Vigils Reading

TRUE REPENTANCE

From a sermon by St Ambrose3

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Behold now is the appointed time, in which you must confess your sins to

God, and to the priest; and by prayer and by fasting, by tears and by almsgiving,

wipe them away. Why should sinners be ashamed to make known their sins,

since they are already known and manifest to God, and to the angels, and even

to the blessed in heaven? Confession delivers the soul from death. Confession

opens the door to heaven. Confession brings us hope of salvation. Because of

this the Scripture says through Isaiah: “First tell your iniquities, that you may

be justified.” Here we are shown that they will not be saved who, during their

life, do not confess their sins. Neither will that confession deliver you which is

made without true repentance. For true repentance is grief of heart and sorrow

of soul because of the evils one has committed. True repentance causes us to

grieve over them with the firm intention of never committing them again.

And even though every day we live may rightly be a day of repentance, yet

is it in these days more appropriate to confess our sins, to fast, and to give alms

to the poor, since in these days you may wash clean the sins of the whole year.

Therefore I counsel all of you, and I exhort each one of you to repair whatever

you know within your soul is blameworthy. Whoever among you discerns

within yourself what is unworthy in a Christian, make amends.

What does it mean to give tithes faithfully, but that no one should offer

to God [anything that] is defective or stunted. For of all things which the Lord

bestows on us, a tenth part we reserve to God. So it is not lawful to keep what

is reserved to God. And if you do not give God’s tenth part, God will take nine

parts from you.

Again, if you know in your own heart that you have taken something

unjustly from another, make amends by restoring what you have unjustly taken.

For if you do not render the tenth to God, which is reserved for Him, and

[return] to another what you took from him unjustly, you are a person who no

longer fears God and does not know the meaning of true repentance, or of true

confession of sins.

And you ought to do this, since each person should give to the needy

according to his means; that is, that you who have much should give much and

if you have little ought to give little; as the holy Tobias taught his son: “Give

alms out of your substance, and do not turn away your face from the poor,

that the face of the Lord may not be turned away from you”.

3 From The Sunday Sermons of the Great Fathers, Henry Regnery Co., 1958, pp. 13-15.7