Sometimes a person is embarrassed, and sometimes he simply does not have enough time, as a large queue of people who want to confess has lined up behind him, and the priest cannot devote enough time to each parishioner. It is best to visit the general confession, which is held in most Orthodox churches and monasteries.

Unfortunately, few believers have come across the concept of a general confession. Let's look at what it is and why this sacrament is needed.

A general confession in Orthodoxy is a meaningful story of a person, how he lived his whole life, from a conscious age to the moment he turned to a priest.

Such repentance is also called complete.

With it, you can:

to see a full picture of the life lived and understand where even the most insignificant, according to a person, sins were committed;
get rid of a heavy psychological burden for consciously or unconsciously committed misconduct;
explore your heart and understand your purpose.

A general confession with a full story about your whole life and perfect deeds can heal not only the soul, but also the body. As you know, most diseases are closely related to mental and emotional state. Prolonged experiences, resentment against oneself or another person, envy, grief, anger and regret can cause various pathological processes in the body. Before the body can be healed, the soul must be healed. This can be done through complete repentance.

It is logical to assume that general repentance is required for a person in extreme old age, when his life path is coming to an end. A person will help analyze his whole life and sincerely repent of his sins.

With the help of such a story, one can heal the soul and prepare for a meeting with the Lord. However, young people also need a full confession. A person does not know how much time is allotted for him, when his life will be interrupted and he will have to appear before God.

Note! It is best to choose a weekday when there are no church holidays to perform the sacrament of confessing your sins, so that repentance takes place in a quiet and calm atmosphere.

Training

A full confession requires preliminary preparation, since a person needs to present to the priest the whole picture of his life in one story. It is better to write out all the events in a notebook that you can take with you.

A few days before the sacrament, it is advisable to fast and spend time in prayer. It is also recommended to completely review all the actions committed in life, both bad and good.

A pre-prepared general confession with various explanations will help you see, as if from the outside, your entire life path and decide in which direction to move on.

An important aspect of the sacrament is the choice of a confessor. Not before every clergyman a person can fully open up. It is best for a believing Christian to turn to the priest with whom he previously confessed.

Rules of Confession

General repentance should be agreed in advance. It is necessary to coordinate the appropriate time for the celebration of the sacrament with the clergyman. It is best to start preparing at least a week in advance.

How to confess:

The story should begin from the moment of self-awareness (as a rule, it is 4-5 years old), when the concept of good and bad deeds has already been formed.
It is necessary to tell the priest not only the negative moments of your life, but also the positive ones.
It is important not only to tell the spiritual person about sins, but also to indicate the circumstances under which they were committed.
The confessor should be told about all sins, even those that were committed in thoughts.
You should talk about everything: about mental pain, feelings, moments of anger, about what has been deep in the heart for a long time.

General repentance can take from several minutes to several hours (in case of good preparation, it can take 30 minutes). The essence of the sacrament is not just to list your sins, but to repent, feel cleansing and relief, and understand how to live on.

Interesting! There are many examples when, after full confession, a person was healed of serious illnesses.

One of the most striking examples of such healing occurred in the life of the Monk Barsanuphius of Optina. Once a boy came to him, who had been mute since birth. The priest guessed that his illness was connected with a great sin.

The reverend elder leaned towards the boy and quietly uttered a few words. Fear appeared in the child's eyes, and he nodded affirmatively in response.

Thanks to the wisdom and insight of the priest, the boy was able to repent of his sin. Some time after repentance, he spoke.

Where to confess in Moscow

You can fully confess all sins in Moscow in one of the city's Orthodox churches. However, one should not perform the sacrament of complete repentance just because it is customary or fashionable. You need to be fully prepared for this.

Unfortunately, most of the people see their life rather superficially. To appreciate the entire path traveled, spiritual vision is needed, which can appear both at a young and old age. Priests recommend confessing when a person feels ready for it and wants to do it with all his heart and soul.

It is worth noting that a general confession of committed sins will be useful only if a person has realized all the actions of his life and decided to change himself.

If you approach repentance for selfish purposes, in order to get what you want, to brag to your friends, to feel your infallibility, then this will only be a distortion of the sacrament.

You can confess in Moscow in the Church of the Transfiguration of the Savior, the Elokhov Cathedral, the Sretensky Monastery, the Church of All Saints.

Note! You need to contact the priest who knows at least a little about your life.

You should know that the result of confession does not depend on the priest, but on how much a person believes in the Lord, sees and realizes his sins.

Confession at the Trinity-Sergius Lavra

Residents of Moscow and the region often perform the sacrament of complete repentance in the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, located in the city of Sergiev Posad. This is one of the largest Orthodox monasteries in Russia, with an amazing and centuries-old history. The Trinity Sergius Lavra was founded by St. Sergius of Radonezh in the first half of the 14th century. Today it is a real church town with numerous churches, chapels, educational centers.

You can find out how to confess and take communion directly on the official website of the monastery. Ordinary confession in the Lavra is available to anyone who wants it almost any day after the service.

Having visited the monastery in person, you can find out in the Lavra the schedule of sacraments of complete repentance. To get detailed information about this, you need to contact any clergyman of the monastery.

Confession in the Lavra will undoubtedly become one of the most exciting events and great sacraments in the life of a believing Christian.

An example of repentance

What to tell the priest, where to start.

The following example of general repentance will help with this:

Merciful Lord, I want to tell You about all the sins that I have committed voluntarily and involuntarily in words, deeds and thoughts, at my own will and under compulsion.
I am sinful in non-observance of the commandments of God and the vows given at baptism, in superficial reading of prayers and neglect of the Church.
I am sinful in that I lied, was impudent, rude, irritated, quarreled, cursed and humiliated.
I am sinful in that I slandered, was jealous, hated, offended, despised and incited.
I am sinful in that I took revenge, indulged in voluptuousness, had crazy fun, was intemperate, unclean, devoted too much time to my clothes and appearance, condemned others.
I am sinful in being greedy, covetous, envious, careless, ambitious, vain and disrespectful.
I am sinful in that I despised and hated the poor, lepers and unfortunate people, in that I refused to help the needy, did not visit the sick, did not pay due attention to my family and loved ones.
I am sinful in that I indulged in despondency and sorrow, blasphemed, did not honor Sunday and church holidays, did not observe the fast, did not take communion and did not confess.
I am sinful in that I remembered God in vain, spent my time in vanity and idleness, indulged in sins, incited people to commit bad deeds, spread false information, cursed, missed morning and evening prayers.
I am sinful of adultery, excessive drinking and gambling.
Before the Lord, I plead guilty to all my sins and sincerely repent for all the actions I have done and not done. I beg you, our Heavenly Father, for forgiveness. I hope for Your mercy and help.

