Confession Part IV: What do we need to confess?

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Part IV of Metropolitan Jonah Paffhausen's series on confession in the Orthodox Church. 21 August 2019. Thoughts; provocations; feelings; awareness; obsession; the stage beyond passion; identities; spiritual delusions; asceticism; self denial; stillness; soberness; watchfulness; sins that disrupt our spiritual life with God; being at peace with one another in order to be at peace with God; confession as preparation for communion; the experience of God; healing of our souls; old world piety; focus in the spiritual life; extreme watchfulness; deeper motivations; getting over yourself; becoming transparent to Christ; guilt versus shame culture; despair and the lack of hope in society; milennials; pride; silence; forgiveness; self delusion; atheism

[@stellajacovides9676]

Thank you Father for an excellent talk . Your presentation is easy to listen to and to digest . My question : please clarify the word judgement vs discernment . The judgement we are warned against leads to condemnation . Discernment is something else . I continually hear the phrase “we should not judge .” When is discernment indicated ?Please compare/contrast these two terms . Good Strength .

[@JissenkanHonbu]

I am so happy to have found your teachings. You constantly bring up points that I have struggled with and never got any help with.. Glory to God! Thank you

[@kotp-a]

This was by far I think the most helpful. Thank you, Vladyka, for taking the time to teach. Much needed and appreciated.

[@justrubio3121]

Priest makes the faith palpable which is harder to do than it seems. Very spiritual man as it were. Thank you for transmitting the ancient faith. Christ is in our midst! He is and always will be!

[@edwardhall2067]

Excellent! "Living a life of extreme watchfulness"!!!

[@314Tesla]

Greetings from Orthodox Greece !

[@sacrecur7352]

🙏 Thank you very much for these videos/this channel. I deeply appreciate the effort gone into it. This wisdom and knowledge being recorded shared is a blessing.

[@Sainthermanofalaskastaffordva]

Thank you for the kind words. God bless you!

[@karinbilicka9061]

Thank you so much father! This talk is very helpful. Aspecially the part where you talk about the young people of this generation and their battle with worthlessnes. I would love to hear more about this topic. 🙏

[@gwentong9715]

This life saving information, I and others struggle with this and it can damage our life journey.

[@sifu9683]

Glory to God!!!

[@cyberpunkworld]

Everything we're doing and what we are up to.

[@maxguita12]

Hi Father. I love your videos. I'm a catechumen at the moment. I'm a convert from Traditional Roman Catholicism (attended Latin Mass). I'm struggling horribly with scrupulosity and the concept of life confession. I'm constantly obsessing about getting all the details and examples within sin categories correct in confession. The reason why I'm obsessing and paranoid 24/7 is because I read and heard from various sources that much like in Roman Catholicism, in Orthodoxy if you withhold even just one sin, your entire absolution is invalid, you therefore are automatically damned for certain, and must reconfess even all of the properly confessed sins fronthat invalid confession, at the next opportunity. I've heard this from Priests as well, both Greek and Russian. My spiritual father disagrees with this , and says it isn't true. He still says you will be guilty of a greater sin for withholding, but now I'm not even sure what that even means due to all of the contradictions. It isn't helping, because now I'm absolutely confused, and paranoid. What if my spiritual father is wrong, and the others are right, and I end up going to hell for withholding a detail I wasn't sure I needed to say, when confession a general category of sin. Furthermore, there's some sins I may or may not have done, therefore I don't know if Ive even done them. Right now, I'm choosing to only confess sins I'm absolutely certain of, in order to relieve my paranoia, but I'm still terrified in fear that maybe I'll still be guilty of withholding if by some algorithmic chance I was guilty of that sin, despite me not being able to figure it out. My spiritual father said im not obliged to confess uncertain things, but what if hes wrong? Others have said differently. I could kean my damnation. Please help me Father Jonah. I trust your opinion greatly, due to what I've seen in your videos. Much love Max

[@gamer106892]

As an Orthodox Christian who struggles regularly with this exact thing when I go to confession at least once a week, allow me to share some of my limited experience. By God's grace perhaps you'll find it helpful. I know the anguish you are going through, and I know that no matter how bad it is, you want to do things the right way for your salvation. It is good to want to follow all the rules and put all into our confession/repentance, but here is the truth about our repentance... here are the words of my spiritual father, esteemed by many to be a holy man, "Your trust is in who God is, and not in yourself, not even in your abiity to repent. Always look "up", to God. Of ourselves and our abilities, we are nothing, doomed. "With God all things are possible."" In another context he also said, "Strive to ever be "free" in what you offer to God. Be "simple" that way." For what it's worth, that personally reminds me of 2 Corinthians 3:17 "Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." I don't have a perfect answer for you, far from it, but from the anguish I've been through with this problem, from the guidance of my spiritual father, and from the journey it seems that I've walked with the Lord and those apparent signs he's given... one thing stands out to me constantly, you have to trust God. You MUST really TRUST in Him. Proverbs 3:5-6 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Through the prayers of our holy Fathers, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us. Amen.

[@garrettdennis2365]

Does anyone know what the name of the chant was in the beginning? It was very beautiful

[@user-qg1oq8it7c]

"America will feed the world. And then it will be destroyed." Saint Paisios

[@kimberlystevens886]

Is this the end of the series or will you be speaking further on this topic? It has been very enlightening, especially for a protestant who hasn't grown up with confession in this form.

[@Sainthermanofalaskastaffordva]

This was the end of this series but Vladyka has other videos on St John the Baptist ROCOR Cathedral’s site. God bless!

[@MaximusWolfe]

Thank you Vladika!

[@robscovell5951]

У меня вопрос: как писать nous по русски?