For a complete treatment of the differences between Orthodox Catholicism and Roman Catholicism / Protestantism, visit our Western Series: Orthodox vs. Western Christianity from this same contributor Irene Polidoulis MD.
In both the East and the West, many terms are used to describe sin, such as: “disobedience,” “separation, falling away or turning away from God,” “apostasy,” “immoral act,” “lawlessness,” “transgression” and others. The Greek word for sin is αμαρτία (hamartia), which is an archery term that means to miss the mark, or bull’s eye. To experience true joy and fulfil our life’s purpose, our goal is to make God the target or focus of our lives. When we are not focused on Him, we miss the mark, and we sin.
For many, especially those in the West, sin is often seen as something we physically say or do that becomes a stain on our record. Forgiveness is often seen as a magic eraser that rubs it out; and righteousness is often seen as a credit in our account when we do good deeds. Some people, both Eastern and Western, sin freely, thinking they can later just wipe out the sin with a confession to restore their status in the eyes of God. But this type of insincere repentance mocks God; and a juridical or legalistic view of sin has no place in Orthodoxy. In Orthodoxy, sin is not like the breaking of a law and God does not behave like a judge in a court room, to impose a penalty analogous to the crime. God does not keep a record of our sins to assign punishment according to their severity. And God does not weigh out our bad deeds against our good deeds on the “scales of justice” to see if we are “good enough” to go to heaven or “bad enough” to go to hell. This is because God hates every type and every magnitude of sin.
Therefore, the Orthodox Church does not tend to use the strict legal categories of “deadly,” and “minor” sins the way Roman Catholicism defines them. In the Orthodox Church, sin is not simply an evil act, something we do, but a condition of the soul, a state of being, where at the deepest level, we turn away from God and resist His love. By the time the evil act has been committed as a physical deed by the body, the soul has already sinned by opposing God’s will, has already resisted the virtues of humility and God’s love, has already resisted loving and forgiving its enemies, has already adopted pride to raise itself above God and above its neighbour, to put itself first, because it has already departed from God and committed evil in its nous as thoughts, and in its heart as desires, well before the body acts out the deed that brings to light the sinful condition of the soul.
In his book, “Surprised by Christ, My Journey from Judaism to Orthodox Christianity,” the late Reverend Bernstein explains the Orthodox view of sin as follows:
Because God is virtue – Love and Humility, sin is the absence of the virtues of love and humility. It is much deeper than breaking a rule or failing to meet a moral standard. Sin is the denial of Love and Life itself. Since God is both Love and Life, sin is a rejection of God and a turning away from Him; it is a spiritual sickness that reaches even into the flesh, causing it to sicken and die.
Sin is failure to recognize that God, who is Life, is Love and Communion. When we deny the existence of God, ignore God, or trivialize God as irrelevant or unimportant, we reject communion with God, and we cut ourselves off from His grace to live autonomous, self-sufficient lives without Him or contrary to His will. In this sense, sin is obsessive self-love. Instead of relying on God’s guidance, or even considering God, we depend only on ourselves – our judgment, our reason, and our desires. The prodigal son’s departure from his father’s house illustrates this movement away from communion. The pursuit of absolute individual autonomy away from God is sin, indeed the “original sin,” because the first humans were the first to seek independence from God and His grace.
Sin not only denies God but also denies the image of God in us. Our soul that was made in the image of God, was created by the breath of God, which is the Holy Spirit, and this connection with God’s uncreated energy makes our soul inseparable from God. Our soul cannot live without God any more than our body can survive without blood. Without blood there is no physical life and without God there is no spiritual Life. (Paraphrased from Rev. A. James Bernstein’s book, Surprised by Christ)
Our soul, which God made “in His image according to His likeness” (Genesis 1:26), with a nous (intelligence), a conscience (the voice of God), and free will, is a very noble creation that reflects God’s majesty. We are meant to use these powers of the soul to willingly progress ourselves from God’s image towards the likeness of God, in love and humility, until we have reached Theosis, which is ultimate union and communion with God. Few people – the Lord’s holy Mother is one example – reach Theosis in this life; but if we die while still struggling to imitate God, He will complete the process for us in the afterlife. Because God is infinite and eternal, our Theosis, our progressive transformation in virtue to reflect the character and image of the Lord, will also be infinite and eternal, taking us from grace to grace and from glory to glory. St. Paul said, “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor. 3:18).
