Metanoia, the word generally translated “repentance” is both temporary and, in its final stage, permanent. Temporarily, it can happen at any moment of the day or night, when we correctly discriminate in that moment between the back-to-front truth of the world, which sees us being and doing, and the gospel truth, which recognizes that Being and Doing belong to God.
Metanoia signifies a return to the source: a turning back, and the journey of return, what Lent is. In the Orthodox Church, it is symbolized most often by the parable of the prodigal son.
The phrase he came to himself is clearly a reference to an early stage of Self-remembering, and the result of this metanoia, a change in direction in life, leading to complete transformation.
We see at least 7 stages in the parable:
1. A fall – the son loses his birthright in self-indulgence in a “far country”
(i.e., the world)
2. The result of the fall – In time, he feels a lack, and so takes employment with a citizen of that country, wanting even the coarsest food, but nobody gives it to him.
3. An awakening – He comes to himself, recognizes his situation, and remembers the alternative of his father’s household.
4. A decision – He then forms a resolution to return “home”, accepting his humiliation, and begins the return journey.
5. A confirmation – His father comes out to meet him.
6. A new attitude – He confesses his fault to the father.
7. A new life – The father does not punish him, but instead immediately gives him the “good things” he has been lacking. The errant son has come back to life.
In fact, metanoia, repentance, except in a few exceptional cases, does not consist in a single moment of conversion, a flash of insight that immediately and forever transforms our lives; neither is it simply an occasional impulse, an momentary change of direction; nor is it a change of thought without a change in feelings and impulses that also form our minds. Instead, it is a continual – and very difficult – struggle to perceive the truth about ourselves, and, in response, to turn away from the past and so keep ourselves turned toward God, to remember God.
Belonging to the struggle for repentance is the effort of continually guarding our thoughts; it is by putting away from ourselves all the demonic temptations that act to soil the mind so that we are able to keep the heart pure that it might reflect God.
The struggle is a struggle for that purity of heart, and for apatheia, or a kind of emotional detachment, sometimes called “passionlessness”. It occurs when, having seen the emptiness, the vanity of everyday life, by the grace of God working with our ascesis, we are able to rise above it, to hold it loosely, to not be enmeshed in its tendrils. We choose not to react from our passions to either calumny nor praise, but calmly view all as a God-given means to our salvation.
It is not enough to choose once, nor even once a day. The struggle is one that demands of us continual choices, repeated choices from the “better part” of ourselves.
Humility is borne of our increasing self-knowledge, and is in fact the truest test of self-knowledge. No effort, no teaching, is true and transformative that does not lead to humility, that does not turn us around and, closing us off from the pressures of the world, begin to open us to the constant pressure of the Love of God.
The Lenten journey of metanoia, repentance, is about choosing the divine as opposed to the worldly in each of the little decisions that precede every action of our lives, and we discover that we are working not for a different idea of life, but for a different consciousness of life: it is then that we discover that we are working not for some idea, but for the emergence of a different “I”, a different self – the new creature – Christ in me, the hope of glory.
When the struggle has become part of our being, when our change of heart becomes permanent, we become aware that it is not we who are praying, but the Lord is praying in us. That is the end of repentance, that is the salvation of our souls – that is the journey of Lent.