Date: 2026-08-15T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Homiletical

Homilies for Fasting Penitents

Saint Innocent of Alaska

Royal Archives

2026

Copyright

The modern English translation and the cover design are © 2026 Royal Archives. All rights reserved.

The underlying source text is in the public domain.

Published by Royal Archives

First published 2026

Translated by Royal Archives

Source: Поучения постникам или говельщикам

Cover: The Hermit (c. 1888–90, GRM) by Mikhail Nesterov (Russian, 1862–1942), Wikimedia Commons, which is in the public domain.

Edition identifier: urn:royalarchives:homilies_for_fasting_penitents:en:1

Introduction

St Innocent of Alaska

He was born on 26 August 1797 in Anginskoye, a village in the Irkutsk region of eastern Siberia, and christened John—the son of a church sacristan who died when the boy was six. Poverty and early loss shaped him; so did the seminary at Irkutsk, which he entered at nine and a half. There, according to a custom of the time, he was given a new surname in honour of the recently reposed Archbishop Benjamin of Irkutsk, and so John Popov became John Veniaminov, the name by which the Church would come to know him before his monastic tonsure. He married, was ordained deacon in 1817 and priest in 1821, and was serving a prosperous parish at the Church of the Annunciation in Irkutsk—respected, comfortable, and by every worldly measure well placed—when the decision came that would carry him to the far edge of the world.

In 1823 he left Irkutsk for Russian America, arriving on the Aleutian island of Unalaska in the summer of 1824. What followed is among the great missionary careers of the modern age. For fifteen years he lived among the Aleut (Unangan) people, learned their language, devised an alphabet for it, compiled a grammar, and translated the Gospel and the catechism into their tongue. In 1833 he wrote, first in Aleut, the little spiritual classic that became famous across Russia in translation, Indication of the Way into the Kingdom of Heaven. In 1834 he transferred to Sitka to work among the Tlingit. He built churches with his own hands, kept clocks and made instruments, studied the weather and the peoples he served, and travelled by boat, sledge, and on foot across distances that still seem scarcely credible.

The turn of his life came in the late 1830s. Travelling in Russia to press the cause of the Alaskan mission, he learned that his wife had died. He was tonsured a monk in 1840, taking the name Innocent after St Innocent of Irkutsk, and within weeks was consecrated the first Bishop of Kamchatka, the Kuril Islands, and the Aleutians—a diocese stretching from Siberia across the sea to the Alaskan mainland. Raised to archbishop in 1850, he extended his labours to the Yakut and other peoples of the Russian northeast. In 1868 he was called, unexpectedly, to the highest post in the Russian Church, succeeding his friend Metropolitan Filaret as Metropolitan of Moscow. Even then his missionary heart did not cool: in 1870 he presided over the founding of the Orthodox Missionary Society, which gathered support for missions until the Revolution, and he encouraged the young Nicholas Kasatkin, the future apostle to Japan. He reposed on Holy Saturday, 31 March 1879, and was buried at the Trinity–St Sergius Lavra. In 1977 the Russian Orthodox Church, at the request of the Orthodox Church in America, glorified him as a saint, and he is honoured as Equal-to-the-Apostles, Enlightener of the Aleuts, and Apostle to America.

The six short writings gathered here belong to this life at its various stages—the working priest, the field missionary, the reigning bishop, the aged hierarch composing his last words. None is a treatise. Together they let us hear, in his own unguarded voice, the practical wisdom of a man who spent forty-five of his eighty-two years in journeys for the Gospel.

Occasion and Purpose

These are minor pieces by design, and they are best read together—not as a system but as a set of samples from a single, coherent pastoral mind. They were not composed as a book, and they come from widely separated occasions.

