Early Church Fathers on Repentance and Confession of Sins

Even though some of those who became worthy of the aureole of suffering excelled, during their earthly lives, in one or another virtue, all of them, without exception, embraced repentance. The greatest saints are those who repented and lived in humility. The cleanest souls felt even more the need to repent. Throughout this book, we do not intend to introduce a simplified propaedeutic to how to work repentance, but our intention is to guide the reader in the world of profound thinking and intense spiritual living, of thorough understanding and of the logic of faith, as they have been brought forward in the spiritual tradition of the great fathers advanced in virtue since the 1st-4th centuries to the present days. Going through the patristic literature we can conclude that the spiritual life does not consist exclusively in rules and provisions, instead it is a life of communion in love and in God. Every Christian who responds promptly to His love, Christ shapes his image in His image as this is the work love does, to change the one who loved to the image of the one who is loved.

Autorentext

Fr. Liviu Petcu is a Ph.D. Researcher at the Department of Research at the "Dumitru St niloae" Faculty of Orthodox Theology inside the "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" University in Iasi, Romania. Ph.D. in Orthodox Theology and Ph.D. in Philosophy, he has published five books and over ninety research articles in scientific journals in Romania and abroad.