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Summing up

It is necessary to be prepared for the sacrament of complete repentance, both morally and spiritually. It can be done at almost any conscious age. For children, the minimum age for full repentance is 7 years of age. Residents of the Moscow region can confess in the Trinity-Sergius Lavra or in one of the Orthodox monasteries in their city.

What is a general confession? Why is it needed by future priests and not intended for the laity at all? Is it necessary to repent of those sins that you have never committed? Why do priests oppose mass repentance for the "sin of regicide"? How to treat complete lists sins? Look for answers in the article.

Why should a person go to confession?

Every person wants to be better. And this aspiration is connected not only with appearance or professional opportunities. We want to be kinder, more attentive to relatives, more merciful, more responsive. This, one might say, is a basic spiritual need. After all, man was created for holiness, which implies constant moral improvement.

The Monk John of the Ladder has a work called "The Ladder". The saint compares this spiritual growth with a ladder: step by step, step by step, a person rises higher and higher.

But the movement of each of us can hardly be called direct and unhindered. On the life path can not do without many sinful falls - from mental condemnation to many years of resentment and even murder.

And what to do in such situations when a person realizes his guilt, repents of it, wants to change? Merciful God accepts our repentance in the Sacrament of Confession.

When we feel a spiritual need for cleansing and healing from sin, we go to confession, in the presence of a priest we repent of our vices. But we bring repentance not to the priest, but to God himself. The priest is only a witness and an experienced mentor. He can wisely advise us on how best to act in this or that situation, to overcome our attachment to this or that sin. The confession itself is accepted by the Lord. And you can't hide anything from Him: God sees everyone's heart.

Why can't you hide your sins?

If a person deliberately concealed some kind of sin in himself, then it turns out that he wanted to deceive God, and this is an even greater offense. That is why in the prayer before the Sacrament of Confession there are these words:

Here is His icon before us, but I (the priest) is only a witness to testify before Him everything that you tell me; if you hide something from me, you will fall into a double sin.

What does it mean? If you have already come to a spiritual hospital, that is, to a temple for confession, repent before God of everything that torments you. Then you will get relief. Many believers really feel like a stone is falling from their hearts.

This is another confirmation that the Sacrament of Confession has a result: the Lord has forgiven our sins. There is only one thing left: to correct your life not in words, but in deeds, and try not to return to the confessed vice.

How not to turn confession into a formality

In our time, the meaning of repentance in the presence of a priest has been somewhat distorted. Some consider this unnecessary, others fall into another extreme - for any trifles they run to the priest for advice and “demand” to listen to a general confession. How to reach the golden mean?

In monasteries, there is a practice of confessing thoughts: a monk reveals to the confessor not only his actions, but also all sinful thoughts. An experienced mentor gives wise recommendations, to which the monk is sure to listen. After all, monastic life presupposes the renunciation of one's will and "submission" to the confessor.

In the world, everything is different. Man is responsible for his own life and actions. The priest, knowing your situation, can only give advice. Therefore, it is not necessary to run to the priest with all the household trifles and ask whether to go on vacation by train or bus and whether to take the child to kindergarten.

We need to deal with spiritual issues. In order not to turn the Sacrament of Confession into a kind of indulgence and formality, it is worth remembering its purpose and following these recommendations.

Come to repentance in the temple when you feel a special spiritual need.
Repent of your sins consciously. First of all, name the thing that torments you the most.
If you use lists of sins for confession, then in no case do not rewrite everything in a row without understanding and awareness.
Don't make confession a formality. After all, the God of the Church is a living God, a Person. And with a person it is worth maintaining a lively, trusting relationship. If you verbally “repent” of some misdeed, but deep down in your soul you don’t consider it a sin at all, then aren’t you acting hypocritically?
After the Sacrament of Confession, try to bring the fruits of repentance. Ideally, renounce the confessed vice. If there is a temptation to return to it, then control your thoughts and, if possible, cut off sinful manifestations already at this stage. After all, as you know, any sin begins with a thought. At one time, Eve entered into a dialogue with the sinful thoughts that the devil instilled in her. If she had discarded them immediately, then perhaps everything would have ended completely differently.
No matter how pessimistic it may sound, but approach the Sacrament of Confession with the feeling that this chance may be the last. Therefore, try to reveal your spiritual state as much as possible and get relief.

General confession: an aptitude test for a priest?

IN Orthodox Church It is customary to confess to adults and children who have reached the age of seven.

Of course, the repentance of an adult differs significantly from that of a child, because a child has not yet had time to sin as much as a father or mother.

The confession of the clergy also looks somewhat different. It is not performed very often, because the parish priest, if he serves himself, cannot leave the church and go to the confessor for confession. Such an event is definitely planned.

The so-called general confession. This means that a person repents of all the sins that he can remember (regardless of whether he confessed them before or not). It is necessary to carefully prepare for such a Sacrament so as not to miss anything if possible. And this “procedure” lasts not the usual 5-10 minutes, and sometimes even 1.5-2 hours.

What is it for? Not just to prepare to receive the grace of the priesthood. The confessor must find out if the candidate has any barriers to becoming a deacon, and then a priest, and possibly even a bishop. There are sins, after the commission of which, even when a person sincerely repented, confessed and gave his word not to return to this vice, a person who wants to become a priest cannot be ordained.

As Serbian Patriarch Pavle said:

You can become a saint, but never a priest!

Among the canonical obstacles that a general confession can reveal, you will find criminal offenses (theft, murder, etc.) and adulterous sins. And the future priest must have a spotless reputation.

If he is a family man, then his wife must be Orthodox and, like her husband, remain chaste until marriage. There can be no question of divorce in the family of a priest, as well as marriage with a divorced woman and remarriage.

There are other obstacles for those wishing to take holy orders. Confession of all your sins ever committed will help to reveal their presence or absence.

Lists of sins and repentance for regicide: how to avoid extremes?

Today, among believers, a kind of “movement” has formed for a general confession for the laity. Many Orthodox in the world and even some monks urge everyone to go through the rite of popular repentance and repent of a whole list of sins. It is noteworthy that a significant part of these offenses the person himself did not commit.

Also, people are offered to repent of the "sin of regicide", because "the blood of the royal family still lies on us and our children."

What does this kind of logic lead to?

First extreme— people come to the priest with a long list of sins. And they did not compile this list, guided by their conscience, but simply copied it from the Internet. Sometimes people do not even know what this or that sin means. But how can you repent of something that you did not do or do not even understand?

