The Penitential Canon of the Lord Jesus Christ - teacher of repentance

Orthodoxy is a joyful faith. It does not prescribe a grief, a serious facial expression or something like that. On the contrary, it is believed that even repentance should be joyful.

What is repentance and how to implement it, is often completely incomprehensible to a modern person. Unfortunately, now a superficial attitude to the world and to the state of one's soul is cultivated, self-analysis is not recommended, and guilt is considered destructive.

When the Orthodox repent, the penitential canon is often used for the Lord Jesus Christ. The main purpose of reading is the canon - to remind ourselves of the true meaning of earthly values, to realize the transience of the world and time.

The canon is a church form of prayer. Many believe that the main thing in prayer is content, and form is superfluous. It's kind of right. Indeed, if the penitential canon of the Lord Jesus Christ or any other prayer is read inattentively, a person will not benefit. Prayer is not a spell, it does not work outside the will of man, its main goal is to facilitate for a person communication with an incomprehensible God.

You can draw an analogy with a declaration of love. In recognition, the main thing is content. But if a young man does not know which words to pick up and how to start, he risks frightening the girl with strange words. Very helpful poetic lines close to him. So in prayer: content is more important than form, the latter is only help. But will everyone be able to fully express his thoughts about sin and his soul as holy fathers? The penitential canon of the Lord Jesus Christ makes it possible to put vague movements of the heart into words, to think over your life to the smallest detail, to find in oneself vices that you did not notice before.

Each ecclesiastical form of prayer - and there are a few more - is built according to certain rules. For example, any canon, and a canon penitential to the Lord Jesus Christ Including, consists of eight songs. And according to the numbering of songs nine, but the second is always skipped. Each song consists actually of a song and of several verses, which alternate with the refrain established for this canon. In the penitential canon it is necessary to repeat: "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner."

Repentance must be possessed by man almost constantly, but especially over this topic one must work before confession.

The daily canon of penitence to our Lord Jesus Christ is a wonderful practice of preparing for confession. In this case, the canon is read at discretion, once before the communion it is mandatory.

The penitential canon of the Lord Jesus Christ was written many centuries ago, but now it is still relevant. Thoughtful reading of the entire canon takes about 20 minutes. The canon itself is published in both Russian and Church Slavonic. You can read it and so and so, the result does not depend on it.

Prayer work is one of the most difficult. It seems that speaking out loud or to yourself of some words can not give satisfaction to desires, that this is just a self-suggestion, a waste of time. However, even if this is so, the thoughts that are set forth in the canon will be very useful to any thoughtful person.

Orthodox canons are read at any time of the day, alone or aloud, with a group of worshipers.