A Confession of Elder Philotheos Zervakos

 Confession of Elder Philotheos Zervakos from 1908

Found in his files after he fell asleep

I do not love God with all my soul, heart and mind. I don't obey the Lord's commands and I don't keep the promises I gave at Baptism and my tonsure before God, Angels, Saints and those present.

I don't pray and I don't study carefully. In holy Matins and vigils, even during the Divine Liturgy, I attend the Temple without fear, caution and reverence. Many times, I have indecent, lewd, impure and blasphemous thoughts.

I have no true repentance, no mourning or tears. I do not confess plainly and with a broken heart; nor do I feel that my confession is made before the All-Knowing God, Who is omnipresent and knows all, and the thoughts and depths of my heart.

I come to the mystery of Holy Communion unworthily, without proper preparation, without fear of God, faith and love.

I do not love my neighbor as myself.

I have neither love nor due respect for my spiritual father and the abbot of the Monastery. I have not perfect obedience and have not cut off my will.

I am proud, contentious, conceited, self-righteous, self-loving, talkative; I gossip, talk, joke and laugh at silly things, complain, criticize, accuse, lie, slander, get angry, rage and hold grudges.

I have no self-control, patience, meekness, or humility. I'm a glutton, a thief, odd, and unkept.

I sin with all my senses (sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch).

I sin in words and deeds, with my will and without it, with knowledge and ignorance, with my mind and intellect; I am negligent and lazy and for this reason, I often have bad and lewd desires, out of place, vulgar, impure, proud calculations.

For these sins that I confessed, father, before God and before you, and for other innumerable ones that out of forgetfulness or ignorance I failed to confess, I ask God's forgiveness.