On Passions & Confession

How The Passions are transformed into virtue

Healing the Passions (Part 1)
Study # 6

1. Healing the passions defined
a.) "to cure the passions is mainly to transform them...it is to be expected that with therapeutic treatment we shall change them. (Met. Hierotheos Nafpaktos, Orthodox Psychotherapy: The Science of the Fathers, 1994, Greece.)

b.) Freedom from the passions leads to love:
"A heart which is ruled by passions is incapable of loving." (Met. Hierotheos Nafpaktos, Orthodox Psychotherapy: The Science of the Fathers, 1994, Greece.)

2. Reasons for fleeing the passions (St. Maximus)
a.) Human fear (fear of hell)
b.) Self-Control (to gain Paradise)
c.) Divine Providence (out of love for Christ)
d.) Dorotheos: "...one must not wish the release from passion, ‘in order to escape its torment, but because one truly hates it.'"

3. Healing is a synergy of God and man
a.) Grace of God
b.) Purification of man through the sacramental life
c.) Living in Christ - walking in the Spirit.
d.) The victory is God's: To wage war against sin and passion, the struggle, yes, to continue to fight, to inflict blows is our own work, but to ‘uproot' the passions, to transform them in an essential way, is the work of God." (Met. Hierotheos Nafpaktos, p. 272)

4. The passions are transformed and healed by:
a.) Sensing the love of God - which is communion with His grace
b.) Loving God - which is the fruit of the Holy Spirit
c.) Holy Communion is a medicine of immortality

5. Self-knowledge and the cooperation of the human will
a.) Self-knowledge: ignorance of our illness makes us permanently incurable. 8If we should say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. [1 Jn. 1:8]"

"The Father know...that the symptoms of the passions are not easy to diagnose with accuracy, since we are sick and they have united with our nature. . . As long as the senses are functioning carnally, self-knowledge is impossible. . . Watch out continually for signs of the passions and you will discover that there are many within you. (Met. Hierotheos Nafpaktos, p. 273)

b.) Repentance and Confession-
• The first stage of repentance is knowledge of our sins- a sense of the soul's illness
• Repentance is expressed in Holy Confession

c.) Two stages of Hoy Confession
• First it is made as a prayer to God - leads to contrition, compunction
• Second, to a Spiritual Father/Priest

d.) St. Diadochos on Confession
• Be very watchful lest our conscience ‘deceive itself into believing that the confession which it has made to God is adequate.'

e.) Some passions are not healed immediately after Confession
• A great struggle and much asceticism are required for the souls to be freed from its passions. . .Just as someone who has been ill for many years cannot acquire instant health, so is it not possible to overcome passions- in a quick movement. . . passions formed in practice are also healed with practice. So, constraint and self-control, labors and spiritual struggles offer dispassion.