Two Excerpts from St. John of Kronstadt

Two Excerpts from Season of Repentance: Lenten Homilies of St. John of Kronstadt:  “Did We Really Benefit from the Week that Went By?” and “On the Miracles of the Orthodox Faith.”

[Did we really benefit?]

And during this brief time we have already been able to know within ourselves the benefits of fasting and prayer,... If we sincerely made use of this time for our salvation and sincerely fulfilled the conditions of the fast and of preparation; if we… prayed sincerely, humbled ourselves before God and our neighbor, were merciful, recognized the multitude of our faults and transgressions and firmly repented of them, having a firm intention of not committing them again, and finally, sincerely confessed them and received absolution… , then we were granted to taste of the life-giving Food. But did all of us really benefit from the week that went by? Did our hearts become closer to God, to the Most Pure Mother of Life, to the Church, to our Holy Guardian Angel, and to the saints of God? Have we sincerely loved truth and virtue, and have we hated all falsehood and iniquity? Do we sincerely love God and neighbor?; do we feel a greater spiritual affinity with each other as members of the One Body of Christ, as members of Chriist? 

Do we feel within our hearts how the streams of transgressions do not flow with such impudence and violence toward our souls as they did before … and have noticeably dried within us, and we have become purer, freeer, calmer, passionless, better, with softer hearts, more inclined to everything that is good and beneficial? Has the hunger for carnal pleasures and greed diminished within us? Have we become meeker, more patient, more compassionate toward our neighbors? Do we look more often to the heavens, to our true and eternal homeland, and do we look more passionlessly upon all that is earthly as being temporary, transient and passing? For see how many people among us were taken by death in a short time, and how death constantly carries its victims. If this is so, if we have become better and more reasonable, then once again, I congratulate you and myself with God’s great mercy, and together with you, I pray that the Lord will establish this good attitude and disposition of heart in myself and in you. But let none of us be tempted by that evil thought that now, thank God, we have cast off from ourselves the burden of sin and can go back to living the way we used to live, and sin the way we used to sin because, we would say, who is without sin?  It is true, brothers and sisters, that no one is without sin; however, to live like once we lived and sin like we used to, after being renewed through repentance and communion, is not proper, is not becoming, and should not be done by any Christian.  pp.87-88

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[Our Precious Orthodox Faith]

Yes, my brethren, only the Orthodox Faith purifies and sanctifies human nature stained by sin; it renews the corrupted, especially through the mysteries of Baptism, Repentance and Communion. It illuminates those who are darkened, heals those who are wounded by sins, warms those who are cold, and, through the grace of the Holy Spirit, makes fragrant those who reek of the passions. It quickens those who are dying, reunites to God those who had turned away from Him, returns to Him those who were alienated from Him. It strengthens the weak, beautifies and adorns the disfigured, raises the fallen, frees those who are captive, fills with love those who are hostile, as it did with the Apostle Paul and many others. It fills blasphemers with incessant glorification of God, fills those who are despairing  with hope, consoles those who are sad, delivers those who are guilty  from condemnation and punishment in Gehenna. It pacifies those who are confused, strengthens the faint, frees the oppressed, enriches the unrighteous with righteousness, turns the cunning honest, evil into good, corrects the depraved, makes the greedy abstentious, the adulterous chaste, the avaricious generous. It gives wisdom to the foolish, makes heavenly those who are earthly, refines those who are rough, makes spiritual those who are carnal. Turns lovers of things into lovers of God, lovers of self into self-denying lovers of all, those who are demon-like into God-like, and, what miracle, makes them divine!  Behold the miracles the Orthodox Faith works in man!