Excerpts from “Seeing One’s Sins” by St. Ignatius Brianchaninov

Excerpts from “Seeing One’s Sins”  by St. Ignatius Brianchaninov

…God alone can give man the vision of his own sins. Only through God, can man see his sin and the fall that is the germ, the seed, the summation of all human transgressions.

…Having called on God’s mercy and power with ardent prayer, wise fasting, and the sorrow and groaning of the heart, once again I open the book of my conscience. Once again I look at the number and quality of my sins. Once again I examine the consequences of the sins I have committed…“For my wickedness are gone over my head; like a sore burden have they become too heavy for me…yeah, they are more in number than the hairs of my head” (Ps.37:5, 39:13). What is the consequence of my sinfulness? “Innumerable troubles are come about me; my sins have taken such a hold upon me, that I am not able to look up…and my heart hath failed me” (Ps.39:13). 

The consequences of the sinful life are the blindness of the mind and the hardening and insensibility of the heart.

By admitting my sins, by repenting of them, by confessing them, by regretting them, I cast their multitude into the abyss of God’s mercy. To avoid sin in the future, watch closely, having descended deep into yourself, 

how sin acts against me, 

how it approaches me, and 

what it says to me. 

It approaches me like a thief. Its face is hidden; its words drip with oil (see Ps.54:22 LXX); it speaks lies to me when it offers me iniquity. Its mouth is filled with poison. Its tongue is a death-dealing stinger.

What conclusions can I make after seeing myself thus? Only one - in me, in my entire being, sinful damage abides, which sympathizes and aids the sin that attacks me from without. 

…My forefathers once transgressed a single command of God, but I, though I am in the bosom of the Church of Christ, constantly violate all the divine commandments of Christ, my God and my Saviour.

I have not inherited repentance, for as yet I do not see my own sin. I do not see my sin because I am still enthralled to sin. He who takes pleasure in sin and allows himself to taste of sin - even in thought or with a mere sympathetic inclination toward sin in the heart - cannot see his own sin. Only he who has definitely decided to cut off any friendship with sin can see his own sin. Only he who has stood watch all night at the gates of his house with a  naked sword in hand - the word of God - and who repels and cuts sin down with his sword, in whatever form it approaches him - can know his own sin.

Whoever will do this great deed - to begin war against sin, forcefully repelling his mind, heart, and body from it - to him will God give a great gift - to see his own sin.

…If, in your spiritual infancy, you cannot plunge into prayerful silence and weeping before God, then utter before Him a humble prayer for the forgiveness of sin and the healing from the sinful passions, these terrifying moral illnesses that are formed from the willful repetition of sins over the course of a very long time.

…Clothed with repentance, stand with fear and reverence before the great God Who has the power to purify you of your sins and to renew you by His all-holy Spirit. The Spirit Who will come “will guide you into all truth” (John 16:13).

The only emotion required by the soul that approaches the Lord with the intention of receiving forgiveness of sins is sorrow and repentance. 

…Clothed with repentance, stand with fear and reverence before the great God Who has the power to purify you of your sins and to renew you by His all-holy Spirit. The Spirit Who will come  “will guide you into all truth” (John 16:13).

…All the saints have admitted that they were unworthy of God. By this have they shown their worthiness, which can only be found in humility.

“My sin is ever before me,” said St. David (ps.50:5 LXX). His sin was an object of constant scrutiny. “For I will confess my wickedness, and be sorry for my sin” (Ps.37:19).

The holy David condemned himself and denounced his own sin, even after the sin was forgiven and the gifts of the Holy Spirit were returned to him. This was not enough. He condemned his own sin and confessed it for the entire cosmos to hear (see Ps.50).

When the Holy Fathers of the Eastern Church, especially the desert ascetics, achieved the heights of spiritual ascesis, all their labors flowed together into a single stream of repentance. Repentance embraced their entire life, their entire activity. This was the consequence of their seeing their own sins.

Seeing one’s own sins and the repentance that comes of such a vision-this is a labor that has no end on this earth. The vision of sin inspires repentance. Repentance gives purification. The gradually purified eye of the mind begins to see ever more shortcomings and scars in man’s being, which he previously, in his darkness, did not even notice.

Lord! Give us the gift of seeing our own sins, so that our mind, drawn completely toward attentiveness to our own sins, ceases to see the sins of others. Thereby, we will see all our neighbors as good. 

Help our hearts abandon the pernicious attention given to the sins of our neighbor, and let all our cares be united in a single desire to acquire the purity and sanctity that You have commanded and prepared for us. 

Help us, who have defiled our spiritual clothing, to whiten them once again. They have already been washed clean once by the waters of baptism, but they now require, after defilement, to be washed clean by the streams of repentant tears.  Grant us to see in the light of your grace, the many sicknesses that live within us and destroy all spiritual movements in the heart, instead inspiring in it sinful movements of the flesh, so hostile to the Kingdom of God. 

Give us the great gift of repentance, preceded and birthed by that greater gift-the vision of our own sins. Protect us by these great gifts from the abyss of self-delusion that opens up in the soul from its unnoticed and unacknowledged sinfulness, from the actions of unnoticed and unacknowledged sensuality and vanity. 

Preserve us by these great gifts on our path to You, and let us reach You, Who calls repentant sinners and rejects self-admitted righteous ones. And we  will eternally praise You in eternal blessedness, the Only true God, the Redeemer of the imprisoned, the Saviour of the lost. Amen.