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EXAMPLES OF CONFESSIONS

A Lament for Sin

St. Basil the Great

Weep over your sin: it is a spiritual ailment; it is death to your immortal soul; it deserves
ceaseless, unending weeping and crying; let all tears flow for it, and sighing come forth
without ceasing from the depths of your heart.

In profound humility I weep for all my sins, voluntary and involuntary, conscious and
unconscious, covert and overt, great and little, committed by word and deed, in thought
and intention, day and night, at every hour and minute of my life.

I weep over my pride and my ambition, my self love and my boastfulness; I weep over
my fits of anger, irritation, excessive shouting, swearing, quarreling and cursing;

I weep for having criticized, censured, gossiped, slandered, and defamed, for my wrath,
enmity, hatred, envy, jealousy, vengeance and rancor;

I weep over my indulgences in lust, impure thoughts and evil inclinations; covetousness,
gluttony, drunkenness, and sloth;

I weep for having talked idly, used foul language, blasphemed, derided, joked, ridiculed,
mocked, enjoyed empty gaiety, singing, dancing and every pleasure to excess;

I weep over my self indulgence, cupidity, love of money and miserliness, unmercifulness
and cruelty;

I weep over my laziness, indolence, negligence, love of comfort, weakness, idleness,
absent-mindedness, irresponsibility, inattention, love of sleep, for hours spent in idle
pursuits, and for my lack of concentration in prayer and in Church, for not observing fasts
and not doing charitable works.

I weep over my lack of faith, my doubting, my perplexity, my coldness, my indifference,
my weakness and unfeelingness in what concerns the Holy Orthodox Faith, and over all
my foul, cunning and reviling thoughts;

I weep over my exaggerated sorrow and grief, depression and despair, and over sins
committed willingly.

I weep, but what tears can I find for a worthy and fitting way to weep for all the actions
of my ill fated life; for my immeasurable and profound worthlessness? How can I reveal
and expose in all its nakedness each one of my sins, great and small, voluntary and
involuntary, conscious and unconscious, overt and covert, every hour and minute of sin?