Second extreme- people come to the priest not with what torments them, but to repent of the "sin of regicide." They suffer from a lack of love, bad relationships with relatives and friends, condemnation and hypocrisy, but they seem to be trying to ignore real spiritual problems and repent of something they were not involved in.

Observing these extremes, the priests call people not to a general confession (which is really only needed by those who are ordained) and the rank of nationwide repentance, but to conscious repentance.

Is there really a "general confession" for the laity?

Although this concept of “generalism” is firmly entrenched in everyday life, there is no need for such a confession for the laity. Let's try to explain our idea.

When a Christian comes to the Church, he regularly goes to confession, takes communion, and, if possible, gathers together. If we do this consciously and try to get rid of our vices, then God forgives and has mercy.

In the sacrament of repentance, we receive the forgiveness of sins. Why repent a second time (if we never returned to this sin) that the Lord has already forgiven us?

When a person has committed a particularly serious offense, the priest can assign him a penance. This is a kind of corrective work on one's soul - prayer, fasting, almsgiving. By doing them, a person acquires a feeling of repentance and especially asks God for forgiveness. Usually, after the time of penance, the believer himself feels that the Lord has accepted his repentance.

First and last

Some people call the first and dying confession the general confession. It is believed that if a person at a conscious age comes to faith, then he must go through such a “procedure” - to repent of all his sins, which he only remembers.

But it will be nothing more than first confession. Whatever age we may be, the first repentance in the presence of a priest necessarily requires enhanced preparation and time.

Even seven-year-old children are worried when they go to confession for the first time. What can we say about adults who have accumulated a myriad of sins in their lives?

When a believer comes to this Sacrament consciously, and not under the pressure of relatives or friends, he experiences two completely different states: sinful heaviness and amazing lightness after repentance.

It also has a special status deathbed confession which is often referred to as the general For a person, this is the last opportunity to carry out a “general cleaning” in his soul, to remember what tormented him (sometimes for many years), to forgive all offenders. Therefore, she is always sincere and especially honest.

A dying man is afraid not to reveal his vices, but to die without repentance. But such a confession has nothing to do with long lists of sins. It is unlikely that a dying person will repent of everything in a row, which he never did. On the contrary: the patient will tell with maximum reference to his life.

Revolution in consciousness

Sometimes the general confession is called the one that especially influenced life. For example, a man went to a monastery for a week, in silence, prayer and labor overestimated his deeds, matured for repentance.

Usually in monasteries on weekdays, when there are few people, there is time for a long and thorough confession. In addition, the hieromonks will not only patiently listen to your confession, but will also give you a lot of valuable advice.

But this is also not a general confession. Why? Yes, because for a believer, in a sense, every repentance is general. The Lord accepts it, so you need to open your heart to God. But we should not return again to those sins from which we have long been cleansed.

When we clean the house, we try to put everything in order so that every corner sparkles with cleanliness. But we do not remember how much dirt was removed from this room last year. We are just happy with the cleanliness. It is the same with repentance.

Confession and the Eucharist are two different Sacraments

Modern gradations of confession into "general" and "everyday" are associated with the unification of the sacraments of confession and communion. In the ancient church, in order to receive communion, it was not necessary to go to repentance in the presence of a priest. If you preserve spiritual purity and do not hold grudges, then you have no obstacles to the Eucharist. But the first Christians took communion at first every day, then on Sundays... If a person did not attend the Liturgy for three Sundays and, accordingly, did not receive communion, he was excommunicated from the Church.

Today, many people consider it normal to confess and take communion only once a year, during Great Lent. If, however, we begin to repent as we become aware of our sins and regularly take communion, then we will not turn to the “general” confession and the longest lists of other people's sins. Yours is enough.

On the importance of seeing your sins, not repentance regicide says theologian Alexei Osipov:

Take it, tell your friends!

Read also on our website:

Hegumen Nektary (Morozov)

We agreed to continue the conversation about the sacrament of Confession and, in particular, to talk about what general confession is. Surely most of you have heard such a phrase, but not everyone understands what it means.

What is the difference between a general confession and a “regular”, “everyday” one? In general, we can say that this is a confession for the whole life lived by a person - from the age at which he began to distinguish good from evil, until the moment when he began this confession. It would seem that a person comes to the temple, comes to the first confession - and it is then that he must repent of everything that he sinned before coming to the Church. But this, as a rule, does not happen due to various circumstances. First of all, because the vast majority of people come to their first confession completely unprepared. And most often a person does not even confess for the first time, but answers the leading questions of the priest: has he sinned in this, has he sinned in that, has he sinned in something else. But even if a person who came to confession for the first time prepared for it, and asked someone how to confess, and even read some books, he most often sees his life still rather superficially. He sees and confesses only those sins that burden his soul most obviously and which are of particular concern to him at the present moment, while he does not seem to notice other sins. Firstly, because he does not yet have that spiritual vision that allows him to turn to his own soul and find what is hidden in it. Secondly, because sometimes the Lord Himself, as it were, covers most of his sins for a time: after all, as some holy fathers said, if the Lord immediately revealed to any of us our sinfulness as it is, then, perhaps we simply could not stand the horror of the spectacle that presented itself to us ...

And so it turns out that a person, perhaps, has repeatedly confessed, and then suddenly from someone he heard this very phrase - a general confession. How to prepare for it and how to go for it?

And here various doubts, questions, misunderstandings begin. Some people say: “Well, after all, we have already repented of all sins, why should we confess them a second time? After all, it turns out that there is some disbelief in the power and effectiveness of the sacrament of Confession in this?

Indeed, we are talking about the fact that if a person once confessed something, then there is no need to confess the second and third time in the same non-repeating sin. You can sometimes see how someone comes and repents over and over again of those sins that took place once in distant youth, and at the same time, for some reason, he does not confess those sins that he already does directly at this time closest to confession . This is one of the tricks of the enemy: he constantly sends a person back to the past, which can no longer be corrected, and thus leads away from the present, in which much can and should be changed. But the need for a general confession is due to something completely different. It is necessary to speak in it about previously committed - including confessed - sins, not because of disbelief in the effectiveness of the sacrament, but simply because some kind of wholeness is necessary: it is necessary to present in the aggregate everything in which we have sinned up to this point. Elder Paisios of Athos generally believed that when a person comes to a new confessor, then no matter how many times he has confessed before, he needs to bring this kind of general confession. He explained it something like this: when we come to the doctor, we must bring him the whole history of our illness, so that he knows what and how to treat us, and not wander in the dark.

