{"id":7826,"date":"2020-02-04T12:06:42","date_gmt":"2020-02-04T17:06:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/?p=7826"},"modified":"2020-02-01T08:08:42","modified_gmt":"2020-02-01T13:08:42","slug":"elder-st-porphyrios-on-inexperience-in-confession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/?p=7826","title":{"rendered":"Elder St Porphyrios on Inexperience in Confession"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201c..when I first started to hear confessions I use to really \u2018scald\u2019 those who came to make confession.\u00a0 I used to have a my side St Nikodemos\u2019s Confessor\u2019s Guide* when someone would come for confession. If he confessed a serious sin then I would look up the book and would see that it wrote: \u2018Not to receive Holy Communion for eighteen years.\u2019 I didn\u2019t know; I was inexperienced. And so I imposed the corresponding penance. Whatever the book said was law. But then the people would come back the following year \u2014 they would come from various places, from various villages, from far and near \u2014 and when I asked them,\u2018How long is it since you made confession?\u2019 they would answer,\u2018I confessed to you this time last year.\u2019 Then I would ask,\u2018And what did I tell you?\u2019<\/p>\n

They would reply, \u2018You told me to do a hundred prostrations every night.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018And did you do them?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018No.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Why not?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Well, you told me that I couldn\u2019t receive Communion for eighteen years so I thought to myself, \u201cSince I\u2019m damned anyway, I might as well forget about the whole thing.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

You understand? Then another person would come and say the same thing. So I thought,\u2018What do I do now?\u2019 It was then I began to become a little wiser\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013 \u2018Wounded by Love\u2019<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201c..when I first started to hear confessions I use to really \u2018scald\u2019 those who came to make confession.\u00a0 I used to have a my side St Nikodemos\u2019s Confessor\u2019s Guide* when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-modern-orthodox-elders","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7826"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7828,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7826\/revisions\/7828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}