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We are approaching a beautiful time of repentance set aside for us in the life of the Orthodox Church.  Already the Church is priming us with the beautiful Sunday’s of preparation… Zacchaeus’ generous repentance and ammends to those he had wronged , the humility of the tax collector, the coming to his senses of the Prodigal Son.   All of this is but a little leaven softening the lump of our hearts.  Great Lent is my favorite season of the Church – but I know I say that about all of the seasons set aside in the Church – I guess they all are my favorite, really.

As a parent, I have tried to explain this word repentance to my daughters. I want them so comfortable with it that they could cuddle up with it like a blanket. I want them to nestle in the Truth of Faith and embrace the timeless wisdom and Grace of the Church and live their lives in it rather than to be pulled in so many opposite directions by popular culture.

Over the years, what I have noted is that in today’s relative everything goes world many ears have hardened to this word making it sound more like a punishment than a healing holistic way.

Upon those ears, repentance looks more like an angry wagging finger rather than an inviting outstretched Hand.

Why do I need repentance?   Most often we need it because life happens. We get mired in the muck of it and the muck of it gets all over us.  The muck of life getting in your eyes and mouth and skin absorbs into you.  It’s toxic.  But it’s always the muck of life, because we also make bad decisions which like the Prodigal l lead to a far country, perhaps despair and lousy nourishment – that depletes rather than restores us.

And so the Church guides us gently into Repentance.  The fruit of repentance is a heart returning to innocence – something like that of a child.  Another helpful explanation I have heard is that it is a cure or return to wholeness. A monk, older than me, once told me that after years of not seeing a childhood friend who had entered Orthodox monasticism he made the journey to visit her and saw in her all of the qualities of innocence he remembered from when they were children together and this for me is now the image of repentance.

I suppose that’s why monastics also say that repentance is gift and but also our task.  It’s a heart given entirely over to Christ.  It is a life long struggle.

Faith like a child, love like a child, forgiveness and innocence like a child. I want that – I need that. don’t you?