The Communion of Repentance

A Sermon on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son & the Feast of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia

Today is the Sunday of the Prodigal Son — one of the most beloved days of the entire Church year (especially by us monastics). It is easy to understand why it is so beloved. Today is the day of repentance par excellence, upon which the entire Gospel is founded: “Repent, for the Kingdom is at hand” (Matt. 4:17). And it is a day which helps us to understand repentance as it truly is: not as some dismal embrace of guilt, shame, and self-loathing, nor as some unpleasant but still necessary duty imposed upon us by a strict and legalistic deity, but rather as freedom from eternal bondage and misery, escape from the “far country” of a meaningless life (and an equally meaningless death), and above all, the unfathomable gift of our Heavenly Father’s unconditionally loving embrace — no matter who we are, no matter what we have done, and no matter how greatly we have squandered all that His love has given us before.

As Orthodox Christians, we likely know all these things in our minds. But on this Sunday, we must ask ourselves if they have truly penetrated into our hearts, and into our lives. We must ask ourselves if we look upon the upcoming season of Great Lent as that which it truly is: the opportunity to at long last come home. We must ask ourselves how we see the Father’s House: as the place of toil and drudgery which the Prodigal Son saw when he demanded his inheritance and fled to the far country, or as the place of abundance which he began again to desire after long experience of the utter emptiness of his own passions, or as the place of superabundant divine grace which he finally began to comprehend as the Father poured out upon him all of His love — despite all of his unworthiness.

But beyond these things, there is another lesson for us in today’s Gospel passage about the true meaning of repentance. It is a lesson which we likewise might understand on a rational level, but which — due perhaps in part to the deeply-ingrained individualism of the modern world — might nevertheless remain unlearned in the depths of our own hearts. And that lesson is the profoundly communal nature of repentance.

Often we might have the tendency to think of both our sins and our repentance as something fundamentally between us and God. And of course, in one sense this is true: the primary relationship in the Parable of the Prodigal Son is of course between the son and his Father. Yet we also cannot help but understand (at least when we consider it honestly) that our sins have a profound effect on those around us — even those sins which we commit in the “privacy” of our own hearts: as Christ said, “whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already” (Matt. 5:28). And the same thing is true of our repentance: even if it seems to manifest itself only on an interior level, yet it cannot help but impact the lives of countless others. As St. Seraphim of Sarov said: “Acquire the Spirit of Peace, and a thousand souls around you will be saved.” How can the Spirit of Peace possibly be acquired, if not through repentance?

And as I said, today’s parable likewise contains within itself this great truth about repentance. For the parable does not end with the repentance of the Prodigal Son, nor even with his loving embrace by the Father. No, it ends with someone else: it ends with the elder son. Now, it might seem at first glance that the Prodigal Son’s repentance (or rather, its acceptance by the loving Father) was hardly something which benefited the elder son, who on the contrary was stirred up by it to wrath, indignation, self-pity, and resentment. Indeed, by the end of the parable it is the Prodigal Son who has entered into the ineffable joy of the Father’s House, while the elder son of his own will “would not go in” (Luke 15:28).

Yet let us listen closely to the parable, and understand that — even in such a state — the incomprehensible love of the Father remained just as unchanged toward the elder son in his pride as it had toward the prodigal son in his profligacy: “Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine” (Luke 15:31). And in truth, we can even say that by the end of the parable the elder son was perhaps in a better state than he was at its beginning — thanks precisely to the repentance of his younger brother. Why so? Because it was not only the younger brother who discovered the true nature of the Father’s love when he returned from the far country — the elder brother discovered it too. And though he reacted to such love with anger, yet he was thereby given the opportunity to (perhaps for the very first time) encounter the poverty of his own heart, and to thereby understand that, despite all his years of apparently faithful service to the Father, he still remained a stranger to the depths of divine love.

The Holy Fathers tell us that the man who sees his sins is greater than the man who sees the angels. Likewise, they tell us that those who offend us are, in very truth, our greatest spiritual benefactors. This is because we cannot possibly repent of our sins until we see that they are there; and very often, we cannot see that they are there until our passions are stirred up by the offenses we take from others. We do not know the final fate of the elder son (or rather, the self-righteous hearers of the parable whom the elder son represents). We do not know whether he ultimately embraced his own repentance, set aside his anger and his pride, and entered into the eternal joy offered both to him and to all in the Father’s House. But we do know that he was given the opportunity — and that he was given that opportunity by nothing other than the repentance of his younger brother, the Prodigal Son.

How gloriously our God uses even our worst sins and mistakes to bring about healing — not only our own healing, but also that of those around us! How ineffable is the power of repentance, and how joyous are its saving fruits! Though we labor so briefly and offer so little, yet how richly does the Lord pour forth His grace and His love in return! Though the Prodigal squandered everything in the far country, though he did nothing at all to recompense the Father other than simply setting out upon the road back home, yet the Father killed for him the fatted calf, and put a robe on his back, shoes on his feet, and a ring on his finger. Moreover, He used that one small act of repentance to not only welcome the Prodigal Son back into His House, but also to thereby call the elder brother back home as well, who — under the guise of an external obedience — had long and secretly been wandering in his own “far country” of self-righteous pride and poverty of heart.