Most often, we don’t even think about it, because we don’t understand how much a priest – indeed, just like a doctor – needs a history of our sinful illness. In addition, it happens that a person, even regularly confessing, due to some cowardice - sometimes conscious, sometimes unconscious - either hides some sins, or confesses incompletely or speaks about them indistinctly, trying to name them and not to name them at the same time. During the general confession, this reticence can and must be overcome. In addition, the gracefulness of the experience of general confession is also evidenced by the fact that since ancient times it precedes both monastic tonsure and ordination to the priesthood.

During a general confession, sometimes unexpected turns occur - unexpected both for the priest and for the penitent himself; and this is also worth mentioning. It happens that a Christian who undertakes this work receives some absolutely amazing gift, namely the gift of seeing his life in its entirety, in its entirety. He begins to understand how this life was lived, what was right in it, what was wrong in it. Such a holistic view of one's life leads to equally solid and definite conclusions, and this greatly helps to come to those decisions that can change and correct the situation in the present. General confession in this sense becomes literally a kind of steering wheel, through which you can completely unfold a person's life.

It also happens that a person who came to a general confession and before that asked many questions that led him to a dead end: “why is this not so in my life? why did it happen like that? where is the trouble? where else to attack? ”, suddenly after confession, without asking the priest about anything else, he himself says:“ I understand where this comes from in my life, but from somewhere else. ” And sometimes even he very accurately names the reasons for one or another of his life misadventures. And if a person does not sin in the future by inattention and does not lose the laziness of this spiritual vision, the experience of confession throughout his life allows him to see the connection between his actions and what then happens in his life and in subsequent years. And it helps a lot to live, because torment and bewilderment - why are others good, but I am bad? They take a lot of time and energy from us. And the answer, in a word Saint Ambrose Optinsky, is simple: the tree of the cross that a person carries grows on the soil of his heart. That is why the heart itself must always be very carefully examined, studied, so that later you will not be surprised at what suddenly, completely, it would seem, unexpectedly grew out of it.

How do you usually prepare for a general confession? Naturally, this requires some time: as the holy fathers said, while the water in the vessel is in a state of confusion, the turbidity does not settle. It is necessary to leave this vessel alone, and after some time the water will settle and become transparent, and all the dirt will settle to the bottom, and it will be possible to separate one from the other. This same process should probably take place in preparation for confession for a lifetime: a person needs time to sort himself out. Naturally, even if ordinary confession sometimes requires us to write down a pen and a piece of paper or a notebook in order to write down what we want to repent of, then this is all the more necessary for confession for the whole life we have lived. It's just that you can't keep it in your memory. It is imperative to pray that the Lord would help to remember everything that happened in the life of the evil one, and clothe it in precisely those words in which the sin will be visible and specifically named, and not hidden behind this or that turn of speech. It is really very difficult to look at ourselves impartially from the outside and admit: “I am a sinner,” because in everyday life we present ourselves and others as we want to see ourselves, and not as we really are (we are so we know ourselves that we often do things that are unexpected for ourselves, let alone for those around us). But in order to truly change for the better, you need to open up at a general confession, bare your heart to the very bottom before God, and the courage that a person shows in this spiritual feat of repentance will then no longer leave him, becoming his priceless acquisition and property.

Preparing for a general confession, in my opinion, is the moment when you need to use one of the so-called questionnaires for confession at least once in your life, containing a long list of sins and their manifestations. I would not say that these questionnaires are some kind of pleasant, highly artistic reading. They are often quite primitive. But we are not going to enjoy reading them. This is a kind of plow with which you need to plow your soul and pull out to the surface all that black, dirty and worthless that is in it. These questionnaires should not become our companions throughout our church life: they just have to help us one day, and then they, like crutches, can be put aside. Why are they needed in this case? Because at modern man the idea of the norms of behavior is so distorted that until he sees a clear indication of what is sin, he may not even think about it, and if he does, he will immediately drive this unpleasant thought away from himself. At the same time, if we took, say, once the book “I Confess a Sin, Father,” in which there are several hundred questions about whether we have committed this or that sin, we do not need to build our confession as a list of answers on all points. It's sad, but I had to deal with cases when a person brought leaflets to confession indicating points: 1, 2, 3 ..., and against each point the words: "yes" or "no." - "What it is?" - you ask and hear: "And I answered the questions from the book ...". Of course, this is a completely wrong attitude towards preparing for confession in a lifetime. These questions play only an auxiliary role, and the confession itself should take place in an arbitrary form. Each person speaks differently about the sin he committed; the most important thing is that everything be said clearly, without concealment, understandable for the priest, so that a feeling of repentance and an unshakable desire not to repeat this sin again is born.

Naturally, the process of preparing for confession for a lifetime is a rather painful process, because usually, confessing every two or three weeks, we experience a certain spiritual discomfort when we remember those sins that need to be said. And when we have to remember our whole life, we involuntarily have to return with our souls to things that we don’t want to share with anyone and which we not only don’t want to talk about, but don’t even want to remember. These are not necessarily some terrible crimes, these are not necessarily monstrously shameful deeds. But each of us has something to be ashamed of in our lives. And it happens that a person, when he begins to stir up all this and write down for a general confession, comes into a difficult state of mind. At the same time, someone is thrown into the heat, then into the cold, someone is crying, someone is discouraged, someone cannot understand at all what is happening to him. But all this must be passed, and it is important not to drag out the process of preparing for such a confession. Well, if it fits in a week, no more, because when it takes weeks or months, then, firstly, a person is already getting used to this process and can endlessly supplement and reformulate something, postponing the completion further, and secondly secondly, during this period the enemy is especially active. And if a person begins to hesitate and thinks: “I won’t go today and I won’t go tomorrow either, and next week I have urgent business, so I’ll go in two weeks,” then it’s quite possible that during these two weeks some things will begin to happen to him. then strange things: either the very sins in which he is going to confess will begin to multiply, or troubles will arise at work, or something else will prevent him from going in the end - up to the point that he falls and breaks his leg (I had to deal with this ). So if, as is often said, “something doesn’t let you go” to confession, you need to be aware of who really “doesn’t let you in”, and you need to break out and run as soon as possible, because, then, such is the power " who doesn't let you in" over you.

And further. It must be understood that a person cannot repent of all the sins that he has committed in his life. He cannot repent of every sinful deed, in every sinful episode that was in his life: not a single person will remember all this. And therefore, it is impossible to imagine such a state in which we have collected all the sins, repented of them and became literally completely clean from sin. This cannot be. Therefore, the point is not to list everything as meticulously as possible - sometimes someone understands confession in this way, but to name the most important, the most difficult and most shameful in specific vivid manifestations and at the same time set yourself the task of changing, becoming others; this striving, coupled with a correct understanding of where and to what we should go, is the most important thing.

