People work, hurry to enrich themselves with knowledge, but only knowledge of little importance, suitable only for time, contributing to the satisfaction of the needs, comforts and whims of earthly life. Knowledge and work, which are essential, for which earthly life alone has been granted to us, the knowledge of God and reconciliation with Him through the Redeemer, we completely despise. Repent!

Fraternity! Let us look impartially, in the light of the Gospel, at our earthly life. It is insignificant! all its benefits are taken away by death, and often much earlier than death by various unexpected circumstances. These perishable goods, which so quickly disappear, are not worthy to be called goods! Rather, they are deceptions, nets. Those who are entangled in these nets and entangled in them are deprived of the true, eternal, heavenly, spiritual blessings brought about by faith in Christ and by following Him along the mysterious path of life of the Gospel. Repent!

What a terrible blindness we are in! How evident is our fall by this blindness! We see the death of our brethren; we know that it is certainly and perhaps very soon before us, because no man has remained forever on earth; We see that even before death many people are betrayed by earthly well-being, that it often turns into misfortune, similar to the daily tasting of death. In spite of this so clear evidence of experience itself, we pursue only temporal goods, as if they were permanent, eternal. To them alone all our attention is directed! God is forgotten! Forgotten is the majestic and at the same time terrible eternity! Repent!

They will change, brethren, they will certainly betray us all perishable goods: the rich will be betrayed by their wealth, the glorious by their glory, the young by their youth, the wise by their wisdom. Only one eternal, essential good can be acquired by a person during his earthly pilgrimage: true knowledge of God, reconciliation and union with God, granted by Christ. But in order to receive these supreme blessings, one must abandon the life of sin, one must hate it. Repent!

Repent! What does it mean to repent? It means to confess, to repent of one's sins, to forsake one's sins, as a certain great holy Father answered such a question, and not to return to them again. In this way, many sinners were transformed into saints, many lawless people into righteous men.

Repent! Reject from yourselves not only obvious sins – murder, robbery, fornication, slander, lies, but also pernicious amusements and carnal pleasures, and criminal dreams, and lawless thoughts – everything, everything forbidden by the Gospel. Wash away your former and sinful life with tears of sincere repentance.

Do not say to yourself in despondency and weakness of soul: "I have fallen into grievous sins; I have acquired sinful habits through a long-term sinful life; they turned from time to nature, as it were, and made repentance impossible for me" [80]. These gloomy thoughts are inspired in you by your enemy, who is not yet noticed and understood by you[81]: he knows the power of repentance, and he fears that repentance will tear you out of his power, and he tries to distract you from repentance, attributing weakness to God's almighty healing.

The Founder of repentance is your Creator, Who created you out of nothing. All the more easily can He recreate you, transform your heart: make a God-loving heart out of a sin-loving heart, make a pure, spiritual, holy heart out of a sensual, carnal, malicious, voluptuous heart.

Fraternity! we come to know God's ineffable love for the fallen human race. The Lord became incarnate in order to make it possible for Himself to take upon Himself the punishments deserved by men, and to redeem the guilty from execution by the execution of the All-Holy. What drew Him to us here, to the earth, to the land of our exile? Are they our truths? No! He was attracted to us by the miserable state into which our sinfulness has plunged us.

Sinners! let us be of good cheer. For us, precisely for us, the Lord accomplished the great work of His incarnation; He looked upon our illnesses with incomprehensible mercy. Let us stop hesitating! Let us cease to be discouraged and doubtful! Filled with faith, diligence and gratitude, let us approach repentance: through it we will be reconciled to God. If the wicked man turn from all his iniquities, which he has done, and keep all My commandments, and do justice, and righteousness, and mercy, he shall live his life, and shall not die: all his transgressions, which he has committed, shall not be remembered unto him, but in his righteousness, which he hath done, he shall live. This is the promise God gives to the sinner through the mouth of His great Prophet.

Let us correspond, according to our weak strength, to the great love of the Lord for us, as can the love of His Creator, and fallen creatures: let us repent! Let us repent not with our lips alone; Let us bear witness to our repentance not only by a few, short-term tears, not only by outward participation in church services, in the performance of church rites, which the Pharisees were content with. Let us bring together with tears, with outward piety, the fruit worthy of repentance: let us change the life of sin for the life of the Gospel.

You are dying, O house of Israel! [83] Why do you, Christians, perish from your sins with eternal death? Why is hell filled with you, as if almighty repentance had not been established in the Church of Christ? This infinitely good gift has been given to the house of Israel – the Christians – and at whatever time of life, whatever the sins, it acts with the same power: it cleanses every sin, saves everyone who runs to God, even if it be in the last, dying moments.

You are dying, O house of Israel! That is why Christians finally perish in eternal death, because during the entire period of their earthly life they are engaged in one violation of the vows of Baptism, one service to sin, they perish because they do not deign the slightest attention to the Word of God, which proclaims to them about repentance. In the most dying moments, they do not know how to use the almighty power of repentance! They do not know how to make use of it, because they have not received any idea of Christianity, or they have received the most inadequate and confused concept, which should be called complete ignorance rather than any knowledge.