My brothers and sisters, by the grace of God our own meager repentance can likewise reach far beyond our own hearts and lives, co-working with the Father to bring salvation to “a thousand souls around us,” as St. Seraphim of Sarov said. Repentance is not something simply between us and God; if it is true repentance, it cannot do anything less than embrace all creation by active participation in the all-encompassing love of the Father.

I mentioned before the particular meaning of this feast for monastics. Of course, the monastic tonsure service itself begins with the beautiful hymn we heard sung during the canon at Vigil last night:

Make haste to open unto my Thy Fatherly embrace, for as the prodigal I have wasted all my life. In the never-failing wealth of Thy mercy, O Saviour, reject not mine heart in its poverty, for with compunction I cry to Thee: “O Father, I have sinned against heaven and before Thee.”

Likewise, the entire monastic life is nothing other than the living out of the mystery of this parable — which is to say, it is nothing other than an incarnation of the mystery of repentance. Therefore, the communal nature of repentance of which we have been speaking can also be discerned in the authentic monastic life. It is no accident that the monastic fathers have appointed the cenobitic rule of life to govern the formation of a monk: though we come to God alone, yet we find Him in brotherhood — as St. John the Theologian taught (cf. 1 John 4:20). And though the withdrawal of monastics into the wilderness (whether in a literal or a figurative sense) might appear selfish to those who do not understand its purpose, yet the multitudinous fruits born from the seeds of repentance sown in monasteries can in no way be denied. The vast reaches of the Russian land were brought to Christ in large part by the many monasteries founded in the wilderness, which drew to themselves countless men and women who were hungering and thirsting for God. The repentance of those monks and nuns was not in any way selfish, but on the contrary proved to be the foundation upon which the faith of the entire Russian nation was laid.

And truly, just as the Lord Himself promised (cf. Matt. 7:24-25), this foundation of repentance was able to endure even one of the greatest storms imaginable: the persecution of the Russian Church by the God-hating Bolsheviks, which slaughtered more Christians than any other in the entire history of the world. How did Christianity survive such a tremendous outpouring of demonic savagery and hate? After all, many believe that with the murder of Tsar-Martyr Nicholas, the prophecy of St. Paul was fulfilled: “the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way” (2 Thess. 2:7). St. John Chrysostom taught that “he who now restrains” referred to power of the Roman Empire, which many likewise believe came to its final end when the Third Rome of Imperial Russia fell to the forces of revolution. But regardless of whether one believes this interpretation to be true, it cannot be denied that the resurrection of the Russian Church and nation was an extraordinary miracle, which hardly anyone expected. How was such a resurrection accomplished? By the grace of God, of course — but the grace of God unquestionably worked through the foundation of repentance and faithfulness laid down by the Holy New-Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, whom we also celebrate this day.

Many of these men were already giants of faith and sanctity by the time the Bolsheviks arose to make them martyrs. But others were simple sinners and prodigals, who for much of their lives had squandered God’s gifts of grace just as surely as had the Prodigal Son in today’s parable. I want to read a brief account of a few such men, which in my opinion is among the most moving stories in Metropolitan Tikhon (Shevkunov)’s wonderful book Everyday Saints:

SOMEWHERE IN THE depths of Russia before the Revolution there was a monastery that had a bad reputation in the neighborhood. It was said that its monks were all idlers and drunkards. During the Civil War the Bolsheviks arrived in the town that was closest to the monastery. They gathered together its inhabitants in the market square, and then they dragged the monastery’s monks out in a convoy.

The commissar loudly yelled at the people as he pointed to those men in black: “Citizens! Townsfolk! You know these drunkards, gluttons, and idlers better than I do! Now their power has come to an end. But so that you will understand more fully how these vagabonds have fooled the workers and peasants for centuries, we will throw their cross and their Scriptures into the dust before them. Now, before your very eyes, you will see how each of them will stamp upon these tools of deceit and enslavement of the people! And then we will let them go, and let the four winds scatter them!”

The crowd roared. And as the people cheered, up walked the monastery’s abbot, a stout man with a meaty face and nose all red from drinking. And he said as he turned to his fellow monks: “Well, my brothers, we have lived like pigs, but let us at least die like Christians!”

And not a single one of those monks budged. That very day all their heads were chopped off by the sabers of the Bolsheviks.

My brothers and sisters, in this life we might never fully comprehend how much every single one of us owes to the repentance of such prodigal sons as these. Nevertheless, it is solely on account of the repentance of sinners that this world continues to exist at all. Truly, the grace of God works in mysterious ways.

So as we approach the gates of repentance which will be opened to us at the beginning of the Great Fast, let us always remember that we do not set out upon the path to the Kingdom of God on our own. Let us always keep in mind that our repentance cannot in any way be something private, individual, or self-centered. We are not called to repentance only for our own sakes, nor even only for God’s sake: we are each of us called to repent (if I may dare to use these words) “in behalf of all, and for all.”

May God help all of us to do this. May He help all of us to “lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us” (Heb. 12:1), so that the High-Priestly Prayer of Christ might truly find its fulfillment in every single one of our lives — which is to say, in all our lives together:

That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me. John 17:21-23

Amen.