Revista Română de Studii Eurasiatice, an XII, nr. 1-2/2016, p.

31-42

“REPENTANCE OF THE HEART, PURE AND TRUE”,

A FUNDAMENTAL TEACHING
IN ANTHIM THE IBERIAN’S WORK

Corneliu-Dragoş Bălan
Faculty of Theology,
“Ovidius” University of Constanţa, Romania;
e-mail: dragos_balan1980@yahoo.com

Abstract.
The hierarch since whose death 300 years have elapsed sees spiritual
blindness as a serious illness which grinds the society, feeling entitled to take
action and sound alarm signals as explicit as possible.
The teaching about repentance permeates most of the sermons and
the teaching words of the great bishop. The power of repentance is precisely
the resurrection of the sinner's dead soul, opening, in heaven, doors that had
been closed by sin. This gift of repentance is great, since it is only for people
that God has ordained it and this is because for angels there can be no
repentance "because good angels can do no wrong and no mistakes and so
they need no repentance"; also for devils one can not speak of repentance
since they "are out of their own will hardened in deceit"; and also for animals
one can not speak of repentance, because "they have no mind, no word, ever
working without mistake as their nature teaches them."And Saint Anthim
insists that God has given only to us, Christians, this great gift, namely
repentance, because although they, too, sin, namely "the Jews, and the Turks,
however repentance is not useful or helpful in any way to them, because they
are outside the law".

Rezumat.
Ierarhul, de la a cărui moarte de împlinesc 300 de ani, vedea în
cecitatea spirituală o boală gravă care macină societatea, simțindu-se
îndreptățit să ia atitudine și să emită semnale de alarmă cât se poate de
explicite. De aceea, învățătura despre pocăință străbate majoritatea predicilor
și cuvintelor de învățătură ale acestuia. Salvarea de păcat nu se poate înfăptui
decât printr-o pocăință sinceră, o pocăință a inimii, o pocăință curată.
Acest dar al pocăinței este mare, de vreme ce numai pentru oameni l-a
 Corneliu-Dragoş Bălan
rânduit Dumnezeu și aceasta deoarece la îngeri nu poate fi vorba de pocăință,
„pentru că îngerii cei buni nici au greșit, nici pot să greșească, drept aceia nici
pocăință le trebue”; de asemenea, nici la diavoli nu se poate vorbi de pocăință
din moment ce ei „dintru a lor voință sunt împietriți în vicleșug”; și, totodată,
nici pentru dobitoace nu poate fi vorba de pocăință, căci „n-au nici minte,
nici cuvânt, ce lucrează pururi făr’ de greșeală precum îi învață firea lor” .

Keywords.
repentance, hierarch, sin, heart, teaching.

“…there ought to be true, not deceitful repentance; pure, not cunning repentance,
repentance of the heart, not of the mouth, because just as there is true gold and false
gold, similarly there is true repentance and deceitful repentance”1. The great
ecclesiastic orator and high hierarch of the Orthodox Church, typographer,
calcographer, miniaturist, caligrapher, painter, sculptor, embroider, architect and
restorer, Saint Anthim the Iberian2 considered the teaching on repentance worth
highlighting in most of his teachings.

1Antim Ivireanul (Anthim the Iberian), Didahii (Didaches), Editura Litera, București-Chișinău,
p. 207.
2Some bibliographic data about Anthim the Iberian: he is born in the year 1660, in Iberia,

