introduction:

This guide is merely a reminder designed to better prepare you for the sacrament of repentance and confession. For a person to know himself and work to save it is a great science, but the soul can only be saved by the Savior, the God-Man Jesus Christ, who established repentance and confession as a unique way of salvation in his church. Therefore, you must jump over every obstacle that prevents you from heading to the confessional, where the representative of Christ, the “priest and spiritual father,” who knows how to understand and sympathize with sinners, his brothers, is waiting for you with tenderness.

Therefore, keep all fear and shame away from you. Why should you be afraid and ashamed when your soul suffers as a result of various sins? Why are you not ashamed or afraid when you suffer from various diseases? Rather, he quickly rushed to the doctor and even to the hospital for immediate treatment.

Do not imitate those who ask the priest to read to them “Afshin” of absolution and forgiveness without prior confession. When you act like this on purpose, you are sinning and mocking God.

Come forward to confession with faith and sincerity and be certain that the love of the Crucified One will accept you and free you from the heaviness that you have, because He says, “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

Do you believe in Allah? By the Holy Trinity? By the divinity of Christ and the Holy Spirit? Do you believe in the Church and its secrets? There is paradise and damnation?

You and God

• Do you always have confidence in yourself? Do you believe in God's providence, especially during the difficult stages of your life? And that you despair and demonstrate a weakness in faith?
• Have you ever complained before God during hardships, illnesses, or trials, and as a result you lost your faith and courage?
• Do you believe in fortune-telling and magicians, in astrology and magicians, in the scriptures and coffee-based divination? Have you pushed others to resort to such methods?
• Do you believe in preconceptions and sorcery and consider shaking wood, ringing in the ears, howling dogs, meeting a priest as bad signs?...etc.
• Do you depend on luck and fate?
• Do you pray morning and evening and at the table? Are you ashamed to make the sign of the cross in front of others, for example in a restaurant and while passing by a church?
• Do you read the Bible and other spiritual books?
• Do you go to church every Sunday and on holidays?
• Do you follow the Divine Liturgy from beginning to end, and do you enter late and leave before the end?
• Do you dress modestly, especially when you go to church? Do you pay attention not to laugh and not to discuss with others in the church, even during the completion of the sacraments of baptism and marriage?
• Have you, your wife, children, and acquaintances ever been prevented from coming to church?
• Do you take it regularly and do you take it once a year without confession?
• Do you swear without reason and lie on an oath you gave?
• Have you blasphemed the name of Christ, the Virgin and the saints?
• Do you fast, in the absence of a health obstacle, on Wednesdays and Fridays and during the holy fasts?
• Have you ever thrown out Bibles in dirty places?

You and others

• Do you hate and be hostile to someone who insulted you and insulted you in his anger?
• Do you doubt others, believing that they talk over you, don't want you, don't love you, or sympathize with you?
• Do you envy others and worry about their progress, success, beauty and experience?
• Do you turn a blind eye to your injured relative who is in need?
• Are you generous with your comrades, upright, honest and just?
• Do you gossip about your relative and condemn him?
• Do you mock and laugh at the pious people who are fasting and striving for a Christian life? Do you mock those who have natural and spiritual shortcomings?
• Have you ever reported, even against your will, news or an accusation against another person that you heard, and you hurt and insulted your relative in this way?
• Have you condemned the behavior of others, their actions, their weaknesses, their mistakes in their absence, even if they were true?
• Have you cursed someone who harmed you and yourself, even up to the time you were born, in difficult circumstances that occurred in your life?
• Did you wish to send some others to the devil?
• Do you respect and care for your parents? Can you bear with them if they are helpless? Do you help them with their physical and spiritual needs? Do you care about them going to church and receiving the sacraments? Did you abandon them without compassion?
• Have you ever hit someone in your anger and insulted them with your words?
• Did you push your family to register an inheritance for you, unfairly doing so to your siblings?
• Do you complete your professional work and mission sincerely?
• Are you stealing? Did you help someone else steal or hide the thief? Do you keep stolen items?
• Are you ungrateful for divine grace and ungrateful to those who have done good to you?
• Do you associate with evil people and bring disrepute? Have you pushed anyone into sin with words and deeds?
• Are you faking it? Did you violate state laws?
• Have you borrowed from anyone and not repaid the debt?
• Were you killed in any way?
• Have you interfered in other people's lives, businesses, or families and caused conflicts and disturbances?
• Do you have mercy on the poor, the orphans, the elderly, the many children, and the poor families you know?