Having properly prepared for a general confession and with due courage about everything that was remembered, having said during the sacrament, a person often feels amazing spiritual freedom - literally, as if some kind of mountain fell off his shoulders. This relief comes from the fact that the soul, which was bound by sins, like some downtrodden, unfortunate being, suddenly straightens up and straightens itself. Surely many of us had to experience this state of contraction, exhaustion of the soul, and the feeling that it was set free. This is what the Gospel says that the Lord comes in order to set the tormented free (Luke 4:18) - tormented, weary of sin.

With this liberation from sin, there are also cases of healings, and one such miraculous case was in my priestly experience. At one time in Moscow, a man came to my temple; he was a Gagauz who lived and worked in Moscow, a baptized person who, according to tradition, refers himself to the Orthodox Church, but in no way showed his faith before. And he came after he lost the ability to speak - inexplicably, suddenly lost the gift of speech. Naturally, this could not but frighten him and lead him to where he guessed the possibility of help. Being still a completely inexperienced priest, I then remembered an example from the life of St. Barsanuphius of Optina. A boy was brought to him who could not speak without being mute from birth. The reverend told his mother that the boy had committed some kind of sin, which he could not confess in confession, and his dumbness was connected with this. Then he said something in the boy's ear - the boy was frightened, recoiled from him, then nodded his head, repented of the very sin that only God, the Monk Barsanuphius, by revelation from the Lord, and the boy himself knew about, and the gift of speech returned to him . Remembering all this, I advised this man to confess for the rest of his life. He diligently prepared for confession, wrote everything down, brought it to the evening service. He could not read it, because he still did not speak, and I read it for him. The next day he came to take communion and, having come to Communion, he was already speaking. In fact, there are many such cases in the life of the Church.

Concluding the conversation about the general confession, it is worth saying that, in addition to the confession for all the lived years, taken once, there should be confessions in our life, for which we prepare in some special way. We understand that there is a certain inertia in our Christian life. Obviously, it is not just some repeated sins and repeated mistakes, but deep-seated passions and skills that we cannot cope with. And sometimes it is necessary - I met this advice for the first time with one of the Greek elders and remembered it - from time to time to make a kind of general revision of our entire current life, that is, not just prepare for confession for the period during which we they didn’t start the sacrament of Repentance, but to take the trouble to reconsider my life as a whole: how I live, what happens to me, why I make these mistakes, why I step on the same “rake” that both me and those around me without beat the end. Such a confession also brings clarity to the soul, since it can be deeper and more serious than everyday confession, because again, when we do some things out of inertia, in our usual bustle, it turns on more often and more imperceptibly for us. self-justification mechanism. You know, sometimes it even happens like this: a person comes to confession and starts saying: “I’m a scoundrel, I’m a lazy person, so-and-so,” and you understand that self-justification is also hidden in this, because a person wants to say: I’m a scoundrel, such and such any, so everything I do is not so scary. Since I am like this, what I do is natural. In a word, self-justification can be hidden behind the most unexpected external screens, and it is necessary to periodically discover it, bring it to light. clean water. And regular review of your current life helps a lot with this.

Questions after the conversation

? Why can a state of God-forsakenness arise after confession? Does this mean that the confession was brought incorrectly?

It is difficult to say what is the cause of this condition in your particular situation. But it seems to me that in general this happens in those cases when in confession we either consciously or negligently bypass the main thing in which we should have confessed. Sometimes you have to see how a person comes to confession and very diligently confesses what is, by and large, secondary in his life. Meanwhile, a huge boulder is clearly standing in his way, and he does not even put a finger in order to somehow move it from his path. Then there is a feeling of God-forsakenness, because it turns out that a person not only ignores this opportunity given to him for salvation by the grace of God to change his life, but, as it were, even plays with it. This is not God-forsakenness as such - rather, it is such a punitive state with which the Lord wants to reason with a person, wants to show a person: you are doing something wrong. I think this is one of the reasons, and probably the most important. But it may sometimes happen that a person tests his conscience and understands that he has completely bared his soul, said everything that he had to say, but nevertheless this state fell upon him. Then this can be God's permission to strengthen a person in courage, in firmness and fidelity to Him. Any Christian, having come to confession, terribly offended and humiliated the enemy, and the enemy of the human race takes revenge for this. And the Lord allows a person to endure this revenge and the spiritual burden from it, and then we understand what terrible forces we are in the hands of when we sin ... This experience can also be really very useful.

? Should I ask for a general confession in advance? Or can you just get ready and come to the service?

Of course, it is better to agree separately, because, for example, at the Sunday Liturgy or even at the All-Night Vigil on Saturday evening, it is very inconvenient to bring a general confession. It is better to do this on a weekday or during non-liturgical hours, so that you can confess calmly, without worrying that someone is waiting for us to finish our confession.

? With this, you can turn to any priest?

I think not, not to anyone: you need to contact the one to whom you confess more or less regularly. Because you are telling complete history your spiritual illness, and in order not to retell it later to one more, or even more than one, priest, it is better to immediately try, if possible, to choose the one who will help you in your healing later.

? I’m thinking: what kind of father will listen to me for so many hours?

Naturally, confession for the whole life lived by a person cannot be put into five minutes or even fifteen, because the negative, sinful component in our life is always very large. A general confession can and should be quite lengthy, because it is wrong when a person only says, for example: “I sinned against the first commandment in this way, in that way…”. Some moment of the story about sin will be present, but it is about sin, and not about life. And first of all, it is necessary to speak in a more or less broad context, confessing some grave sin, since it is still important for a priest to understand under what circumstances a person committed it. And it is important for the penitent himself to say at the same time about the pain of his soul - about the pain that, perhaps, he has been carrying in himself all this time. Nevertheless, this confession should not take several hours anyway. To avoid excessive space, it is necessary, when we have prepared and have already written everything that we want to say, to sit down and review: what words are superfluous here, what can be dispensed with, and what, on the contrary, is not enough. And if a person prepares thoughtfully and consciously for confession, then it will take half an hour or an hour and hardly more. And the priest will be able to choose the time for this. If some priest says that he does not want to accept this confession from you at all, turn to another, because it is obvious that it is with this priest that you should not confess, and, perhaps, not only in this case, but in all the rest, because if he cannot find time for you on such an important occasion, then this means that he is not very worried about your soul.

? When you are preparing for confession and Communion, you often encounter in your prayers the words “ cursed», « sinful”, but sometimes you don’t feel them. How to feel really sinful?