old denomination of Georgia; at the age of 16 he is kidnapped and enslaved by the Turks. Freed
from slavery, he learns the art of the printing press in Greek, Turkish and Arabian. Between the
years 1680-1690 is situated the date of Anthim’s arrival in Wallachia, at the request of the
reigning Prince Constantin Brâncoveanu, the latter desiring to benefit of Anthim’s skillfulness
in order to accomplish his cultural plans. On 10 June 1691, he takes over the leadership of the
princely printing press of Bucharest, taking care of it until 1694. Between the years 1684-1701,
he is sent as hegumen of Snagov Monastery. He returns to Bucharest for four years (1701-1705)
prints 15 works, most of them in Greek, but also the New Testament and an Akathist in
Romanian. On 16 March 1705 he is elected bishop of Râmnic, a period during which there
appear, under his careful supervision, most of the cult books: Antologhion (1705), Molitvenic
(1706; 1713), Octoih slavo-român (1706); Octoih (1712), Liturghier (1714), Ceaslov (1715), Catavasier
(1714; 1715). At the beginning of the year 1708 (27 January) the Wallachian Metropolitan
Teodosie dies, and he expresses, by his will, the desire that he may be replaced by the Bishop of
Râmnic, Anthim, which actually happens. “Didahiile” – his best known work – the title being
taken over from Greek and meaning sermons, were uttered by the Metropolitan between the
years 1709-1716, either in Bucharest or in Târgovişte. This work contains 28 sermons on
Sundays and the great celebrations of the Church, to which a number of 7 occasional sermons
can be added. In the year 1715, by the endeavours of the Metropolitan, the Monastery of All the
Saints, today Anthim’s Monastery, is erected, where the great hierarch would have wanted to be
buried. After the martyrdom of the reigning Prince Constantine Brâncoveanu, Ştefan
Cantacuzino followed in his throne, and during this period Metropolitan Antihm shepherds his
flock at ease. When the reigning Prince Nicolae Mavrocordat comes to the throne (1716), the
period of persecution of the Orthodox hierarch begins. “Accused of whichcraft and satanical
32
“Repentance of the heart, pure and true”, a fundamental teaching in Anthim the Iberian’s …
The hierarch, since whose death 300 years have elapsed, saw spiritual
blindness as a serious disease grinding the society, and was feeling entitled to
take action and emit alarm signals as explicit as possible. In a work published
the very year when he is chosen as a Bishop of Râmnic (1705): “Învăţătură pre
scurt pentru taina pocăinţii, acum într-acest chip tocmită și tipărită în zilele prealuminatului
domn Io Constantin Brâncoveanu Basarab Voievod” (Short Teaching on the Mystery

