TEARS IN THE DESERT

It was said Abba Dioscorus wept continually. His disciple, who lived in a cell nearby, heard his master’s frequent weeping. One day he came to see the old man and asked him, “Father, why are you weeping?" “I weep over my sins," Abba Dioscorus replied. His disciple said, “But Father, you have no sins." The old man answered, “My son, if I were allowed to see the depth of my sins, three or four men would not be enough to weep for them."—from The Sayings of the Desert Fathers

I’ve been hearing confessions for more than thirty years. I’ve listened to a child confess the day before his tenth birthday and forgiven the sins of a woman more than 100 years old. I’ve heard the confessions of bishops and cynics—people on the verge of lapsing into atheism. I’ve sat in the confessional and declared God’s forgiveness to men and women whose spiritual struggles moved even a hardened soul like mine to a sense of same for my sins. On rare occasions I’ve had to send someone out of the confessional without forgiveness, because, whatever the reason they entered, they had no true sorrow for their sins.

I’ve been making my own confessions for more than forty-five years. During that time, I’ve been blessed to have had some excellent confessors, masters of healing and guiding the soul.

One thing I’ve found as a result hearing the confessions of so many and having wise directors listen to my own for all these years is how little we see and how less we understand the hold sin has over us. I’ve sat amazed to hear a man of more than fifty years tell me he hasn’t confessed in a decade and then have him own up to a few occasions of drinking more than he should, feeling a pang of envy over a co-worker given a bonus when he was overlooked and—oh yeah—overeating last Thanksgiving (this isn't a real confession but an fictional example of a great many I've heard).

I myself, on more than one occasion, have bunched several sins at the very end of my confession that I didn’t particularly want to go into detail about, hoping my confessor would pay more attention to my less painful and more obvious sins of arrogance and intellectual pride (it rarely—if ever—worked. When you choose a good confessor, they’re good because they’re wise and experienced and pay attention to the things that actually need attending).

Abba Dioscorus wept for his sins, because he had a genuine sense of them and their impact on his soul. We may think he sounds unhealthily fixated, that he doesn’t grasp what we might nowadays call the “joy of forgiveness.” In our up-to-date version of Christianity and sin, what seems most important is not facing our sins and the damage they do to us, but, in the ludicrous terminology now so widely embraced, that we can “forgive ourselves.”

It’s not that the Abba has a misplaced focus on his sin, but that we’re so eager to blind ourselves to the reality and depth of our sins. If sin is merely a religious faux pas, an infraction against the Common Good of Society, or even a technical offense against religious rules, then Abba Dioscorus is indeed a doddering sentimentalist and we can laugh and clap our hands about our sins, because they’re so easily forgiven by our indulgent grandfather-type God.

But this pabulum version of faith has little to do with real sin, real men and women and nothing at all to do with the God Who Is. Abba weeps because he understands that sin embeds itself into our souls like sharpened fish-hooks in the heart, working deeper and deeper into us unawares. Abba weeps not because he’s a hopeless sinner dangling over the insatiable fires of hell, but because his sin has separated him from the Lover of All. He knows that heartfelt repentance doesn't bend God to mercy, but the sinful soul to love.