I often recall the words of a friend of mine who once came and said, frightened: “Here I feel that I will die, there will be a Last Judgment, at this Last Judgment they will show me a man whom I have never seen, did not know, do not I even knew him… and it turns out that this person is me.” In fact, it seems to me that this is a very accurate image of what each of us can face at the Last Judgment. And for a person who is preparing for confession all his life, it should become precisely a kind of prototype of the Last Judgment. And it happens that then the Lord gives a person partly to experience this sensation. At the Last Judgment, a person will ask God for mercy and most of all will desire mercy. And therefore, according to the words of St. Theophan the Recluse, we need to bring it to a certain heartfelt feeling that we are perishing people, and perhaps even already practically dead, and, except for the mercy of God, nothing can save us. You know, we pronounce the words: "Lord, have mercy" and often perceive them as some kind of familiar, especially when this petition is repeated. But in fact, if we imagine that we are in some kind of difficult situation and they will kill us now, but there is someone who can be asked not to kill us, then most likely we will ask for this quite compassionately . And it is from this heartfeltness that repentance and that prayer are born that truly unite us with God. There is not enough strength of the soul of a person to stay in them every day, every hour, but it is important that a person strives for this and this is present to some extent in his life.

? At what age should you start general confession?

From the period from which we ourselves remember ourselves. There is a formal regulation according to which a child must confess before Communion from the age of seven. But at the same time, one often has to see children who, at the age of seven, do not know what to say in confession. And there are children who at the age of four themselves ask their parents for permission to confess. In fact, as soon as a person is born, the action of passions already begins in him. Why do babies often cry? Just because he's afraid, just because he needs his mom, just because he's hungry? No, often he cries because he is in a bad mood, because something irritates him, because he is offended by someone, which means that passions are already acting. And, returning to the question of from what moment one should begin one's confession, one can formulate it more precisely: from the moment when we first consciously felt the action of passions in ourselves. And at the same time, it is not necessary to talk about the sanity or insanity of these passions for us in accordance with our age.

? What if the child was involved in some kind of sin?

If we were involved in some kind of sin, then, of course, we are judged to the extent that we consciously participated in this sin. If, for example, father and mother take a child and drag him to some kind of psychic, it is clear that there is absolutely no fault of the child in this. But if, nevertheless, a person, upon reaching middle age he will say this in confession, his soul will be calmer, although this is not directly his sin. It can only be a sin that a person, even after time has passed, does not consider visiting psychics something sinful and does not see anything bad in it.

? Is sincere repentance by compulsion possible: when you tell yourself that you have not repented for a long time, and for this very reason you begin to remember your sins?

Undoubtedly, a person must force himself, because, according to the word of the Gospel, the Kingdom of Heaven is taken by force, and those who use force take it away (Matt. 11:12). Almost everything good that needs to be done, we will always do with effort. And if we do something good with ease, with joy, without overpowering ourselves, then one of two things: either at this moment the grace of God helps us and we do not work at all, but she simply teaches us, shows us how to do these very good things. Affairs; or the enemy helps us, in order to plunge us into the abyss of vanity, pride, narcissism. In all other cases, you have to force yourself first. At the same time, when a person regularly forces himself to do something, it becomes easier for him to do it, and then sometimes even the feeling of heaviness disappears and joy appears.

As for confession, it would seem that there should be a natural, unconstrained feeling. Here I am carrying a bag of sins on me, like a bag of stones that bent me to the ground, and I should rejoice at the opportunity to come to confession and throw it all off myself. So it would be, but there is still an enemy who has clung to this bag and is sitting on top of it. And he absolutely does not want us to go and throw him off of us. And so it begins to influence our heart. And I must say that the enemy can not only offer us some thoughts, but also literally change the state of our heart. Why does it happen that we go to communion, but our heart is like a stone? Saint Ignatius (Bryanchaninov) writes about this precisely as a consequence of the influence of the enemy on the human heart. The devil cannot live in our heart from the moment of baptism, he cannot possess it of his own free will, but he can influence our heart, harden it or, on the contrary, make it somehow soft and cowardly. But we, in turn, can resist this, and our heart, by the grace of God, will return to the state in which it should be. And it is also very important to know: if we immediately discarded some thought and went, for example, in the morning to the temple for confession, then on the way it will be easier and easier for us. If we stomped on the threshold for a long time, thinking: maybe we should go another time, or maybe not go now, then we will have to drag this bag and the one who holds it with us all the way, and it will be much harder .

? But what if these thoughts – that maybe you shouldn’t go to confession – arise when you are already standing in church?

This should be treated as a completely natural thing. It's just that the enemy has his own work and his own business, which he will do independently of us all our life and all his life, while we have another job and another business. Therefore, there is no need to think about what he is doing: he will do it anyway. We need to think about what we are doing. Suppose, if we know that we are in some place where pickpockets are operating, what depends on us? We can hide the wallet. If we do not hide it, we will lose it. But if we hid it, then it is likely that it will not be stolen. If at the same time we continue to go and hold on to him for some time, then, most likely, he will certainly remain with us. The same is true here. The enemy fights us in one way, we fight him in another. In no case should you be embarrassed and worried because of the thoughts that you are talking about, because the whole life of a Christian still goes through this struggle, and we either win it with the help of God, then we lose, then we are in state of equilibrium. It is only important not to give up and not to say: "That's it, I can't do anything else and I won't," because this state leads to death.

? Tell me, is it worth it for a husband and wife to prepare for confession for the rest of their lives together or separately?

In no case should you prepare for confession, not only together with your husband, but you should not involve children in this process, trying to write their children's confession with them together. Each person is an independent person and must prepare for repentance himself, especially since when a husband and wife tell each other their sins, nothing good comes of it. We will definitely come across some situations in which we have difficult feelings for each other, and when you still know the sins of a person, then you are exposed to such thoughts and temptations that are difficult to resist. Some pre-revolutionary pastoral manuals contained an admonition to the priest that he should never quarrel with his spiritual children, because he knows everything bad about them, and one can always assume that it is this knowledge that causes the quarrel. And this, of course, casts a shadow on the priest ... Therefore, it is better not to talk about your sins anywhere and to anyone, except at confession, so as not to remind yourself of the sensations of these sins and not to give the enemy a reason to prevent the termination of our union with these sins.

? How can you learn to identify what is sin in your life and what helps you the most? Reading the Holy Fathers?