crafts, but also of plotting against the Ottoman ruler and the reigning prince, Anthim the
Iberian is condamned to exile, on Mount Sinai, at Saint Catherine’s Monastery. The ruler
obtains the defrocking and exile of the Metropolitan. Sick of podagra (gout located at the legs,
affecting especially the big toe), with a red cap on his head, he was handed over to an escort,
which, instead of taking him to his destination, slaughtered him near the locality Galipoli and
threw him off a ship, heading for Constantinople, in Tundja River, a tributary of Maritza
(Bulgaria), the most likely on the day of September 12 of the year 1716. This is how at the age
of 56, yet unattained, dies the man who according to the words of his disciple Mihail
Ştefanovici, “taken out of his country and brought in our area, illumined like a valuable pearl,
impossible to estimate in gold, and like a bright ray” – Ibidem, p. 5-6. See also Victor Brătulescu,
240 de ani de la moartea de mucenic a lui Antim Ivireanul. Antim Ivireanul miniaturist şi sculptor (240
Years Since the Martyr’s Death of Anthim the Iberian. Anthin the Iberian, a Miniaturist and a
Sculptor), in rev. “B.O.R.” (The Romanian Orthodox Church), no. 8-9, LXXIV (1956), p. 766-
774.
We shall mention that these biographic data are not completely embraced by all the
historians, some of them having different opinions regardin Anthim’s origin. Thus, Alexandru
Odobescu believes that the name of Iberian (Ivireanul) came from the Iviron Monastery, of the
Holy Mount Athos, where he may have received his tonsure as a monk (usually, monks are not
called according to their place of origin, but according to the name of the monastery where they
received the monastic cloak or where they lived most of their lives) – Alexandru Odobescu,
Opere (Works), II, Writings of the years 1861-1870, Editura RSR, Bucureşti, 1967, p. 233.
Moreover, at Anthim Monastery one can find as well a part of the holy remains of the 40
Martyr Saints of Sebaste, Armenia, brought – according to the tradition of the monastery – by
Anthim the Iberian from the Holy Mount Athos, namely from Iviron Monastery – from where
Odobescu considered that Anthim had come to Wallachia, during the reign of Şerban
Cantacuzino, between the years 1678 and 1688 – situation in which he could have taken part in
the printing of the Bucharest Bible. The Archdeacon Petru I. David considers that at least one
of his parents is Wallachian, because his parents’ names, in the diptych, Ioan and Maria, are
written in Romanian, and that the origin of his name comes from Iviron Monastery, from the
Holy Mount Athos – Archid. Petru I. David, Caută şi vei afla (Search and You Will Find),
Editura Europolis, Constanţa, 2002, p. 715. This opinion is in agreement with the official
position of the Romanian Orthodox Church, affirmed in the act of canonization of Saint
Anthim, namely “He is called the Iberian (Ivireanul) (name given by himself), either because he
was a monastery borther in the Holy Mount Athos, at Iviron (Saint Elijah?), or because he was
coming from a mixed family (Wallachian father or mother); otherwise, one cannot understand
how he had an ontological knowledge of the Romanians, of their history and their language;
only in this way could one decipher the problem of the origin, as C.C. Giurescu and G. Potra
stated - ***, Proclamarea solemnă a canonizării Sfântului Ierarh-Martir Antim Ivireanul (The Solemn
Proclamation of the Canonization of the Holy Martyr Hierarch Anthim the Iberian), in rev.
“B.O.R.”, CX (1992), no. 7-10, p. 162.
33
 Corneliu-Dragoş Bălan
of Repentance, Drafted and Printed Now in This Way in the Days of the Most
Illuminated Reinging Prince Constantin Brâncoveanu Basarab Voievod), the
scholar hierarch reacts against the vicious habits that had comfortably settled in
the life of his contemporaries and parishoners: “O, Christians, o, fathers and
brothers, how long in evilness and in sins? How long shall we sleep on the bed of laziness the
heavy death-loaded sleep of sin? Why, for the little wine of drunkenness, for a bitter sweetness
of a stinky debouchery, for money that are earth, for the glories of the world, which are all
dishonours, for prides and vanities shall we make the Creator and our Father God our enemy
and give ourselves willingly to God’s and our enemy, the devil, to torment us mercilessly? How
long shall we keep staying out of our minds? How long shall we stay idle instead of looking for
our benefit? How long shall we stay away from repentance? How long shall we keep the sinful
passions of our soul unhealed? How long shall we avoid hating sin and loving goodness?”3.
The warnings and the calls of the hierarch end up, nevertheless, on a
fatherly tone, so that the heart may be softened and fear may not turn towards
panic or discouragement but may be covered by God’s mercy, which comprises
and covers all: “I pray, therefore, and I earnestly desire your love, me, the most sinful in the
whole world, let us all together with me repent of our evil things, cry with sobs and hot tears to
our man-loving God, say to Him the tax-collector’s words: Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Similarly the confession of the adulterer: Father, I have sinned against heaven and before You.
And truly our heavenly Father, seeing our true repentance and our tears, as a merciful and
long-suffering, will forgive our sins. Therefore, if repentance does not take place as it ought to,
it is useless to man”4.
Speaking, in the first part of the above-mentioned work, about the
instruction of the lay people who wish to repent, Anthim identifies the stages
necessary for man’s true spiritual healing: inner repentance (defeating of the heart)
which man needs to have, actual confession, but also accomplishment of the epithimia
prescribed by the confessor priest. The defeating of the heart is called “the first door”
through which the penitent enters the parental home5. To reach this state, man has
the duty to dissociate himself in his inside from what he formerly cherished,
from sin, because this has destroyed his communion with God, being “the great
loss”6 of the human being.
To be able to keep an indifference and distance to this state of
sinfulness, Anthim the Iberian considers that a contemplative pondering on the
unhappy consequences of evilness and sins is necessary, developing this
teaching in six points as follows: “First think that sin is a separation from God and it
won’t let you see God’s face and glory…; Second think that you have respected no

3Antim Ivireanul, Opere (Works), Editura Minerva, București, 1972, p. 350-351.