The two Instructions to missionaries are the earliest in spirit and the most celebrated. Both grow directly out of Innocent’s own field experience in Alaska. The Instruction to the Nushagak Missionary, Hieromonk Theophil was written in 1842, when the newly consecrated bishop dispatched a mission to the Nushagak redoubt on the Bering seacoast—a place he himself had first visited as a priest years before. It is a concrete field order to one man setting out for one station. The longer Instructions to the Priest Appointed to the Conversion of Non-Christians is a generalized redaction of the same counsel, expanded and reordered so as to serve any missionary priest; its opening chapters run almost word for word with the Nushagak text before broadening into a fuller manual. Taken together they form the document that later readers have regarded as a small classic of Orthodox missiology—the distilled method of a missionary who never disturbed the customs of a people without first understanding them.

The Homilies for Fasting Penitents belong to the parish and the confessional. They are four short sermons—with an opening dedication prayer—addressed to govelshchiki, the faithful keeping a fast in preparation for confession and Holy Communion. Here Innocent is not the strategist of missions but the ordinary pastor, catechizing plain people in the barest essentials of the Christian hope.

The Note on the Religious Education of Children comes from the end of his life, written at St Petersburg on 13 February 1869, when he was Metropolitan of Moscow. It addresses not a frontier but the Russian heartland, and takes up a question then much debated: how are the great mass of ordinary people, and above all their small children, actually to be taught the faith?

The Autobiographical Note (1863) and the Spiritual Testament (dated 14 December 1869) are the most personal. The first was provoked by a published article about him that he judged inaccurate and, worse, flattering; he set out to correct it, and in doing so left almost the only first-person account of his early years. The second is his literal last will—the practical and spiritual dispositions of a man preparing to die. What unites all six is the sensibility of a working missionary bishop who never lost the parish priest’s directness, and who insisted, again and again, that the whole work is God’s and the labourer only an instrument.

The Six Writings

The two instructions to missionaries may be treated as one work in two forms, and they are the centre of gravity of this collection. Both open with the same solemn preamble: to leave one’s homeland for wild and comfortless places in order to enlighten those still in darkness is “a work truly holy and equal to that of the Apostles,” blessed for the faithful labourer and terrible for the negligent one who makes his converts “sons of Gehenna, twofold more than himself.” Both cite the imperial edict of 1777 warning that hasty baptism without instruction is “an abuse of one of the greatest sacraments.” From there the counsel unfolds in numbered rules. Preparation comes first, and it is inward before it is outward: begin with prayer; keep “a modest and humble disposition of spirit,” promising oneself no guaranteed success, for grace is not given to the proud; approach the work calmly and never with carelessness; and above all preach with love, “for love alone builds up.” Practical wisdom follows—go to people when they are gathered, never begin the services in a new place without first offering at least a brief word, choose a devout interpreter and keep the same one. Then comes the heart of the method: “Christianity is a need, satisfaction, and consolation of the heart above all, not of the intellect alone,” and so one must “act more upon the heart than upon the mind” and “speak from the heart.” The order of teaching is to follow the order of Providence itself—first the Creator known from the visible world, then the moral law written on every heart, then the consequences of keeping or breaking it, and only then the Gospel proper, beginning as Christ began, with the call to repentance. The fuller Instructions to the Priest carries this into further chapters on the conduct of church services, on bearing patiently with new and imperfect Christians, and on relations with the local civil authorities; the Nushagak text divides its matter explicitly into the priest’s “spiritual” duties as a preacher and his “external” duties as a member of the settlement’s ordered society.

The Homilies for Fasting Penitents open with a shepherd’s prayer—“O Jesus Christ! My Good Shepherd!… teach me to do Thy will”—and then move through four brief sermons of rising sequence. The first, On the Kingdom of Heaven, begins with the largest question a plain person can be asked: “For what was man created?” Not to be born, toil, and vanish like the animals, Innocent answers, but for blessedness—and no earthly thing, not even Solomon’s wealth and wisdom, can supply it; only the Kingdom of Heaven, which is simply “life with God,” and which the poor and unlettered may reach as surely as the great. The second homily turns to the receiving of the Holy Spirit and to repentance; the third lays out, with a catechist’s clarity, the five conditions for a fruitful confession; the fourth prepares the penitent for Holy Communion. The movement is exactly that of the preparing soul—from the goal of life, through repentance and confession, to the Eucharist itself.