Of course, the holy fathers must be read, and this is very important: this is a thing almost as necessary as reading the Holy Scriptures. But in order to understand what our sin is in this or that situation, to name and characterize it, it is not necessary to know the patristic literature inside and out. Here we come to confession and do not know how to call what we seem to have done wrong. Very simply: we must imagine that it was not we who did this, but another person did it in relation to us. And our mind will immediately single out what is sin, what we are dissatisfied with.

? But it can be difficult for someone to articulate in essence ...

And what can be difficult to formulate here? If you said something wrong, then sit down and figure out what you said wrong and why. And you will quickly come to the conclusion: you said something wrong because you exalted yourself over a person, or at the same time you experienced cowardice, or you said something wrong because you pursued some selfish interests. If you really want to understand, you will find the answer for yourself very quickly. And when you come to confession, it will be very easy for you to say: in this conversation I showed cunning, because I pursued a certain goal, and this goal eclipsed the truth for me. But in this situation, I didn’t say anything wrong, false, but I was careless, inattentive to another person and caused him pain because I didn’t think about this person, but thought about myself. It's not that hard. This is born just as a result of that test of conscience, which is daily necessary for each of us.

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GENERAL CONFESSION

From "Solovki Leaf":

Who Should Prepare for General Confession? For what?

People who have lived away from the Church all their lives and during this time have never confessed or confessed briefly need to prepare for confession for a lifetime. Some priests also recommend preparing for such a confession for those who, having slipped, fell into mortal sin: fornication, adultery, abortion (or inclination to it), murder, theft, child molestation.A detailed confession of what was done "from youth" is part of the rite of joining the Orthodox Church "those who come from occultism and Satanism." Here we are talking about those who "after the Sacrament of Baptism engaged in various occult practices."Confession of all sins committed "from the age of seven" is part of another rank, "the rank of renunciation of occultism." In a similar way, confession is made not only of those who purposefully engaged in the occult sciences (sorcerers, psychics), but also those who "turned to the occultists for help."

Why do you need to prepare for confession for the rest of your life?

A detailed confession needs to be passed not only by criminals and people who go crazy: every penitent person needs it. In the book "Invisible Warfare", addressed to every person who desires salvation, St. Nikodim the Holy Mountaineer advises: "First of all, make a general confession, with all due attention and with all the deeds, considerations and decisions that are necessary for this."

A similar confession was made at the beginning of his ascetic path by the Monk Silouan of Athos. Upon his arrival at the Holy Mount Athos, he “according to Athos customs<…>I had to spend several days in complete peace, so that, remembering my sins for my whole life and setting them out in writing, confess to the confessor. Drinking people should also think about confession. If a person drinks to forget the past, then he will not be able to overcome alcoholism until he feels peace in his soul. He will be able to give up alcohol only after the horrors of the past stop putting pressure on him.

In the Sacrament of Confession, grace operates, which “liberates you from all the bad experiences of life, from wounds, emotional trauma and guilt”

Confession can free a person not only from the psychological consequences of what he did, but also from what his will did not take part in.This is especially important for those people who, for example, believe that they have inherited a mental illness. So one girl, tormented by thoughts of suicide, said that such states are a feature of their kind along the female line. There is some meaning in her words.

In this regard, we can cite the words of the elder Porfiry Kavsokalivit, who said that “from the parents in the soul of a person forms the state that he will take with him for his whole life.” The elder believed that much that happens in a person’s life is a consequence of this state: “He grows up, gets an education, but does not correct himself.”

But the elder not only talks about the problem, he also points out the way to solve it: “There is a way by which you can get rid of this evil. This method is a general confession made by the grace of God.” The elder repeatedly used this method and saw the miracles that took place during such a confession. During it, “Divine grace comes and frees you from all the bad experiences of life, from wounds, trauma and guilt. Because when you speak, the priest creates a warm prayer to the Lord for your release.

Here the question arises: “what should people repent of, whose state was “formed from their parents?” What to say to a girl tormented by thoughts of suicide?

The answer to this question is in the instruction of the same elder. He believed that one could tell a confessor “your life from the very beginning, from the time when you began to realize yourself. All the events that you remember, what was your reaction to them. Not only unpleasant, but also joyful, not only sins, but also good. Everything that makes up your life."

Only the Sacrament of Confession heals a person: in it, a person frees his soul from what has squeezed it.

During the preparation for confession, a person will reconsider his life, decide how he should live on. It will fix the intention to change your life.

Preparing for confession, a person expresses his thoughts in writing, during the confession itself - aloud. Both help him to understand a lot about himself. After all, in order to write down and voice an idea, it must first be formulated.

If a person does not prepare for confession, then it will be difficult for him to decide how to change his life. Perhaps he thinks about this issue every day and makes some plans. But plans drawn up in passing crumble like dry leaves in a gust of wind. Speaking about such a situation, St. Theophan the Recluse said that “ a change of life, only conceived inside, one is indecisive and not firm". The planned changes acquire stability in the Sacrament of Penance, " when a sinner in the church reveals his faults and affirms a vow to be correct". Leaving in confession, the burden that torments him, the man " returns relieved, overjoyed, in a pleasurable frame of mind". Such a gratifying mood cannot be created artificially.

Pave the way to such complacency through confession. But it is not easy to fit a whole life into confession. How to review your life?You can use certain lists. Someone, preparing for confession, uses the book of Archimandrite John Krestyankin "The Experience of Building a Confession." Someone is reading the pamphlet "To Help the Penitent", compiled according to the works of St. Ignatius (Bryanchaninov). There are other books on the subject. Reading them, comprehending what they read and applying it to themselves, a person understands what, in fact, he should repent of.

We offer you a COMPLETE CONFESSION ON THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF GOD AND THE NINE COMMANDMENTS OF BLISS (Edition of the Holy Trinity Seraphim-Diveevo Convent, 2004, p. on the blessing of Bishop of Nizhny Novgorod and Arzamas Georgy).

Download the archive (rar) with the texts of the "general" confession:

EDITORIAL

Dear brothers and sisters!

We have long wanted to offer downloadable texts for the so-called. full (general) confession.

Yes, of course, you and I confess our sins before each sacrament of receiving the Holy Mysteries of Christ. But these confessions are usually short. We repent of those sins that we have committed since the last confession (i.e. usually in the last 1-3 weeks).

A full confession, or as it is also called, a general confession, is a confession during which we name all the sins committed in our entire lives. After all, very often we forget our sins, and sometimes we don’t even know that this or that action, word, thought is a sin. And if we don’t know, then we don’t repent of it. But ignorance of the laws does not exempt from responsibility for their violation. And when we finish our earthly journey, then at the ordeals the demons will unfold their charters and, without any mercy and condescension, will convict us of all these "unknown" and forgotten sins.