4Ibidem, p. 351.
5Ibidem.
6Ibidem, p. 352.
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“Repentance of the heart, pure and true”, a fundamental teaching in Anthim the Iberian’s …
commandment and no teaching of God…; Third think about the damage a deadly sin does
to you …; Fourth think (to earn this holy sadness and hate against sin, how much the Most
Good God hates sin…; Fifth, remember death with tears…;Sixth, think about the
ineffable multitude of goods of your Saviour to be ashamed of your cunning and lack of
gratitude…”7.
The second part of this work is addressed to the priests, the one who
was to become Metropolitan of Wallachia exhorting the priests to make the lay
people be aware of the importance of the Mystery of the Confession. Anthim’s
teaching is that we ought to confess our sins8, that the penitent needs to find a skilled
confessor, pious and learnt, to straighten him: erudite and learnt in the divine and holy laws
and canons9, and not someone less learnt, out of the hope that he shall not
receive any epithimia, and then, once he has found a good confessor, he ought to go to him
forever, and not from one confessor to the next, making a trade out of the Mystery [of the
Confession]….10. Epithimia is useful, because, just as an ill person finds no use in just
showing his disease to the doctor, but ought to eat the herbs that the doctor gives him as well,
similarly the sinner shall not be forgiven only with the confession, but ought to also do the
epithimia his confessor shall give him…11.
Moreover, the high hierarch claims that the priests ought not to receive
the cheirothesia as confessors before the age of fourty and they ought to be
virtuous and pious, erudite and honest with the people12.
*

Man’s fight against sin, the fundamental teaching of the “Didaches”

The teaching on repentance pervades most of the sermons and teaching
words of the great hierarch, yet it is especially highlighted in his Teaching on
Repentance (“Învăţătură asupra pocăinţii”)13.
The beginning of evil lies in sin, and the beginning of sin lies in
rebellion and in man’s desire of being god without God, which demonstrates
that the beginning of evilness and sin is pride. Pride generates infatuation and
human selfishness. Exaggerated selfishness and individualism have become
essential features of the human society, of a humanity disjoined from its
primordial state of love and communion14.

7Ibidem, p. 352-354.
8Ibidem, p. 355.
9Ibidem.
10 Ibidem, p. 356.
11 Ibidem.
12 Cf.Ibidem, p. 357.
13 Idem, Didahii…, p. 202-211.
14 Gianina Picioruș, Antim Ivireanul – avangarda literară a Paradisului (Anthim the Iberian – the

