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Join Metropolitan Jonah (Paffhausen) as he unravels the profound essence of repentance and its transformative power in our lives. In this enlightening discourse, Metropolitan Jonah sheds light on the misconception that repentance is bitter and burdensome, emphasizing instead its joyful liberation from sin and worldly entanglements. Through heartfelt anecdotes and insightful teachings, he reveals repentance as a journey of spiritual renewal and enlightenment, guided by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Discover how embracing repentance opens our spiritual eyes and renews our consciousness, leading us on the path of salvation and deification. Explore the divine synergy between God’s grace and our cooperation, as we embark on the lifelong process of cleansing our souls and being reborn anew in Christ. Join us on this transformative journey of faith, where repentance becomes the gateway to experiencing God’s boundless love and joy. Metropolitan Jonah is a retired American Eastern Orthodox bishop who served as the primate of the Orthodox Church in America until his resignation on July 7, 2012.
Video source: Saint Herman of Alaska Orthodox Church, Stafford, Virginia, January 2024
For more resources, check out the website of St. Herman of Alaska Orthodox Church
https://sthermanorthodox.org/
and the bookstore of St. Demetrios Monastery: https://virginiamonks.org/collections/all
Metropolitan Jonah:
The process of repentance is not bitter and hard. The process of repentance is joyful because it lifts off the burden of our sins, it lifts off the burden of the world from our backs and opens our spiritual eyes. And what does that repentance mean? It’s not about beating yourself up, it’s not about feeling guilty, it’s all not about any of that kind of thing, it’s being transformed by the grace of the Holy Spirit, it’s having our spiritual eyes opened, our noetic eyes opened, and our whole consciousness renewed by grace.
There’s a real transformation that happens in the life of the Church by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Through the partaking of the sacraments, through prayer, through our good works which are according to the gospel… Because we are recreated in Christ for good works, to serve the poor, to love those who are in need and homeless and afflicted and orphans and widows, this is true religion. James says to visit the orphans and their widows in their affliction and to heed the poor, all of those who are poor, who are in some kind of need or want, whether it be financial, whether it be material, whether it be spiritual, whether it be emotional.
When we reach out to our neighbors we’re doing the work of God. When we’re loving those who are hard to love, we’re doing the work of God and God works through us and with us and in us and by that we are transformed. Jesus went out and He preached and He said: “Repent; for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand” [Matthew 4:17]. This is so important for us because our whole life as Christians is based on repentance, there is no other way to the Kingdom of Heaven than by repentance because our repentance is something that lasts our whole life because everything in our understanding of the spiritual life is process, we’re in the process of being saved, we’re in the process of being deified, we’re in the process of cleansing our souls and our minds and our hearts from sin and from the old man, we’re in the process of putting the old man to death and in the process of being born again a new in Christ by the grace of the Holy Spirit.
And the Church gives us these great gifts of Baptism and Chrismation and of the Eucharist to enable us to go through that process because it is because the active partner in all of this is God. All we have to do is cooperate, it’s called synergy, all we have to do is hear the word of God and do it like His mother did. What we need to do is enter into that flow of God’s love which is the flow of His will so that we manifest God’s love to all of those around us and receive it for ourselves with thanksgiving!