The Note on the Religious Education of Children is a short piece of pastoral argument. Innocent asks who is really responsible for teaching the faith—parents, godparents, or clergy—and observes, without bitterness but without illusion, that parents mostly do not, godparents never, and so the whole burden falls on the pastors, whose sermons and school lessons reach only those already able to understand them. The great mass of the people, and above all children under six or seven who cannot yet enter any school, are left in “ignorance of the most necessary matters of the faith.” Schools alone cannot answer this, he argues, because they “enlighten and cultivate only the mind, and not the mind and heart together,” and because they will take generations to reach everyone. His remedy is the Church herself, “that most loving of mothers,” and above all the ordinary parish priest, who needs no special learning to gather the little children and teach them the sign of the cross, the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the commandments “in simple words.” It is the mature reflection of a man who had spent his life teaching the unlettered.

The Autobiographical Note is unlike the rest—occasional, wry, and self-effacing. Correcting a laudatory article, Innocent disputes small facts (the day of his birth, the age at which he first read the Epistle aloud in church) precisely in order to prevent anyone thinking “something extraordinary” of him. But the corrections become the occasion for a remarkable confession of Providence. He recounts how every human calculation had counted against his going to America—a good parish, esteem, his own house, a larger income—and how he refused the appeal of the old Aleut settler Ivan Kryukov, until one day, overhearing the same man speak to the bishop of the Aleuts’ zeal for prayer, he was “suddenly and, one might say, wholly inflamed with the desire to go to such a people.” Even the accident of a spring ice-break, which cut the seminary rector off from the city and let the young Veniaminov marry, he reads as the hand of God turning him from the Academy toward Alaska. The refrain of his life sounds here plainly: “from the Lord are a man’s paths made straight,” and “all of us, servants of His Church, are nothing other than instruments in His hands.”

The Spiritual Testament, the shortest of the six, is his literal last will, written in 1869 as his eyesight failed. It begins with thanksgiving to God and a full, mutual forgiveness—of all who had wronged him and by all whom he had wronged—and then disposes of simple matters: burial in the common brotherly cemetery, no funeral orations, no monument beyond “a plain cast-iron slab with a most simple and brief inscription.” Strikingly, the same text he asked to be preached from in the Instruction and the Autobiographical Note returns here as the only permitted eulogy: if anyone must speak, let him speak from “From the Lord are a man’s paths made straight,” pointing to the departed only as an example, “to the glory of God, but without any praise of me.” A metropolitan of Moscow arranges to be buried like the humblest monk.

Theological and Spiritual Significance

For all their variety of occasion, these pieces are held together by a single conviction, stated most fully in the missionary instructions but present in every one of them: that the salvation of a soul depends “in no wise on us or on our skill, but directly and solely on God,” and that the preacher is “nothing other than an instrument in the hands of God.” This is the theological root of Innocent’s famous humility, and it is not false modesty but a working doctrine of grace. It frees the missionary from anxiety about results and forbids him pride in success; it makes prayer, not eloquence, the first tool of the trade; and it grounds the astonishing patience of his method.

That method is the collection’s most enduring contribution. Against every temptation to force or hurry conversion—a temptation the 1777 edict itself had condemned—Innocent insists that Christianity is first a matter of the heart, that one must “speak from the heart” to reach the heart, and that the faith must be unfolded gradually, in the order in which God Himself unfolded it to humankind, meeting people where their own conscience and their own dim memories of the truth already stand. He assumes that the “natural law” is written on every heart, even the most primitive, and that the missionary’s task is partly to “awaken this feeling” and build upon it rather than to demolish. This respect for the person being evangelized—his language, his understanding, his pace—is what has led later readers to regard the Instructions as a small classic of Christian missiology, and it anticipates by more than a century much of what the wider Church would later say about the inculturation of the Gospel.