Literary of Vanguard of Paradise), Editura Teologie pentru azi, București, 2010, p. 466.
35
 Corneliu-Dragoş Bălan
In the word reminded by the teaching in Didahii (Didaches), Anthim
makes an extremely happy parallel between the rotation of the Sun around the
earth – in the sense of continual return – and God who turns to man’s humble
and sinful soul: “…and in order to never move away from him, he moves
forever around <him> with a ceaseless motion”15. Moreover, the Orthodox
hierarch shows that towards man’s soul, to show him the way, to tell him the
mediation, for man to be redeemed, the Lord sends prophets and teachers,
looking for him in all “the corners of the world”; and this mediation is
repentance, as God exhorts by the mouth of Prophet Malachi: “Return to Me
and I will return to You” (3:7).
This gift of repentance is great, since it is only for people that God
ordained it, and this is because regarding the angels there can be no repentance,
“because the good angels neither did nor can do wrong, which is why they need no
repentance”16; at the same time, regarding the devils one cannot talk about
repentance since they “out of their own will are petrified in cunning”17; and, at the
same time, one cannot talk about repentance regarding the animals either,
because “they have no mind, no word, but work forever unmistakenly as their nature teaches
them”18. And Saint Anthim insists on the fact that only for us, Christians, God
gave this great gift, because, although they, too, sin, namely "the Jews, and the
Turks, however repentance is not useful or helpful in any way to them, because they are outside
the law"19. This gift of repentance is really helpful only to the Christians because
we have faith, we have hope, and by the mediation of the Holy Baptism we have made
ourselves “sons of God, sons of those who believe in His name”20.
The great scholar hierarch chooses to exemplify as a paradigm of the
stages of repentance the moment when a Jewish of the land of Samaria was
taken to the burial place by some conationals, after the death of Prophet Elisha
(4 Kings 13:20-21). Yet, being on their way to the burial place, unexpectedly, in a
thicket there appear Moab thieves, wanting to kill the “buriers” (“îngropători”)21,
as Anthim calls those who were accompanying the coffin. Feeling the danger,
they throw the dead man in a hole and run away. However, the hole where the
respective Samaritan was thrown was the one in which Prophet Elisha was
buried. And no sooner had the dead man touched Elisha’s earthly remains than
he was resurrected. Anthim the Iberian believes that this event is “a beautiful
picture of repentance”, namely:

15 Antim Ivireanul, op. cit., p. 202.

16 Ibidem, p. 203.
17 Ibidem.
18 Ibidem.
19 Ibidem.
20 Ibidem.
21 Ibidem, p. 204.
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“Repentance of the heart, pure and true”, a fundamental teaching in Anthim the Iberian’s …
a) after man sins, he remains dead because “he loses God’s gift;…because
he separates himself from God…”22;
b) and being dead – in a spiritual sense because of the sinful passions –
man is taken out of the fortress, out of the happy realm of heaven;
c) however, “the Merciful God”, Who “is not slow in keeping His promise
…, but is long-suffering for you, not willing that anyone should perish,
but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9), sends “an assault by
scary thieves”, which signifies the fear of death, the day of the dreadful
judgement, “the right reward of God”23;
d) seeing his state of sinfullness, feeling “his perdition”, the buriers
tremble, are filled with dread and being afraid, they run away – and
these buriers (“îngropătorii”) are: the evil appetites, the unrestrained sinful
passions, the physical delights”24, the spiritually dead man being thrown in
Elisha’s grave;
e) “Elisha’s grave” is repentance, because “just as the grave breaks, scatters and
melts the smelly bodies put in it, similarly repentance cleans away, undoes and melts
the smelly sins that had been wrapped around the soul”25.
f) The sinful man, falling in this grave, meets Elisha which can be translated as
God, our Saviour and consequently embodies our Lord Jesus Christ. And
so, with God’s power and gift, the sinful man desiring “the renewal of
the mind” is forgiven, and he is restored to life.
The power of repentance consists precisely in the resurrection of the
sinner’s dead soul, in the opening of heaven’s gates that had been closed by sin,
making the one desiring straightening “the company of the happy angels”26.
The great Orthodox hierarch insists on the fact that repentance lies not
just in the words, as actually the Scripture teaches as well: “Not everyone who
says to me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does
the will of my Father in heaven” (Matthew 7:21). This highlights the way God
chooses to forgive King David, but not King Saul, and this happens because
the first repents sincerely while the second only declaratively. Saul, the first king
of Israel, who ruled in the 11th century B.C. makes himself guilty of usurping
priesthood, because seeing that Samuel is slow in coming, he dares to offer
himself the burnt offering: “Bring a burnt offering and peace offerings here to
me!” And he offered the burnt offering.” (1 Samuel 13:9). And because he had
not obeyed God’s commandment, Samuel warns him: “You have done