Therefore, to quote St. Nicodemus, “it is a great injustice to waste the wealth of God’s divine gifts that adorn our soul by despising its nobility through sin and mortally wounding it by the passions.” When we sin, we depart in our soul from God. We turn away from Him and no longer face Him as our target. We break communion with Him, becoming unreceptive to His grace. Pride, the opposite of humility, makes us stop listening to our conscience and leads us further along the path of apostasy and deeper into sin. The soul darkens and does not turn towards good, but towards evil. Left unchecked, the sinful inclination takes the reigning position in the soul and becomes its spiritual disease. Instead of becoming free and joyful servants of God, we become despairing “slaves to sin” (John 8:34).
God hates sin – not because we have “angered” or “insulted” Him or “offended His honour” – not because of what sin does to Him, but because of what sin does to us. Our sin does not affect God in any way. It becomes our self-destructive, self-perpetuating spiritual illness that distorts the whole human being and his energies. It corrupts the image of God in us and diminishes His likeness in us by distorting our understanding of the world and by distracting us from becoming deified in communion with God. Habitual sin leads us towards hell.
If anyone should be angered by sin, it should be us. This is why God gave us anger – not to use against one another, whom we should only love, but against temptation and sin; to recognize what these things do to us and to fight them with every ounce of our powers, every attribute of God, in our soul. This is what Jesus meant by, “the violent take [the Kingdom of Heaven] by force” (Matthew 11:12). He did not mean physical violence, but the spiritual violence of a purposeful Christianity: the intense exertion of our will, enjoined to the vigilance of our nous, so that with zeal and determination we may resist every temptation and eagerly embrace every opportunity to love God and our neighbour. And so, to summarize what sin is, sinfulness is much more than slipping up; it is a spiritual affliction, a damaged relationship with God or neighbour.
What is the remedy for sin? Consider someone who eats poorly, smokes, avoids exercise, and eventually becomes physically ill. The doctors in the hospital do not judge or punish that person for their illness because of the bad lifestyle choices they made. They treat and educate them back to health. Similarly, Orthodoxy understands sin as a spiritual disease, and the Church as the spiritual hospital that restores the image of God within us and puts it back on track along the path of Theosis. When some people complain that the Church is full of gossips, hypocrites, and other sinners, it’s like complaining that the hospital is full of sick people. Just as one finds different types and degrees of illness in a hospital, so one finds people in a church at different stages of their spiritual growth and maturity. Just like we all get physically ill at some point, all of us sin at some point. Just as we should try helping one another in physical sickness, we should also help, and not condemn, one another when someone amongst us sins. St. Paul tells us, to “carry each other’s burdens” and “if someone is caught in a sin, [to] restore that person gently, but [to] watch [our]selves or [we] also may be tempted” (Gal. 6:1-2). We are all vulnerable and we are all sinners. The more we sin, the more we belong in the spiritual hospital, which is the Church. As Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:31-32).
But the Church cannot help us if we do not realize that we have been traveling in the wrong direction; if we do not turn back around and once again make God our target; if we do not face spiritually homeward, like the prodigal son, and return to our Heavenly Father. This turning around, from however far we have traveled, and returning to God is called repentance.
This means that forgiveness in Orthodoxy, is far more than God’s pardon for failing to keep the Law. When God sees that we have indeed turned around and taken a step towards Him, He does more than wipe out our sins. Like the Father of the prodigal son, He runs towards us to embraces us with His Love. He covers our rags with the “best robe,” which is the wedding garment, and He holds a wedding banquet for us in His house, which is the Heavenly Kingdom, where everyone there rejoices at our return. And although we may return to Him as a slave, He re-establishes our relationship to Him as sons and daughters. This relationship is healed because He draws us back into communion with Him. Forgiveness in the Orthodox Church is like the return of the Prodigal son. First illumination (repentance), then purification (forgiveness), and ultimately transformation (the Christian way of life) of the very essence of our being. Forgiveness is therapeutic because it heals the image of God in our soul, it strengthens the powers of our soul, and it removes sin from our lives.
Unlike the Roman Catholic Western view that the excess grace of the Virgin Mary and all the Saints can legalistically make up for or cancel out our sins; in Orthodoxy, only the Cross and the Blood of Christ the Redeemer, can overcome our sins. After the illumination of repentance, God heals and purifies our soul from the wounds of sin through the Holy Mysteries of Holy Confession and Holy Communion. Following Baptism, these Mysteries or Sacraments are the greatest saving benefit of God towards Man. Then, as we continue to live a liturgical and sacramental life in the Church, which is the Ark of Salvation, our transformation to Theosis continues.
