"OPEN UNTO ME THE DOORS OF REPENTANCE, O GIVER OF LIFE..."

Homily on Saturday of the First Week of Great Lent, evening

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

We, brethren, after the first week of Great Lent, which should be spent in sincere repentance, have come to the celebration of Orthodoxy, which reveals to us a way out of our sinful state and indicates the path that a person who has begun repentance should follow. If you have brought repentance, then by doing so you have only begun to enter into real life. After all, the covenant of God with man was laid down twice - in the Old and New Testaments. In the Old Testament it was laid down through Moses on Mount Sinai, in the New Testament through His Son: "For this is My Lord, of the New Testament, which is poured out for many for the remission of sins" (Matt. 26:28).

The Lord both now (in the new) and in the ancient (old) revealed His covenant. But in order for us to be in His covenant, we must enter into a covenant with God ourselves. When the priest in the Sacrament of Confession absolves the penitent of sin, he asks in prayer to give him an image of repentance: "Thou Thyself even now have compassion on Thy servant and give him the image of repentance."

We ourselves are created in the image of God and in the likeness. We ask for the image of repentance, the image of correction: this is the image in which we must live. Repentance is our covenant with God to correct our lives. And if we have not entered into our covenant, the covenant of man with God, then for us the covenant of God with man is also invalid.

In the Old Testament, God gave His covenant through Moses. And the Lord said to Moses: "Go up to Me into the mountain and be there, and I will give you tablets of stone, and the law and the commandments, which I wrote for the teaching of Israel" (Exodus 24:12). "And Moses went up into the mountain, and a cloud covered the mountain, and the glory of the Lord overshadowed Mount Sinai... Moses went into the midst of the cloud, and went up into the mountain, and Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights" (Exodus 24:15,18). "When the people saw that Moses had not come down from the mountain for a long time, they gathered together to Aaron and said to him, Arise and make us a god to go before us: for with this man, with Moses, who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has happened" (Exodus 32:1). Aaron commanded them to bring gold. "And all the people took the gold earrings out of their ears, and brought them to Aaron. And he took them out of their hands, and made of them a cast calf, and made it with a chisel. And they said, Behold thy god, O Israel, who brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt" (Exodus 32:3-4).

Notice that when the Lord wanted to make a covenant with man, and when He gave Moses on Mount Sinai the tablets of the covenant, the people were doing great iniquity at that very time. And when Moses received the tablets of the covenant, written by none other than the Finger of God, and came down from the mountain, he heard a noise and saw a calf cast out of gold. Moses in anger dropped the tablets and broke the calf. But the Lord was angry with Israel and revealed to Moses that Israel would be blotted out of the book of life because of their iniquities. Then Moses took upon himself the image of repentance for his people. He began to pray and ask that the Lord would forgive Israel, and if the Lord could not forgive the people, then He would blot out him, Moses, from the book of life. And this entry of one man into a covenant with God saved Israel.

The covenant of God extended to the whole people, and only Moses entered into this covenant through the image of repentance. He himself made a covenant with God. We see the same thing in the New Testament, the same people who shouted "Hosanna!" to Jesus, then shouted, "Crucify Him, crucify Him!" And the first one made a covenant with God, remember who? -brigand. When Christ shed His Blood on the Cross for all the people, at that time He alone made a covenant with God. He stopped the other robber, saying:

"What are you doing? We take what is due, but this one has done nothing evil," and with a prayer he turned to the Lord: "Remember me, Lord, when you come into Your Kingdom." And at that moment the covenant of man with God was made, and this man was a wise thief. The New Covenant of God with man was revealed to him.

My dear ones, it is only through our entry into the covenant of man with God that our entry into the covenant of God with man is revealed.

In the Old Testament, sacrifices were made by priests and prayers were offered on behalf of the entire people. Outwardly, they were in a covenant with God, but in reality they were not in it.

In the New Testament, Christ makes it possible for all to enter into a covenant with Him. But on one condition - repentance and constant abiding in it.

Here we are triumphing Orthodoxy. It is customary for us to say that there is an image of worldly life and an image of monastic life - the angelic image. In the final attainment, however, we must all be equal to the angels, and this division is wrong. The monastic life is a special repentance, and not at all an angelic life. If we are not in the form of repentance, then all the Sacraments are closed to us. There are seven Sacraments, and one of them we perform par excellence is the Sacrament of Repentance. Each Sacrament requires one or another substance for its performance: Baptism - water, Anointing of the Sick - oil, etc. And in the Sacrament of Repentance we ourselves give this substance - our tears, our broken heart. This Sacrament is performed in our soul: the human soul is the throne for it. Each of us now, at this moment, can check whether he is performing this Sacrament and how. God has made a covenant with all of us: we are baptized. But let us examine ourselves: whether we have entered into this covenant, and if we are in it, then how we carry the image of repentance, which we can sometimes lose and defile. And if only we carry it, then all the other Sacraments will be open to us. If we have not completely repented and have not brought contrition of heart, if our sins are not before us, then we do not perform the other Sacraments either.