granted forgiveness after the laying on of hands by the presbyter Ananias (Acts 9:10–18). That is, Saul’s conversion to Christ and his repentance had to be affirmed through an external form of confessional practice.
In apostolic tradition, we encounter two seemingly contradictory views regarding the discipline of repentance. On the one hand, “It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened… if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again” (Hebrews 6:4–6). On the other hand, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves… If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us” (1 John 1:8–9). However, this apparent contradiction is resolved through careful reading of the Word of God.
Sins are divided into those that lead to death and everyday sins, which are healed through repentance and mutual prayer for one another.
"If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life – to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. There is sin that leads to death; I do not say that one should pray for that" (1 John 5:16). "Confess your faults to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed" (James 5:16).
A sinner who commits a mortal sin is expelled from the community, yet the opportunity for repentance still remains. We see an example of this in the story of Ananias and Sapphira, who withheld part of the money from the sale of their property (Acts 5:1–11). In any case, in the penitential practice of the early Christians, the Christian community itself played the primary role. It was the community that received confessions from its members, expelled sinners, or readmitted them. This is evident from the letters of the Apostle Paul.
The tradition of public confession before the Christian community developed in the writings of the Apostolic Fathers. For instance, in the Didache, it is stated that those who have not confessed their sins before the community cannot also confess their faith together with their brethren and glorify God with a pure heart. The text also mentions regular confession, which took place in connection with the Sunday Liturgy. The Didache speaks of collective penitential prayer and the reconciliation with one’s neighbours that must precede it as a necessary condition for offering a "pure sacrifice".
The same idea is echoed by the holy martyr Clement of Rome: "Therefore, in whatever we have sinned due to the enemy’s slanders, we must seek forgiveness… And it is better for a person to confess their sins than to harden their heart."
The theme of repentance is central in “The Shepherd of Hermas”. The author speaks not only of ecclesiastical repentance but also of the inner turning of the soul towards God.
Important evidence of the penitential practice of the early Christian community can be found in the writings of Tertullian, which were composed during the pre-Montanist period of his life. "The confession of sins diminishes them as much as concealment increases them," he writes in one of his works.
Tertullian describes the external aspect of penitential practice as the public confession of sins. The penitents were to be dressed in sackcloth, lie in ashes, defile their bodies with filth, and immerse their spirits in reflection on their sins. The more a sinner humbled himself, the greater the forgiveness he received. "The less you spare yourself, the more, believe me, God will spare you," he writes. The Didascalia Apostolorum and the epistles of the holy martyr Cyprian of Carthage also provide detailed descriptions of penitential practices.
As is well known, by the time of the Ecumenical Councils, the East had already established specific categories of penitents and developed a formal penitential discipline. The bishop became the central figure in this sacrament. A little later, the position of penitential presbyters was introduced, who regularly received confessions. However, penitents, as a distinct group within the Christian community, disappeared in Byzantium by the fifth or sixth century, and public confession gradually turned into individual confession.
Individual confession appears to have its origins in monastic tradition. In monasteries, alongside public confession, spiritual conversations with elders gradually became common practice. An elder could not absolve sins as a bishop did, but he helped the penitent to recognise and confess them. Over time, this practice became widespread.
According to St Anastasios of Sinai, it is beneficial for laypeople to confess to monastic elders.
Many Christians sought out such spiritual guides in monastic communities. Thus, St Basil the Great advised his spiritual children “to confess their sins not to just anyone, but to someone skilled in their healing”. During the Iconoclastic period, according to the Studite tradition, daily confession to the abbot was introduced for monks, while in convents, this was done to a visiting priest.
The rite of the sacrament of repentance gradually took on the form familiar to us today. Confession became primarily the responsibility of presbyters, although some Byzantine authors continued to insist on the right of ordinary monks to receive confessions. However, monastic elders, who became spiritual guides for many laypeople, were typically also ordained clergy and could not only offer spiritual counsel but also administer confession as a church sacrament.
