Keywords: Dumitru Stăniloae, confession, Sacrament, repentance
Abstract:
God stirred Adam and Eve to a “personal confession”, following the fall into sin of disobedience. These two did not recognized in due course what they did to their Creator. In His pre-knowledge God knew what made them to sin. As unnatural stare, the adamic sin can be the reason or the premise for repentance, as the natural state of man, which in this manner becomes an “entrance to” or means to access the Kingdom of Heaven (see Matthew 4, 17). Father Dumitru Stăniloae developed this subject in some of his books and articles that are worth being studied and brought together in a study. People should understand that by truly giving up to their pleasures means to abandon thyself, to kill one’s selfishness, thus to become capable of true love and forgiveness. This means to fight with one’s passions, to give up the sins; this means spiritual struggle with the help of God’s grace, in order to replace one’s narcissistic self-indulgence with the pure love of God and humanity. We cannot love God wholeheartedly if, after the Confession, we fall into the same sins, because this means to lie to ourselves. Fighting with passion aims at replacing the self-indulgence with “tender gestures” addressed unceasingly to God and our fellows. Oftentimes the simple regret for the impossibility of doing of restoring something in some moment or for some pleasures or evil deeds (usually reckoned as unintentional, unwanted) caused to others, is not followed by a compunction or a desire to restore the bad things we had done, or repentance means basically the regret for the evil deeds, deliberately performed and recognized as such, which are contrary to the will of God, followed by their confession and the work of correction/improving both of the soul, and the damage we have caused to ourselves or others, correction which usually does not accompany the simple regret addressed to those to whom we have wronged. Even if some deeds are looked at as being unintentional, but caused some damage to others, they have their origin in one’s passions, in his sinful state, which makes him, often without being aware of, doing uncontrolled deeds. Both the simple regret, and the Christian compunction express the guilt for something, so that, for this reason they are in a way synonyms. But oftentimes the simple human regret is caused by worldly feelings, tied to the morals of a give society, usually secular, in exchange, Christian repentance is caused or provoked by the grace of God in us, a feeling lived in the deep of our heart, that brings to us a humble spirit and tears, that transforms itself in deeds that can repair the damage it had caused and build a new life. Holy Scripture revealed that the Sacrament of Confession confer both the forgiveness of sins in the name of Christ, and the washing and renewal of our nature through the Holy Spirit (see Titus 3, 5). Thus, the repentance is worked out by the divine grace and by the will of our heart, it cleans and sanctifies out whole life, make us partakers of the life in Christ. In order to avoid some individualistic tendencies (inherent in our fallen nature), God has ordained some witnesses, our spiritual fathers that have the role of strengthening or confirming the authenticity of this mystery: once they observe our true fortitude to change and renew our life, they make present (see John 20, 22-23) the cleaning power of the Holy Spirit that was sent by our Lord Jesus Christ in this sense. So, the Christian does not only receive a juridical forgiveness, understood in Eastern Orthodoxy rather as a free gift, but also the power of regeneration of human nature. This comes as a natural consequence of our desire to make place for God’s presence in our heart (see Apocalypse 3, 20), of our desire to commune with Him.
Pages: 26-40