What is God doing when we turn away and distance ourselves from Him? We know from the parable of the Prodigal Son, that God the Father, does not interfere with our freedom to leave Him, but is longsuffering and waits for our return. We also know that after we have turned our back to God, He confronts us. It’s as if He comes right around to face us and look us in the eye, as if to say, hey, remember Me? We know this is true because our conscience pricks us. We also have scriptural evidence of this in Genesis. When Adam and Eve’s conscience pricked them for eating the forbidden fruit, they hid from God. But what did God do? He went looking for them and He confronted them to bring them to repentance. He does the same to us in our conscience. What if we have strayed so far away that we have gotten lost, or stuck in a thorny bush, or trapped amidst rocks and boulders, and now we are too frail or exhausted to help ourselves? Then, Christ, the Good Shepherd, “leaves the ninety-nine sheep” (Matt. 18:12-14; Luke 15:3-7) and searches until He finds us. He places us on His shoulders, and He returns us to the Sheepfold, which is the Church. There, He heals our sins, our spiritual wounds, through the Life and Sacraments of His Church.
The Orthodox Church avoids categorizing sins because even the New Testament does not categorize them. Jesus condemned all sin when He said, “Whoever commits sin is a slave to sin” (John 8:34). St. John the Evangelist wrote, “Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4). The Church does recognize, however, that some sins can be more severe than others. For instance, just like a “minor” cold is different from double pneumonia, a “minor” angry thought is different from carrying out major malicious harm, like murder; but this does not mean that “minor” sins should be disregarded. If a minor cold is ignored, it can eventually lead to double pneumonia and death. Similarly, “minor” faults, if ignored can eventually lead a person into deeper spiritual illness and spiritual death. For this reason, in His Sermon on the Mount, the Lord said, “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment.’ But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca!’ shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of hell fire” (Matthew 5:21-22). In his Epistle, St. John the theologian explains the Lord’s words this way: “Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him” (1 John 3:15).
As we mentioned earlier, sin is not simply the final act. To reach that point, sin first originates in the hidden depths of the spiritual heart, where internal hatred, contempt, and anger are spiritual equivalents to physical murder; just like lust is the spiritual equivalent to fornication or adultery. It also shows the progression of passion, from unrighteous anger (as in being “angry with one’s brother without a cause”), to verbal contempt (as in “Raca” which means empty or worthless), to total dehumanization (as in “You fool”). This is how a “small” seed of resentment grows into spiritual ruin and hell fire. The Pharisees focused only on legalism, on the outward prohibition of physical homicide; but Christ revealed that God looks at the inner condition of the heart, the disposition of the soul. God requires a righteousness that purifies the inner man. Christ’s teachings do not just regulate external behaviour; they heal the internal source of evil.
Therefore, for healing of the soul to take place, any degree of sin or spiritual sickness needs immediate attention in the form of repentance and the Sacrament of Holy Confession; just like a “minor” cold needs immediate attention to resolve without developing into something more serious. The sooner we attend to “minor” physical ailments, and “minor” sins, the better.
And for this reason, the Orthodox Church avoids absolute, legalistic categories of sins; but also, to prevent people from becoming lax or complacent about so-called “minor” sins, which eventually can and do become spiritually “deadly” if we ignore them. The pastoral and Traditional Orthodox view is that every unrepented sin separates the soul from God; and every type of sin causes spiritual illness, which is a wounded relationship with God and our fellow human beings.
Despite this truth, some post-Byzantine theologians, influenced by Latin terminology, started differentiating between “graver” sins and “lighter” transgressions, even though all types and all levels of sin are spiritually damaging. For this reason, let us examine these, not to categorize them, but to better understand and identify them when they tempt us. Most sins, both “grave” sins and “lighter” sins, can be divided into three categories:
Caegory 1 – Sins of the Devil:
Pride – η υπερηφάνεια – corresponds to Humility (ταπείνωση)
Anger/Wrath – η οργή – correspond to Patience/Longsuffering (υπομονή/μακροθυμία)
- Anger comes from pride
Category 2 – Sins of the Flesh:
Envy/Hatred/Murder – ο φθόνος – correspond to Love (αγάπη)
Sexual Sins – Lust/Fornication/Adultery – η πορνεία – correspond to Chastity (αγνότης)
Gluttony – η γαστριμαργία – corresponds to Fasting (νηστεία)
Category 3 – Sins of the World/Materialism
Apathy/Negligence/Sloth – η ακηδία/αμέλεια – correspond to Prayer (προσευχή)
Greed/Avarice – η φιλαργυρία/πλεονεξία – correspond to Almsgiving (ελεημοσύνη)
This is not an exhaustive list, but it is through these main categories that the three great enemies of the soul wage war against us. The flesh flatters and provokes us to commit fornication, gluttony, and negligence. The world draws us toward avarice and greed for material things. And the devil casts upon us pride, the root of anger and envy, so that, if we are not watchful, we may come to resemble him in all things. St. John the Evangelist wisely tells us, “For all that is in the world – the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life – is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:16-17).