22 Ibidem.
23 Ibidem.
24 Ibidem.
25 Ibidem, p. 205.
26 Ibidem.

37
 Corneliu-Dragoş Bălan
foolishly. You have not kept the commandment of the Lord your God, which
He commanded you. For now would the Lord have established your kingdom
over Israel forever. But now your rule won’t last. The Lord will search for a
man following the Lord’s own heart” (1 Samuel 13:13-14). Moreover, Saul does
not obey God’s commandment of total destruction of the Amalekites: “Then
Saul attacked the Amalekites from Havilah all the way to Shur, which is near
Egypt. He captured Agag the Amalekite king alive, but Saul placed all the
people under the ban, killing them with the sword. Saul and the troops spared
Agag along with the best sheep, cattle, fattened calves, lambs and everything of
value. They weren’t willing to put them under the ban; but anything that was
despised or of no value they placed under the ban. Then the Lord’s word came
to Samuel: <<I regret making Saul king because he has turned away from following me
and has not done what I said.>>. Samuel was upset at this and he prayed to the
Lord all night long” (1 Samuel 15:7-12).
On the other hand, David, who followed Saul as a king committed
serious sins: debouchery and murder, whereas Saul disobeyed. Yet, God who
knows the hearts “saw the difference between the repentance of the one and of
the other” because David’s repentance was true repentance “with a humble
spirit and a heart broken with sorrow for sin, thoroughly penitent”, whereas
Saul’s repentance “was deceiving and cunning, only with the mouth and not
from the heart, because his heart was not right with God”27.
For repentance to be sincere and well received before the Lord, Anthim
the hierarch identifies three things so that every Christian may accomplish it:
1. His share ought to be the grass of the land. When man sins he “leaves
the body free in pleasures, eartly appetites of any kind. To truly repent,
man must “change his nature, change his life, rule over (submit) his
body”. And this can happen by fasting, eating nothing all day, “leaving
aside foods and pleasures”28;
2. He ought to change his heart; he ought to have “a beast’s heart”, as God
asked from the Assirian emperor, Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 4:16). And
this [ought to be so] because, as the hierarch says, man’s heart is not
constant but “much desiring” and bent to “unpleasantness”: “it now
turns to good and now turns to bad, now desires one thing and now
hates it, now loves and now detests”29. This is why God exhorts to a
“heart of beast”, which has “forever the same heart, unpretending,
standing and unmoving”30;

27 Ibidem, p. 207-208.
28 Ibidem, p. 208-209.
29 Ibidem, p. 209.
30 Ibidem.

38
“Repentance of the heart, pure and true”, a fundamental teaching in Anthim the Iberian’s …
3. The third element highlighted by Anthim the Iberian for repentance to
be right with God is this: “seven times shall pass by for him”, in the
sense that seven of the sins perpetrated by man shall be changed into
virtues, namely: he shall change his pride into humility, he shall change
his love for money into charity, he shall change his physical sin into
cleanliness, he shall change envy, hate into love, he shall change
gluttony into fasting, he shall change anger into kindness and he shall
change laziness into prayer31.
Freedom from the state of sin can only mean divine intervention:
“know that the Son of Man has authority on the earth to forgive sins” (Mark
2:10). Sin is the obstacle separating man from God and noone can give himself
forgiveness. An intellectual error shall be corrected, an act of violation of the
moral order shall be straightened, but sin can only be forgiven32.
God is a Person and sin has been commited before Him, thus He is the
only One Who can give us forgiveness. This power to forgive sins cannot be
exerted except by someone who is sinless, but no man can draw close to
absolute holiness. Consequently, forgiveness is the exclusive attribute of the
Divinity33. To receive forgiveness, man needs to draw near to God sincerely and
cleanly, and this is realized by repentance. For the typographer hierarch,
repentance is seen, according to the teachings in the Apocalypse (9:13) as “a
wonderful fortress with four corners” and which had twelve doors: three doors to the east by
which the young, who are at the sunrise of their life, are ordained to enter; three
doors to the north through which the men at the middle of their life will come in;
three doors to the south for “the elderly, whose blood is cold and who hold the
whiteness of the snow in their beards”, while through the three doors turned to the
west shall go in those who are at the end of their lives and have “both of their
feet in the tomb and their soul on their lips, whose repentance shall be received
by God’s mercy”34.
*