with yourself

• Are you attached to matter and earthly goods?
• Are you a lover of money? Do you have greed?
• Are you a spendthrift? Do you believe that everything you overflow belongs to the poor?
• Do you have a love of greatness?
• Are you proud of your gift of clothing, money, success, and your son’s grades?
• Are you looking for people's praise and glory?
• Do you gladly accept praise and wait for others to flatter you and say that there is no one better than you?
• Do you get upset when they discover your mistakes and do you complain when your superiors scold you?
• Are you stubborn, pretentious, selfish, arrogant and individualistic? (Pay attention to your sins because they are difficult to deal with)
• Do you play cards, even without money, with your family and friends in order to kill time, as some say?
• Have you defiled your body with carnal sins, as well as your soul?
• Do you watch bad scenes on television, in the cinema and in video?
• Do you read immoral books and magazines?
• Have you ever thought about suicide?
• Are you a slave to your stomach?
• Are you lazy, careless, dull?
• Do you say inappropriate, offensive, insulting words, either to ridicule, insult, or belittle others?
• Do you have a spirit of sacrifice?
• Do you expel from your mind the bad thoughts that come to defile your heart?
• Do you pay attention to your looks so that you are not attracted by tempting images and faces?
• Do you pay attention to your ears and hearing?
• Do you dress modestly? If you are a woman, do you wear men's clothes and seductive clothes that cause suspicion, especially in holy places? If you are a man, do you seek to show off?
• Do you dance in immoral places? And sing and listen to mindless songs?
• Are you drunk?
• Do you smoke (excessively)? Smoking spoils your health and is considered a vice?!

For married couples

• Do you maintain the marital faith? It is terrible for a spouse to aspire to relationships that contradict holy matrimony!
• Did one of the spouses grieve the other in front of others and in private?
• Perhaps one cannot tolerate the other's weaknesses. Are you showing harshness?
• Do you allow your wife to follow fashions and any appearance that is contrary to the law of God? Does one spouse push the other to a life of entertainment and entertainment and to follow the harmful customs of the world?
• Do you think about the effort that each spouse must undertake, whether inside or outside the home, in order to comfort each other psychologically and physically?
• Do you go to extremes in your marital relationships? Do you respect fasting on Sundays, holidays, and fasts?
• Does one prevent the other from going to church and religious meetings?
• Do you raise your children according to the law and commandments of the Lord? Do you only care about their culture without paying attention to their personality type?
• Do you lead children to church, to confession, to Communion, to religious education? Do you raise them through the words and actions of virtue? By praying morning and evening and at the table with attention and piety?
• Do you pay attention to their reading? Do you guide them to spiritual books?
• Do you pay attention to the quality of their friends?
• Do you force them to watch pornographic scenes, and allow them to watch television unlimitedly?
• Did you teach them humility and modest dress?
• Do you curse them when they torture you? And you send them to Satan?
• Do you have an abortion and avoid having children?
• Did you wrong the children when distributing the inheritance?
• Are you negligent in feeding your children, teaching them, raising them in general, and being present with them?
• Do you scold them and provide them with inappropriate words?
• Does everyone respect the people of the other side? Do your parents interfere in your marital life and create trouble for you?
• Do you interfere in your son's family?
• Does one blaspheme? Then each one should strive to control himself and cut off all blasphemous talk.

Prepared by one of the fathers of the Orthodox Church
Quoted from Orthodox Heritage Magazine