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.

I live, saith the Lord, as if compelled to strengthen his assurance before the unbelievers and to arouse the attention of those who do not heed, "I live, saith the Lord: I do not desire the death of the sinner, but that the wicked should turn from his way, and live to be him" [84]... Ye are dying, O house of Israel?..

God knew the weakness of men, knew that even after Baptism they would fall into sins: for this reason He established in His Church the Sacrament of Repentance, by which sins committed after Baptism are cleansed. Repentance must accompany faith in Christ, precede Baptism into Christ; and after Baptism, it corrects the violation of the duties of the one who believes in Christ and is baptized into Christ.

When many from Jerusalem and all Judea came to John, the preacher of repentance, on the Jordan for Baptism, they confessed their sins to him — they confessed their sins to him, not because, remarks a certain holy Writer [85], the holy Baptist would have the need to know the sins of those who came to him, but because, for the stability of their repentance, it was necessary to combine the confession of sins with feelings of regret for falling into sins.

The soul, which knows that it is obliged to confess its sins, says the same Holy Father, by this very thought, as if by a bridle, is restrained from repeating previous sins; on the contrary, unconfessed sins, as if committed in darkness, are conveniently repeated.

By confessing sins, friendship with sins is dissolved. Hatred of sins is a sign of true repentance, a determination to lead a virtuous life.

If you have acquired the habit of sin, then confess them more often, and soon you will be freed from the captivity of sin, you will easily and joyfully follow the Lord Jesus Christ.

Whoever constantly betrays his friends, his friends become enemies, they distance themselves from him, as from a traitor who seeks their certain destruction: whoever confesses his sins, they depart from him, because sins are based and strengthened on the pride of the fallen nature, they do not tolerate rebuke and shame.