The pastoral and personal writings translate the same convictions into other keys. The homilies show the doctrine of the Kingdom made plain enough for a fisherman or a child; the Note on Children’s Education shows the same pastoral realism turned on the Christian heartland, refusing to trust that mere schooling can form the heart; the Testament and Autobiographical Note show a man who preached that the labourer is only an instrument, and who then arranged his own death and reputation to say exactly that. Read together, they are an unusually unified witness: the theology of the instructions is simply the life of the man, seen from the inside.

Reception and Influence

Innocent’s missionary method outlived him. The Orthodox Missionary Society he founded in 1870 carried his approach into the wider Russian Church, and his counsel directly shaped the young missionary Nicholas Kasatkin, later the apostle to Japan, whom he urged to master the Japanese language exactly as he himself had mastered Aleut. His larger devotional work, Indication of the Way into the Kingdom of Heaven, became beloved across Russia; the shorter writings gathered here, long available in Russian in his collected Works, have circulated more quietly, chiefly among those interested in the history and practice of mission. His glorification in 1977—jointly cherished by the Russian Orthodox Church and the Orthodox Church in America—set the seal of the Church’s veneration on the whole of this labour, and secured for these modest documents a permanent place among the memorials of one whom the Church now numbers among the equals of the Apostles.

The Text and This Edition

The six writings in this volume are presented together in a fresh modern English translation prepared for this edition and rendered from the Russian originals as preserved in the public-domain text of St Innocent’s collected works. Each piece was translated on its own terms—the numbered rules of the instructions, the plain homiletic flow of the sermons, the argumentative prose of the note on education, the personal registers of the autobiography and the testament—with care to keep the directness and warmth of the saint’s own voice rather than to smooth it into a uniform style.

This edition follows the house conventions of the series. The author is named as the Church receives him—St Innocent (Veniaminov) of Alaska—and any who assisted in bringing the text into English are credited as translators, never as authors. Scripture and chapter references are given in the modern style. Where the original divides a work into parts, chapters, or numbered points, those divisions are preserved so that the reader can follow the structure the saint himself gave. Because these are minor pieces, best introduced and read as a group, they are gathered under a single introduction; but each retains its own integrity, and the reader may take them in any order—beginning, perhaps, with the Autobiographical Note, to meet the man before hearing his counsel, or with the missionary Instructions, to encounter first the work for which he is most remembered.

Dedication Prayer

“O Jesus Christ! My Good Shepherd! Thou who hast appointed me, unworthy, to be the shepherd of this Thy small flock! I pray Thee, teach me to do Thy will! Grant me Thy voice, to proclaim Thy truth and righteousness, and to them grant hearing, that they may hear and recognize in my voice Thy voice! Give me strength and understanding to preach repentance in Thy name; open their minds and hearts to receive Thy word! And bring it to pass that this my word—or rather Thy word—may fall upon the very heart of them and bring forth Thy fruit! O Lord, hear my prayer. Amen.” (Works of Innocent, Metropolitan of Moscow, vol. 1, p. 37)

