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Winter, 2003
 
FROM HIS GRACE:FROM HIS GRACE:
 Penance--healing 
“Behold, my child, Christ standeth here invis-ibly and receiveth thy confession: wherefore, benot ashamed, neither be afraid, and concealthou nothing from me: but tell me, doubtingnot, all things which thou hast done: and soshalt thou have pardon from our Lord JesusChrist. Lo, His holy Icon is before us: and I am but a witness, bearing testimony before Him of all things which thou dost say to me. But if thou shalt conceal anythingfrom me, thou shalt have a greater sin. Take heed, therefore, lest, havingcome to the hospital, thou depart unhealed.”T
he exhortation above, extracted from the full of-fice of Confession, is customarily read by a Priest whois standing in the Church before the Icon of Christ, “Not-Made-by-Hands,” as the office requires, with an Or-thodox Christian making his confession. [A New Mar-tyr, the Priest Valentin Svetsitsky, one of the membersof the Religious Philosophical Society in St. Peters- burg in old Imperial Russia (along with other leadersof the so-called Russian Religious Renaissance, suchas Sergius Bulgakov, N. Berdiaev, etc.) stressed, in hislong publication against so-called General Confessionin 1929, that the office requires, and even states, thatthe Priest leads one person, and
not
more than one, be-fore the Icon before beginning Confession.] In the so-called Living Church, the above introductory exhorta-tion fell into desuetude, as did Confession itself. It is awonderful exhortation. It answers many questions aboutConfession, including the ones raised by those who at-tempt to excuse their avoidance of Confession by ref-erence to the identity of the Priest. It cannot be over-emphasized that Confession is to God. Many who avoidConfession like to state that they don’t “need” to con-fess to the Priest because they confess to God! Thisexhortation (and a Priest who does not avail himself of it, it seems to me, is rather foolish, to do so) very clearlyexplains that it is in the Mystery of Penance, in Con-fession in Church, that we do confess to God, and thatthe Priest is only God’s witness to the confession. ThePriest witnesses both that the penitent is obeying theScriptures, which clearly state, “Confess ye your sinsone to another” and that it is, in fact, God Who hearssuch Confession.I feel another aspect of this exhortation is also ex-tremely important. In the last few decades of the lastcentury, a brilliant Greek Orthodox Priest, Father Hierotheos Vlachos, gathered around himself a smallgroup of Orthodox people, parishioners and others fromvarious walks of life, not so different from the “Reli-gious Philosophical Society” at the beginning of thatcentury, and discussed together with them importantissues of Christian life, of what is called in Scriptures,the Way. The insights which he and these people weregiven by Grace burst the bonds of the small group andthe Priest wrote several books on those insights. (Oneof them is called “Orthodox Psychotherapy”!) Their insight was this: the activity that began in the 19th cen-tury that developed into modern psychotherapy and thatinforms modern psychiatry, that is, healing those withtroubled or sick souls (the “psyche” in psychiatry, psy-chology, psychotherapy means “soul.”), is nothing new:the Orthodox Church, in fact, what Jesus Christ Him-self does for man, is engaged above all else in that ac-tivity, Healing, or Therapy. Christ came to heal man, to
th
 
O R T H O D O X
 
“. . . the activity that began in the 19thcentury that developed into modern psycho-therapy . . . is nothing new: the Orthodox Church, in fact, what Jesus Christ Himself does for man, is engaged above all else inthat activity.” 
Confession concludes with the so-called ‘absolution’.The present form, used in our Church, allows the Priestto add his own forgiveness and absolution (somethingwe are all required by Scripture to do, not
 just
at con-fession, but “seventy times seven”), right after prayingthat the Lord will forgive the penitent all his sins andoffenses. The Apostle James teaches us (ch.V: 15-16),“And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lordshall raise him up: and if he have committed sins, theyshall be forgiven him. Confess your faults one to an-other, and pray one for another that ye may be healed.”I encourage all to heed the words of the exhortation inthe office of Confession, to review them even at home before going to Church to hear them from the Priest,and I pray that our Great Physician and Therapist, our Lord, God, and Saviour, Jesus Christ will accept our  prayers and heal us of every disease and infirmity; thatis, of our
 sins.
1
The cover shows images from the 2003 Diocesan Assembly held October 6-8 at Holy ResurrectionChurch in Tacoma, Washington. From His Grace Inside Cove Military Service addition2 Interview: Who is Mary Caetta?3The Spiritual Dimension of Vespers4Travel Journal: Orthodoxy in Bombay A Parish School 9 Merry Christmas Forever a story by Sonia Jason13 Editor’s Box 15 St. Paul’s Las Vegas Celebrates 15 Years16  Matushki Retreat 17 2003 Diocese of the West Contributors18Update on Monastery of St. John20 Announcements21
 In This Issue
Volume 9, Number 2
restore him to his original health, and, as so many of thehealing miracles teach us, the healing was co- terminalwith forgiveness of sins.. I encourage the seekers in our diocese who read books to seek out the works of Vlachosin order to benefit from the insights in them. I am writ-ing of him and his work now, because the exhortationwitnesses, rather poignantly to their insights. The lastsentence “Take heed, therefore, lest having come to thehospital thou depart unhealed,” very definitely pointsto this function of not only Penance, but of the Church:hospital, spiritual hospital. Some, most notably Mrs.Hapgood, in one of the earliest translations into Englishof this office, chose to translate “vrachebnitsu” as “phy-sician.” While that is a possibility, I feel it tends to mis-lead, since the person hearing it might very well
misun-derstand
it, and think that the “physician” is none other than the Priest! What an idea! The Physician is JesusChrist, but the word, if translated “hospital, does notmislead anyone.
VISION
W i n t e r , 2 0 0 3
 Eis Polli Eti Despota!
+Bishop Tikhon

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