In the Western Church, the development of the sacrament of confession followed a somewhat different path, although initially, it evolved similarly to the Eastern tradition. Blessed Augustine taught that not every sin needed to be confessed publicly, distinguishing between sins known to others and those committed in secret. Public sins, he argued, should be confessed publicly, while secret sins should be confessed privately. Over time, sins came to be classified as mortal and venial. From around the early sixth century, we find evidence of a new type of confession known as tariff penance. Instead of the usual confession, strict rules were introduced for atoning sins and substituting one form of penance for another. Initially, tariff penance appeared in monasteries.
The penitent would confess their sins to the abbot and receive a penance – a prescribed number of prayers, psalms, prostrations, or days of fasting on bread and water. Once completed, they could return to their normal monastic routine without requiring any special absolution.
Later, tariff penance spread beyond monasteries to parish communities. Whereas earlier monastic and clerical instructions had focused primarily on how one should undergo penance, the emphasis now shifted to how and what should be confessed. The circumstances of the sin, the reasons behind it, and other factors gained significance. The practice of tariff penance is reflected in numerous writings known as penitentials.
Contrary to popular belief, tariff penance was not necessarily easier than the earlier canonical discipline. Many penitentials prescribed prolonged fasting on bread and water, sometimes for as long as 10–15 years. Even to twelfth-century authors, these texts appeared daunting. Since a person might be guilty of multiple sins, their assigned penances were cumulative, sometimes resulting in penitential periods exceeding those prescribed by ancient canonical rules. For example, the Council of Clovesho (747 AD) dealt with the case of a man who had accumulated 300 years of fasting. Later, tariff penance was reflected in the doctrine of indulgences.
From the ninth century, we find penitential rites that include questions from the priest to the penitent about their faith at the very beginning of confession.
Lists of sins also began to appear, which were used by either the penitent or the priest during confession. For example, in the “Life of Saint Philibert”, there is an account of a mute man’s confession: he had to sneeze onto the priest’s hand whenever the priest, reading from a list, reached the sin that he had committed. These lists of sins became very popular and gradually spread from the Western Church to the Eastern Church.
The questions asked during confession began to be categorised. Initially, there was a distinction between penitential guides for laypeople and those for monks; and from the 16th century onwards, special question lists appeared for children, maidens, widows and widowers, clergy, bishops, and even kings. Some of these contained up to 150 articles. Unfortunately, such an obsessive focus on detailed analysis often had the opposite of the intended effect.
A Christian, when answering the spiritual guide’s questions from such literature, might learn of sins they had never previously considered. Moreover, these lists often exceeded the bounds of Christian modesty. Over time, this harmful practice was gradually abandoned, although some individual parish priests continued to use it for a long time.
During the Soviet period, general confession became widespread in the Orthodox Church.
Before the October Revolution of 1917, St John of Kronstadt practised a similar approach, though he had received special permission from the Holy Synod, as he often had to hear the confessions of several thousand people at once. However, in the Soviet period, general confession became the norm due to practical necessity: on the one hand, there was a catastrophic shortage of priests, and a single priest could not cope with the sheer number of those wishing to confess on feast days and Sundays.
On the other hand, there was a real risk of the disclosure of confession being violated under pressure from the authorities. Even so, efforts were made to regulate the practice according to ecclesiastical guidelines. A priest was forbidden from reading the absolution prayer over an entire community at once, and there had to be an opportunity for private confession when needed. Today, we have returned to the traditional form of confession, conducted individually for each penitent.
However, our sorrow lies in the fact that this sacrament is often treated as a bureaucratic formality required for admission to Holy Communion. Even when that is not the case, the habitual repetition of the same sins at confession undermines its purpose as spiritual healing. In essence, confession is like surgery: a person comes and cuts off from their soul the sin they have repented of. After that, they should rather die than allow that sin back into their soul.
Tertullian, in his characteristic rigour, taught that a person could repent of any sin but only once. After that, a second confession of the same sin would no longer be repentance but a mockery. Of course, such an approach to the sacrament of confession is excessively strict, and we do not advocate for it. But to have the determination never to sin again and to do everything in our power not to return to confessed sins is our duty and our direct responsibility before God.