In addition, there are four other important sins that are worth mentioning. These include Heresy, Apostasy, Blasphemy and Suicide.
Heresy is a teaching or a belief that directly contradicts God’s revealed Truth in Holy Scripture, Holy Tradition and the established Dogmas of the Church. Heresy alters the true understanding of God, Jesus Christ and the path to salvation. It is also a turning away from the Apostolic faith that was passed down through the Holy Scriptures, the Church Fathers and the Ecumenical Councils. A Heretic is not someone who believes something wrong out of ignorance or because of having been misled. It is someone who knowingly and stubbornly clings to false teachings even after correction or admonition from the Church.
Apostasy comes from the Greek word, αποστασία (apostasia), which means to distance oneself by “falling away” from the faith. The term Apostasy is more than doubting or struggling with a single teaching. It is a complete rejection of Jesus Christ and His saving power after Baptism and a willful turning away from Christ and His Church.
Blasphemy is the act of showing extreme contempt, disrespect, or slander against God, the Holy Spirit, the Saints, or sacred things. This includes uttering words of hatred, defiance, or speaking ill of God and holy matters. The Holy Fathers view blasphemy as a total spiritual evil that originates from a disordered will rather than external hardships. For example, casual or accidental slips of the tongue, spoken in sudden pain, anger or ignorance, but followed by immediate remorse, are treated as weaknesses, or sins of frailty rather than a hardened state of blasphemy, by someone who truly hates or despises God – someone like Satan.
The unforgivable sin in Orthodoxy is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. This “grievous” sin is the deliberate and conscious act of attributing the clear, visible works of God to the Devil. For example, when the Pharisees saw Jesus casting out demons by the Holy Spirit, they accused Him of doing so by the power of Satan. This sin is unforgivable, not because God lacks the power or willingness to forgive, but because the sin itself, creates a permanent hardness of heart, like that of a hardened criminal. A person, or spirit (such as the Devil), who demonizes God’s grace, including His forgiving grace, completely shuts themselves off from repentance, making it impossible for them to seek or accept forgiveness. If an individual fears they have committed this sin and feels genuine remorse, it proves they have not committed it because their heart is still open to repentance.
Suicide is the intentional causing of one’s own physical death through a decisive act. Since life is considered a sacred gift from God, suicide is viewed as a rejection of that gift. Humans are seen as stewards, not absolute owners, of their bodies, which are temples of the Holy Spirit. Suicide is also a violation of the sixth commandment, “You shall not kill” and it results from a breakdown of hope and trust in God’s providence and love. In the past, all suicides were regarded as a “grievous” sin, but the modern Orthodox pastoral practice recognizes that severe mental illness can significantly impair a person’s free will, rational judgment, and accountability. As a result, today’s clergy evaluate individual circumstances with pastoral discretion, offering memorial prayers and Christian burial rites for those whose capacity to choose freely was compromised.
In my 40 years or so of medical practice, I have observed that there is a notable difference between severely mentally ill people, even those with Schizophrenia, who are faithful to God and those who are not. The ones who are faithful, generally do much better, are less prone to problems like alcohol or drug addiction, and are also less prone to suicide. My own personal explanation for this is that pure mental illness is neurological and affects the physical brain, rather than the spiritual soul. And for this, there is medication. However, if the soul is also affected, with unconfessed emotional burdens or sins, like deep-seated anger, pride, or unforgiveness, the spiritual illness of the soul can occasionally mimic, aggravate, or overlap with the mental illness. In these cases, both types of illnesses, the spiritual and the neurological, need attention and healing.
