Main news for 2 April 2026

How do we evaluate our life before God, our spiritual condition, our relationships with the people around us? If we think that everything is all right with us, "no worse than with others," and are satisfied with what we have, then we need nothing more, and we do not need God either. There is no repentance in this, not even its beginning. Repentance begins with the realization that not everything is all right, that all our efforts do not allow us to attain a life truly worthy of a human being, that we need God and His saving grace. That is, the first movement of repentance is the rejection of ourselves as we are, a refusal to consent to our own sin, a renunciation of it. The second step of repentance is turning to God, acknowledging the necessity of His presence, bringing Him our failure, and waiting for our cleansing, healing, and filling with life from Him.

But repentance also has a third component: the fruit of which John reminds us. Our expectation of change is meaningless if we do not show our readiness to change. We show it not by a "mood," not by a word, but by deed. We must begin to live as righteously as if we had already received everything from God; then He will have freedom to give us strength to carry out this righteousness, to fill our actions with inner content, with love. This will be the saving grace with which God answers our repentance.