31 Ibidem,p. 209-210. And the hierarch insists: “…just as when he was doing these sins he was
rejoicing, enjoying himself and laughing, similarly when he repents he ought to be sad, sob and
cry to clean himself for a change of times and to show the true transformation”, p. 210.
32 Fr. Univ. Prof. Dr. Ilie Moldovan, Preotul duhovnic și darul iertării păcatelor (The Confessor and

the Gift of Forgiveness of Sins), in vol. Spovedania și Euharistia – izvoare ale vieţii veșnice. Sfânta
Spovedanie – Taina pocăinţei și a iertării păcatelor (The Confession of Sins and the Eucharist –
Springs of Eternal Life. The Holy Confession – The Mystery of Repentance and of the
Forgiveness of Sins), vol. I, Editura Basilica, București, 2014, p. 279.
33 Fr. Univ. Lect. Dr. Adrian Niculcea, Teologia Dogmatică Ortodoxă Comparată (Compared

Orhtodox Dogmatic Theology), Editura Arhetip, București, 2001, p. 342.

34 Antim Ivireanul, op. cit., p. 210.

39
 Corneliu-Dragoş Bălan

The world of sin – “valley of tears”, “city of tears”, “the sinful passions
of Egypt”, “the slavery of the world” or “the city of the worldly ones”
Without falling into inadequate and untrue generalizations, there is a
possibility that each one of us may have been tempted at least once by the idea
of estranging ourselves from God, and maybe we have even run after chimeras
and illusions, befriending the devil in the world of sin. Here, we got “hungry”,
not necessarily of bread, but of God’s word and presence. In such a world
without God we are feeling unhappy because we miss the communion of the
people and of God. And, although we are in the world dreamed by us, the
world of sin, of debouchery, of lie, of evilness, of envy and calomny, of theft,
we are getting increasingly discontent. The devil is our master and he is sending us to
feed pigs, as we paradigmatically meet the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32) in the
Holy Scripture. Now the mire of sin begins to smell fishy to us. “Repeated mistakes
thicken the walls of the prison and tie man with increasingly numerous chains
to the place where he descended”35, as Father Stǎniloae explains.
Each of the syntagms mentioned in the title have deep meanings, being
not just simple metaphors and having revealing connotations: “the valley of tears”
(or the Valley of Josaphat) represents the place where, according to the
Christian teaching, the Final Judgement shall take place, which will condamn
the sinners for eternity.
“The sinful passions of Egypt” and “the slavery of the world” refer to man’s
remaining in sin and in the sinful passions, degrading for him, which is an
allusion to the Egyptian captivity of the chosen people, correlated to the earthly
exile of the fallen man, returned to his inferior origin, to this earth, which is the
mother of all the people36. In the entire tradition of the Church, the Egyptian slavery
is interpreted allegorically, in a spiritual sense, as symbolizing the slavery of the
soul in the realm of sins, in the Egypt of the sinful passions, from where one
can come out only if one drowns the “Pharaoh of thought”, with all his army,
namely the devil and the sins committed, in the sea of tears of repentance.
“The city of tears” highlights a sense of suffering as well, which is an
inevitable consequence of man’s tribulations through sins, whereas “the city of the
earthly ones” concerns both the earthly ones, in the sense of mortals, and especially
those who look only towards the earth and never towards the sky, the spiritual
sky37.

35 Fr. Prof. Dr. Dumitru Stăniloae, Mărturisirea – mijloc de creștere duhovnicească (Repentance – A
Means of Spiritual Growth), in vol. Spovedania și Euharistia – izvoare ale vieţii veșnice. Sfânta
Spovedanie…, vol. I, p. 120.
36 Antim Ivireanul, Opere…, p. 176.
37 Gianina Picioruș, op. cit., p. 468.