Now, what about the so-called “pardonable” or “minor” sins? To describe these, I will paraphrase a quote from the Monastic Elder Marcellos of blessed memory:
“Minor” sins typically refer to those that we habitually commit, often involuntarily, because of ignorance or a weakness of our will. For this reason, they often go unnoticed and pollute our soul without us realizing it. For instance, without thinking much about it, we lie. We even justify the lie as being a “white” lie because it was meant for a “good” cause. For the slightest reason we are irritable, impatient or angry. We envy and we grieve others for the smallest things. We frequently argue and criticize without realizing it. We fill our stomachs as much as we want and eat more than we should. We adorn and dress ourselves according to the habits of the secular world, trying to look attractive and not realizing that we may be scandalizing others or leading them into temptation. We do not go to church regularly and we pray with great apathy. We gossip or engage in idle talk, and the list goes on. Most commonly, we sin with our mind, by engaging with evil and impure thoughts that bring about sins of the heart. If the mind does not know how to pay attention to evil thoughts and block them, who can count from morning to night how many evil thoughts have caused his soul to sin? As the Proverbs say, an evil thought is an abomination to the Lord (Prov. 15); In the Wisdom of Solomon, too, we read that evil thoughts separate us from the love of God (W of Sol.1).
It might encourage us to know that even the greatest saints have struggled with these types of so called “minor” sins, because they are due to our fallen human condition; but if we are proactive, with vigilance of soul, daily prayer, fasting and general confession, they are cleansed. However, if we don’t take any measures, these so called “small” sins become like leeches that gradually suck out and reduce the soul’s spiritual strength. These sins deprive the soul of piety without us realizing it. They wither away devotion and repentance. They create a spiritual lethargy and laxness, a lot like a single virus particle that infects us and then multiplies, and before we know it, we are bedridden.
Similarly, “minor” sins deprive the soul of its powers by polluting and weakening the image of God in us. They dim the nous, they dull the conscience and they weaken the will. How can we prevent evil thoughts from developing into sin? St. Nicodemus again helps us by explaining the development of sin in eight progressive steps, all of which took place in our first parents at the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
- First, the Devil attacks/επίθεση the mind or νους with an evil thought.
- Then, the mind considers/θεωρεί the evil thought.
Sin begins/αμαρτία αρχίζει when:
- The heart accepts or consents/δέχεται to the evil thought.
- We then perform or act out/πράττουμε the evil thought with our body.
- As we continue to act out the evil thought, the sin becomes a habit/συνήθεια
- The habit eventually becomes a lifestyle/τρόπου ζωής
- We then begin to despair/απελπιζόμαστε at our worsening situation, until eventually,
- We begin to feel Hell/κόλασης and loss/απώλεια
After the Devil attacks us with an evil thought, which is step one, if we are practising vigilance, we can immediately recognize it to block it or to shoot it down when we find ourselves considering it at step two. If we progress to step three by accepting or consenting to the evil thought, then we have begun to sin. Thankfully, we have prayers that are powerful anti-missile defense systems that shoot down demonic attacks and prevent them from lodging in our heart and developing into sin. These include the Jesus’s prayer, “Lord, Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner,” and the prayer, “Most Holy Theotokos save me.” Unceasingly praying the Jesus prayer can even prevent step one, the evil attack. Confessing repetitive evil thoughts in the Holy Sacrament also helps us get rid of them.
The longer “minor” sins remain in the soul, unaddressed and unrepented, the more they weaken the soul’s good habits and pollute its purity of virtue and its fragrance of Divine Grace. When the soul becomes unclean, the Holy Spirit cannot rest or dwell there. This hinders the soul from progressing towards the perfection of God’s likeness and Theosis. Not only will the soul not progress, but the build-up of unrepented, unconfessed “minor” sins can even cause the soul to spiritually regress to the so-called “deadly” sins. St. Nicodemus wonderfully analyzes this process:
It seems a small thing for you to admire a handsome face but now measure the sins that are born from it. For that intent admiration has often given birth to an offense of the mind. The offense gives birth to voluptuous imaginings. The imaginings give birth to consent, and the consent to the deed. The deed gives birth to habit. The habit to need. The need to despair. The despair to hell.
We are greatly mistaken if we think that only “deadly” sins and not “minor” sins are to be feared. Some say that the “deadly” sins cause hell, but “minor” sins also cause hell. Unrepented sinners do not all receive the same hell. There are different kinds of hell and different degrees of hell. Therefore, we must constantly purify our soul from all types of sin, because they all equally prevent us from inheriting the kingdom of heaven. In the words of St. Paul: “Do not be deceived, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites (all “greater” sins), nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners (all “lesser” sins), will inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 6:9-10).
