Father Schmemann strikes again.

Holy Week is really a time for shaking things up. I got back from Holy Friday Matins, already shook up, and as part of the pre-bedtime ritual, sat outside to have my hot chocolate, cigarettes and a bit of a read. It's usually a peaceful, quiet time to wind down and enjoy the last few minutes of the day. And it was last night, too - I could, under the words I read, contemplate what happened in the service (see previous post). Except neither God nor Fr. Alexander had that in mind for me.

One of Fr. Schemann's constant struggles is to be present for confession - other people confessing to him, that is - he feels wholly inadequate to the task, and despairs of people 'getting' it - getting the point of confession, and what its supposed to be. It's tied up for him with the separation of the church from 'the one thing needful'. I don't pretend to understand all that he writes about on this topic, in the journal - I have a feeling there's a lot of it just going right over my head, becuase I don't know the background at all, or the world in which he's inhabiting while he writes this.

Well, I've been struggling with just that myself - what is confession - how do I properly confess? What's the point here? The end result is what, exactly? Added to that was a question I'd asked of my old Anglican priest, a whole bunch of years ago - why do we act morally if we believe in Jesus, and if salvation is a gift? Behaving the way God wants us to won't save us - so why? What's the point, if he loves us and accepts us as we are, warts and all. Fr. Michael gave me the answer that I was, at that time, able to accept - to thank God for salvation.

Well, Fr. Alexander, combined with the shaking up of the Matins & Gospel reading, managed to answer that question for me:

In the beginning the sacrament of repentance was totally focused on one thing: on the betrayal of the Church, betrayal of her incarnated and revealed reality. Sin was considered a betrayal of the new life, a fallingout of it. Sin was a rupture, a defection, a betrayual; sanctity was understood not as a moral perfection, but as an ontological faithfulness to Christ and His Kingdom. The moral teaching of the Church is eschatological, not ethical. For Christians, the essence of sin is the betrayal of Christ, the falling away from Him and the Church. So the sacrament of repentance is a return, through repentance, confession and regret, to the new life, already given, already revealed.

Now I get it! Now I know what I have to look for when I do my examination of conscience, and figure out where I've gone wrong - it's not just listing how I hurt people, or nasty things I thought or did, or how little time I spent in prayer or Bible reading! It's where did I leave Jesus? Where did I betray Him? Where, instead of crouching at his feet and pouring ointment over them and weeping, did I steal off and accept 30 peices of silver to give him a kiss and nail him to the cross? The Thursday hymns contrast the harlots behaviour with Judas' for a good reason - if we aren't doing the one, pouring the ointment on him and wiping it off with our hair and weeping, then we're doing the other - us, not Judas, not the harlot - we, the people standing in church singing the hymns, listening to the prayers and saying "Lord, have mercy!"

I'm really rather fascinated to see what the rest of Holy Week is going to be like.