Therefore, we need at least occasionally, but to carry out a "general cleaning" in our soul, washing and cleaning all its nooks and crannies and dark places from sinful dust and dirt.

Unfortunately, big number priests do not want to conduct such confessions. They start talking about the ambiguity of attitude towards them, and so on. But, as a rule, everything is explained simply. General confession takes an hour, and sometimes longer. Therefore, of course, priests do not want to spend so much time on one person. And if he has 100 or 500 people in his parish?! That's a lot of work to put in...

Therefore, based on our own experience, we offer you the following way out. Invite a priest to your home on weekdays as if you were holding a service (with the appropriate payment) and ask him to take confession. He only needs to listen to your confession and read the permissive prayer. As a rule, such priests are not hard to find.

As for the confession itself. The texts of confession sheets we offer for downloading were taken from an archimandrite close to us (a former abbot of monasteries, and now the confessor of one of them), who has been conducting such full confessions for many years.

When we ourselves confessed according to these sheets, the priest told us that it was not necessary to choose from the lists which sins we committed and which, as we believe, we did not commit. He said, "With a feeling of deep repentance, read all the sins without choosing them. And even say that Lord, I have sinned more than that, but I do not remember all my sins." Why are we focusing on this? Yes, because we have a lot of thinkers who convince us that it is impossible to repent of those sins that a person did not commit. What is it, as it were, a slander and slander against oneself. And if you took upon yourself a sin that you did not commit, then the Lord will count it as perfect for you and will strictly ask for it.

This is a soul-destroying delusion. It's impossible to repent! And indeed, is it really possible that when reading the evening rule every day, or preparing for Communion, these believers choose from prayers the sins that they have committed that day, and which they have not committed, they do not read? Hardly. And if they do, then they can only sympathize ...

Yes, there are sins that we think we have not committed. But is this really so and can we be 100% sure of this? Of course not. Moreover, we often watch TV, films, various programs, listen to the radio, etc. And when we look, we listen, we will definitely accumulate sins. What we look at enters into us, and we become, as it were, accomplices of the iniquities being committed on the screen.

Yes, and let's look at our holy fathers and elders. They cried all the time and considered themselves the most sinful people on earth: "Everyone will be saved, only I will perish." And when they were undeservedly blasphemed, insulted, accused of sins that they had not committed, they always humbly agreed with this (they did not agree only with accusations of heresy).

We will also point out why we included in the lists of confession sheets the Order of All-People's Repentance, which was previously read in Taininsky.

Our close archimandrite, from whom we took these sheets of confession, told us such a case. Most recently, his mother and father came to him and brought their son between the ages of 20 and 30. He was like a dead soul. He walks, looks, but generally does not react to anything - "a walking corpse." The priest said that these people were not churched: they practically did not go to church, did not go to confession, did not read the Gospel, and so on.

He invited them to undergo a general confession. They agreed because they were ready to do anything in order to help their son get out of this state. They went through a full confession, but the archimandrite said that he did not feel any changes in the state of their child. And then the priest offered them to go through the Mystery Rite of repentance.

They agreed. And after passing the rank of repentance and resolution from sins, incl. and from the sin of regicide, the son, as it were, woke up and came to his senses. It was a real miracle.

Therefore, we have included in the archive with texts the Order of All-People's Repentance, as well as the confession of sins against the royal power.

Brothers and sisters!

You can choose by yourself or together with the priest confession sheets which you deem necessary. You can divide them into two or three confessions. We read them all, adhering to the principle "you can't spoil porridge with butter." It is very good if all family members go through a full confession.

Repentance is impossible! The main thing during confession is our deep repentant and humble feeling before the Lord. There is no need to make excuses and squeeze out of the mass of sins those that, as it seems to us, we did not commit. And it does not matter if some of the sins you read are not entirely clear to you. But they are well known to demons. (of course, it would be nice to go over the sins on the eve of confession and try to find out about them, what they mean)

Most importantly, don't listen to the thinkers who will begin to convince you of the invalidity and futility of the general confession. Such people are known evil spirits and willingly or unwittingly try to harm you. We have a lot of examples when, after going through a full confession, people's lives have changed dramatically for the better, first of all, necessarily in spiritual sense and, as a rule, in everyday life.

Help us Lord! Amen

P.S. Almost all questions that may arise on the above list of sins against the Royal power, the answers can be found in the notes of the author-compiler

Download the archive with the texts of the "general" confession: (downloads: 23281)

Download the archive (zip, for Linux) with the texts of the "general" confession: (downloads: 9061)

CURE FOR SIN

The publication of the brochure was carried out by the grace of God by the Saratov

St. Alekseevsky Convent with the assistance of the Orthodox Foundation "Blagovest"

An old man enters a pharmacy and asks the pharmacist: “Do you have a cure for sin?” - “Yes,” the healer answers and lists: “Dig up the roots of obedience, gather the flowers of spiritual purity, pick the leaves of patience, gather the fruits of non-hypocrisy, do not get drunk with the wine of adultery, dry all this with fasting abstinence, put good deeds in a saucepan, add water to the tears of repentance , salt with the salt of brotherly love, add the bounty of alms, and put in everything the powder of humility and kneeling. Take three spoonfuls on the day of the fear of God, put on the clothes of righteousness and do not enter into idle talk, otherwise you will catch a cold and fall ill with sin again.

This brochure is not intended for everyone, but for those who are spiritually ill and in great need of healing and spiritual healing. So, for example, St. Ambrose and Elder Hilarion of Optina advised some believers, in order to appease their consciences, to resort to a detailed confession of sins committed from the age of seven.

If it is impossible to make such a confession at once (due to a large number of sins), you can gradually confess to one priest 20-40 sins at a time (reception), distributing all your sins.

Four examples testify to the effectiveness of such confession. Some spiritually ill repented for about an hour (at home), the confessor sat and patiently listened to confession. At the end of the confession of sins, the confessor read a permissive prayer. Then the demon shouted through the mouth of the sick woman: “What have you done! All my life I worked and wrote sins to her, and in one hour you made my charter empty!

Another spiritually ill person also repented on this confession. Soon the confessor received a letter from her, in which she reported that after confession, a gelatinous monster with ribs came out of her.

When one believer asked a friend to retype this list of sins on a typewriter, the demon cried out through her lips: “I will copy everything that you give, except for them.” And she refused to reprint. Another believer later said that after a detailed (first such) confession, her mind was enlightened.

Download brochure (detailed list of sins): (downloads: 10917)

Which churches accept general confession. How to correctly name sins in confession