Elder Marcellos of blessed memory also compared “deadly” sins to rocks and “minor” sins to sand. If we put large rocks into a small boat, it sinks in the sea; but if we fill the boat with fine sand instead, it still sinks in the sea. In fact, the “minor” sins can be even more dangerous than the “deadly” ones because, a “deadly” sin will cause us greater remorse and a quicker repentance and confession. If we do not take the same care to correct the “smaller” sins, before long, they will develop into “grievous” sins. This is because sin is like leaven or yeast. “A little leaven,” said St. Paul, “leavens the whole lump” (Gal. 5:9). A little bit of yeast changes the entire batch of dough by working its way through it. In other words, when a sin, however small, enters any aspect of the soul, it immediately spreads and the entire soul becomes polluted.
Saint Gregory Palamas also confirms that “when evil is created within … [the soul] is completely contaminated and all the powers [of the soul] participate in the contamination of one power, because the soul is one.” Therefore, in the Songs of Solomon, the Holy Spirit commands us to “Catch…the [little] foxes [the so-called “small” sins] that spoil the vineyard, [and to kill them] for our vines are in bloom” (Songs 2:15). It does not say to hunt the big, wild boar that tramples upon and fully decimates God’s vineyard, but the sneaky spirits of wickedness, the little foxes, that eat the flowers and destroy the fruitfulness of the grapes, meaning the blossoms of a virtuous life. The foxes seem small. “Pardonable” or “minor” sins also seem “small,” but they spoil the vineyard of the soul by consuming the potential fruit of its virtues.
In conclusion, the best path forward for any Christian, is not to differentiate between “smaller” sins and “grievous” sins, but to treat all manner and all magnitude of sins the same way. Prayer and fasting deter us from sin, while repentance, together with the Holy Sacraments of Holy Confession and Holy Communion forgive us, heal us, and strengthen us against sin and sinfulness. If we repent and confess to our spiritual father, God in His goodness, will blot out our sin. He promised to do this when He said, “I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions, and I will not remember them” (Isaiah 43:25). And then, we can raise that voice of thanksgiving of David, who said, “I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart…I will be glad and exult in You; I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.” (Psalm 9:1-2). And finally, after we have progressed along the path of perfection through the Holy Sacraments, may we hear from Christ, our Bridegroom, the words, “You are altogether beautiful, and there is no blemish in you” (Songs 4:7). Amen!
Elder Marcellos’ (abridged) Prayer for “Minor” sins:
O God of all blessing and supplication, each day my soul is polluted by impure thoughts that enter unnoticed because they seem “small.” Just as one drop of poison poured into clear water pollutes the whole cup, so even the smallest impurity wounds my soul. Therefore, look upon my sinful soul and grant me the constant remembrance of death, sincere repentance, and a vigilant mind, that I may come to sobriety and keep my soul and my body as pure as I am able.
My sins are very many, O Lord; they are like the sand of the sea. I cannot even number the sinful thoughts of a single day. Because of them, the powers of my soul grow weak, my prayer is interrupted, and the remembrance and love of God are diminished within me.
My mind wanders and struggles to descend into the depths of my heart, where it may pray without ceasing. Deliver me, O Lord, from this restless agitation. Upon the garment of my soul, passionate thoughts fall each day like dark stains. My soul loses its purity and is ashamed of its disorder. My mind sees this, and my soul grieves, for it loses its boldness in prayer. The Holy Spirit is grieved and does not find rest within me. O Lord, do not allow me to become an example of shame on the day of judgment.
Heal my sinful soul, O Lord. Pour out, pour out Your mercy, upon my broken soul. Make it pleasing to You and let Your Holy Spirit cover it like a spiritual garment, so that it may not feel or receive any insult from the demons, nor give consent to their temptations. The greatest rest of my soul is the Holy Spirit, and its greatest adornment is His divine gifts. Great will be the shame of my soul on the day of judgment, when my conscience will rebuke it without mercy, because through my lack of struggle and attention, its garment will appear stained by sinful thoughts. O Lord, heal the desires of my thoughts, and make me worthy each day to struggle with greater care. May my soul feel deeply the grace and peace of the Holy Spirit, that I may unceasingly glorify Your Holy Name.
Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, and the intercessions of our Most Pure and Holy Theotokos, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us. Amen!