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“Repentance of the heart, pure and true”, a fundamental teaching in Anthim the Iberian’s …
Man is not bad either by the creation or by fatality, but by his free will,
by which he chooses to be like the fallen demon, instead of being like God, so
that black wrecked men are the villain sinners and sin makes them darker than the devils38.
Anthim identifies sins very correctly and very intelligibly for each of us: “Because
man makes mistakes in three ways: either out of weakness, or out of ignorance, or
out of the bad nature. Thus, the sin out of weakness is against God the Father, because
the Father is called the All-Mighty. The sin out of ignorance is against the Son, because the
Son is called Wisdom. The sin out of the bad nature is against the Holy Spirit, because the
Holy Spirit is called Good. Therefore, whoever sins out of weakness or out of ignorance shall
be forgiven more easily by the Lord, if he repents. Because so does David say: <<Do not
remember the sins of my youth and my ignorance!>>. And whoever sins out of the bad nature
against the Holy Spirit, the sin of that man shall not be easily forgiven. Because so does the
Lord Christ say: <<All manner of sin and all blaspheny shall be forgiven unto men but the
blasphemy against the Holy Spirit shall not be forgiven unto men >>39.
The repentance before Christ was not a Mystery, because the grace of
the Holy Spirit was missing; it was a symbol, a pedagogical means announcing
the inner birth that the believers will realize in Christ and in the Church by the
Mystery of the Repentance.
As Christianism was founded, the ritual of the confession of sins and
the repentance of the people of the Antiquity, which until the coming of Christ
had a symbolical, exterior and formal character, becomes an interior and holy
act, becomes a mystery. The New Testament is the book of the return to God,
is the book of repentance, the book of the reconciliation between man and
God40. Just like Saint John the Baptist, our Lord Jesus Christ begins His
redeeming sermon by the call to repentance (Matthew 3:2; 4:17). He states that
he has come into the world to call the sinners to repentance (Matthew 9:13).
“There will be more joy in heaven - our Saviour says – for one sinner who
repents, than for ninety nine justs who need no repentance” (Luke 15:7). The
confession of sins is the only way to obtain forgiveness and the restoration of
the balance of the soul, the confession of sins being a Holy Mystery but also a
virtue.

Conclusions
For the great hierarch and scholar Anthim the Iberian, sin is what
“pitches” (“zmolește”) man’s beauty and spiritual light and so man devaluates
himself down to the value of the dust scattered by the wind (“So without

38 Antim Ivireanul, op. cit., p. 166-167.

39 Ibidem, p. 122.
40 Fr. Ilarion V. Felea, Pocăinţa (Repentance), Sibiu, 1939, p. 39.

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 Corneliu-Dragoş Bălan
perspicacity, you let sin lose it and blow it, as the wind blows the dust”41). By sin, man
loses not just his original beauty but also his life, as a spiritual state of
communion with God and the restored humanity, when one remains at the
condition of inacceptance of the altruist and pure existence, unaltered by sin:
“Because as soon as man sins he remains dead. Dead, because he loses the divine gift; dead,
because he separates himself from God …”42.
Salvation from sin cannot take place except by a sincere repentance, a
repentance of the heart, a pure repentance that the great hierarch preaches in
almost each of his sermons that have been published.
As a whole, the entire work of Anthim the Iberian is one of great
importance, realized during a quarter of a century (1691-1716), which has left its
mark on the evolution of the Romanian language, on the cultic Romanian
language. George Călinescu, expressing his appreciation of Anthim, calls him “a
miracle for the Romanian literature”, as he is the author of the most beautiful pages
ever written in Romanian, during its old period, according to Mihail Sadoveanu,
a statement reaffirmed by most of the modern exegetes of this work.

41 Ibidem, p. 146.
42 Ibidem, p. 213.
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