Orthodox Portal

Question: Is there anything that can be done to encourage parishioners to prepare in such a way that their confession is more efficacious and more able to bring salvation to them?
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St. John the Divine says that there is a way for man to become infallible – the only way upon earth that man can be infallible – is when he acknowledges his sinfulness. He says, If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness’ (I John 1:8-9.)
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“Through the grace we receive through the Liturgy we enter into eternity. This grace IS eternity, and through this grace we become contemporaries of the events [which we commemorate], and [are thus] able to say ‘TODAY at every feast.” – Father Zachariah. (The Enlargement of the Heart, pg. 93.)

…The Christian knows that Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, by His Passion, Cross, Death, and Resurrection, willingly and sinlessly entered into the totality of human pain, transforming it into an expression of His perfect love. He thereby healed His creature from the mortal wound inflicted by ancestral sin, and made it ‘a new creation’ unto eternal life. Pain of heart is therefore of great value in the practice of prayer, for its presence is a sign that the ascetic is not far from the true and holy path of love for God. If God, through suffering, showed His perfect love for us, similarly, man has the possibility, through suffering, to return his love to God.

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