Confession and Communion

[Reader_Arsenios]

I think your assumption, that salvation was served by withdrawal, is incorrect. Mind giving some reference?

The Canons of St. Basil and the Canons of St. John the Faster.

Arsenios

 

[Reader_Arsenios]

Perhaps you missed my statement, “Penance gives God the opportunity to pour His graces into our soul which sanctifies or purifies us.” To me, this is the therapy of which you speak.

 

[Prayer_Warrior]

Heh, heh… maybe we’re both nit-picky, eh? I’m not overly articulate but I will keep trying. Anyway, you’re right, God doesn’t need the opportunity… He can do what He wants, when He wants. Perhaps a better wording is that we are opening ourselves to receiving His grace? It seems clear that He pours His healing Grace into the souls of those who want it and the acts of Penance are a way of saying “yes” to God’s Grace.

On a sidenote…the thing with the nuns… hard to believe. I know that in the US they have said that abstinence from meat is not required as long as another act of penance is performed. So, maybe they went without their mocha latte’s that day… I prefer the abstinence from meat because I feel rather joined with the Catholic community of old. Technically, I’m not a “traditional” Catholic, I haven’t ever been to a Latin Mass, but I value many of the traditional practices.

Back to the subject. Why is penance a healing balm? Hmm… because through it our fellowship with God (and community) is repaired? We join with Christ’s sufferings, we grow in humility, faith, patience and love for God? As we examine our sins through the process of penitential acts we learn, we change, we conform ourselves to Christ.

But the issue here is the turning away from the early Church’s taking the committer of serious sins from Communion as a healing salve for their soul… Is the Church right to do so? And if so, was the early Church wrong? Or have things changed?

Let me mull over this question some more. I’ve started to write my thoughts about ten times and I can’t seem to get it out the way I want to. I am intrigued by your comments and questions, but I’m pressed for time right now and would like to devote some time and thought into giving you my thoughts.

PS. Your not full of beans… I’m a she. I guessed you are a well-studied Orthodox gentleman but please don’t be offended if I’m wrong.

 

[Fr_Ambrose]

St. John the Faster’s CANON XVIII

It has seemed advisable to exclude any man who has been so mad as to copulate with another man from Communion for three years, weeping and fasting, and towards evening confined to xerophagy, and doing two hundred metanies. But as for one who prefers to relax, let him fulfill the fifteen years.

How incredibly slack!

Here are the provisions for such sins from Saint Theodore of Canterbury (a Greek by the way, appointed to Canterbury by the Pope in the late 7th century.)

The Penitential of Saint Theodore the Archbishop of Canterbury required 1 year for inter-femoral contact (penis between thighs); 7 to 15 years for anal intercourse; 7 to 22 years for fellatio.

If caught kissing, boys under the age of 20 were subject to 6 special fasts; 8 fasts if it was “licentious kissing”; 10 fasts if it was “kissing with emission”; more if it involved mutual masturbation; and much longer if the partners were over the age of 20. Sometimes the penance was greater for the insertor than for the receptor.

 

[Reader_Arsenios]

Sorry for the big delay in responding - I have not been able to post on this forum for some reason until now… I agree with you… And I think that the issue is repentance and self-denial… Because salvation is by repentance, and nothing is one for one, but all is by grace, and grace comes when God decides, and as much as He decides… Yet all is by repentance…

On a side note…the thing with the nuns… hard to believe. I know that in the US they have said that abstinence from meat is not required as long as another act of penance is performed. So, maybe they went without their mocha latte’s that day…

It was an interesting encounter. She said “I noticed that some of the Sisters seem to have forgotten that today is Friday…” [She being one of them] Yet the normal fasting of the Orthodox clearly exceeds by a lot the monastic fasting of Rome… Although I am sure not in all cases…

I prefer the abstinence from meat because I feel rather joined with the Catholic community of old. Technically, I’m not a “traditional” Catholic, I haven’t ever been to a Latin Mass, but I value many of the traditional practices.

So are you a Byzantine Catholic…? I mean, the truly “Traditional” Catholic is Orthodox…!!

Let me mull over this question some more. I’ve started to write my thoughts about ten times and I can’t seem to get it out the way I want to. I am intrigued by your comments and questions, but I’m pressed for time right now and would like to devote some time and thought into giving you my thoughts.

Well, lo and behold, I figured out the answer to my OP… And it is this: In the early Church, the commission of a serious sin was greeted by one being taken out of Communion for a fairly fixed amount of time… Adultery, for instance, was 7 years… The times were guides to priests impositions, and were generally followed pretty closely. But the basic idea was to take one out of Communion for as long as it took to heal the soul of the sin… Some times were for only 3 weeks, or 3 months, and others went on up to one’s whole life… With Communion only upon one’s death bed… And even then, if one recovers, no Communion again until death [again]… And this all according to the Canons of St. Basil… Which themselves had been developing up to his times…

Then along came John the Faster, who fasted excessively, and successfully, hence the name, and he was given a vision that prescribed the reduction in the number of years IF the person was willing to suffer a “Rule”… And the Rule entailed a fixed number of prostrations each day, no food till the 9th hour [3PM], then only dry and uncooked food, with no meat, no eggs, no dairy, and no oil, and an increased prayer rule, and withdrawal from Communion… So John the Faster’s Rule was seen as a letting up of the severity of the consequences of serious sins…

Now apparently what has happened in the west is that the suspension from Communion has been eliminated, and the Rule, instead of being greatly increased to compensate for the elimination, has itself been drastically reduced or even eliminated except for a few small extra prayers thrown in… With the consequence, by the standards of Rome of the first thousand years, has people communing unworthily, even though they have been pronounced worthy by the Roman Church… And how Rome came to this reversal of standards seems to be tied to the idea that absolution and repentance are legal matters given legal release by the Church, and that this is all that is needed for Communion… And you have Purgatory to “take care of” the temporal “punishment” that needs to be exacted for those sins, if the penitent does not suffer enough in this life by penances…

At least that is how it looks from here…

And it is all very foreign to the Early Church…

PS. Your not full of beans…

Easy for you to say! But I have to deal with me on an everyday basis!

I’m a she.

I thought so - You have soft edges…

I guessed you are a well-studied Orthodox gentleman but please don’t be offended if I’m wrong.

I am an ex-atheist whom God directed into Orthodoxy… I studied Philosophy when I was a kid… And Greek… These days I am playing catch-up with Christianity… I doubt many of my friends would call me a gentleman… They have, I am sure, more sympathetic terms of endearment…

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Arsenios

*That’s a mitered, bespectacled, bemused, embearded hieromonk…