Homily One—On the Kingdom of Heaven

For what was man created? For what do we live in the world? This is an important question we must put to ourselves as often as possible! Do we live in the world merely to be born, to live for a while, and then to die, like the other animals? Were we created only to toil, bustle, seek, suffer, and endure our whole lives—and then to disappear? No! We were created for blessedness. To seek blessedness is an indelible and inextinguishable feeling in man; and therefore we see that every man—the wise and the foolish, the savage and the enlightened, the old and the young—all and each desire good for themselves, wish to live better, seek well-being. And although not all seek it in the same way, and not all count the same thing as their supreme good, there is no man in the world who would not wish to be well-off at least as he himself understands it. The savage wishes to be fed and contented. The poor man wishes to be rich; the rich man wishes to have honor and glory; the man of rank wishes to be famous—and so on. In a word, all want to be happy and blessed in their own understanding—this is natural and as it should be. But in what does our well-being consist? Riches? Honor? Pleasures? No—all these are empty, all shadow. Nothing worldly can constitute our true well-being. True, some worldly thing brings us joy and gladness—but for how long? For a moment, no longer. Ask the rich, even those who rose from poverty to wealth—are they happy, are they blessed? But why ask today’s rich? They are all beggars before Solomon. Let us look at this King and hear what he says of himself. Solomon was so rich that all his palace vessels were pure gold; so wise and learned that no man could match him; so mighty that whatever he desired was fulfilled. He enjoyed health, peace, the love of his subjects, the respect of his neighbors; a foreign queen envied even those who served him. Yet was Solomon satisfied with all he had? Was he truly happy? He confessed in his old age: all in the world is vanity of vanities, and all is vanity.—And so, if Solomon could not find well-being in this world, when and where shall we find it? But there is happiness and blessedness for us—eternal happiness, true and unchanging blessedness—the Kingdom of Heaven. This is our true and eternal good! Only in the Kingdom of Heaven will man be perfectly satisfied, eternally happy, always at peace. Apart from the Kingdom of Heaven no one will ever find blessedness. Therefore, brethren! Let all our desires, thoughts, prayers, and efforts be directed to this one end—that we might attain the Kingdom of Heaven. Ah, how happy are those who have attained it!

Let us now consider: what is the Kingdom of Heaven, who may attain it, and how it may be attained.

What is the Kingdom of Heaven, or what does it signify?

1) We know that the Kingdom of Heaven is not an earthly paradise, but a heavenly one; it is a place in the heavens where God Himself dwells, with all the angels and all the holy people. That is, the Kingdom of Heaven is life with God. To be in the Kingdom of Heaven means to abide with God—it means to be in the Kingdom of Heaven. And therefore, every baptized person, every Christian who was Orthodox at the moment of his death, will be in the Kingdom of Heaven.

2) Who can attain the Kingdom of Heaven? We see how often it happens that poor men labor and bustle and try to seek riches for themselves—yet with all their labors and efforts remain poor. And what are all their labors? Vain, useless, and fruitless; and very often the poor man lives and dies in poverty, never having achieved what he sought. Such a man is greatly to be pitied. But far more to be pitied is that Christian who labors all his life yet fails to attain the Kingdom of Heaven.

So which is better: to labor and receive nothing? Or to labor and receive the Kingdom of Heaven? It seems the choice is not difficult.

But—strange thing!—man, for all his reason, all his enlightenment, and all his experience, very often seeks the temporal and leaves the eternal; labors for the empty and neglects the true and real; cares for the acquisition of earthly things and does not think of heavenly ones. How often it happens that for some petty earthly thing we are ready to give much—to endure much hardship, humiliation, and privation; but for our immortal soul and for the Kingdom of Heaven we begrudge even the smallest efforts.

And why this strangeness? Because we desire one thing and not the other; we think incessantly about one and never recall the other—and this is because we love our corruptible body very much while we have not the least love or care for our immortal soul. For example: why did all the saints become saints? Because they thought, morning and night, not about their bodies but about their souls, not about earthly goods but about the Kingdom of Heaven.

To attain earthly goods—riches and honor—one man lacks intelligence, another lacks opportunity, another is hindered by various circumstances, and so on. But anyone can attain the Kingdom of Heaven: rich and poor, noble and simple, those with positions and those without, old and young, a person of great importance and the most ordinary person—all can equally attain the Kingdom of Heaven, if they only will.

3) How can one attain the Kingdom of Heaven? Many think and say that living in the world one cannot attain the Kingdom of Heaven—that one must withdraw from the world into the desert or a monastery. True, it is true that almost all the great saints were anchorites—Abraham, Moses, John the Forerunner, and many others. True, this is true, that the life of a hermit is the very best way to the Kingdom of Heaven; but yet we shall see that one can attain the Kingdom of Heaven while living in the world. For example: look at all those who among us are honored and venerated as saints and called holy—there are among them both monks and those who were not monks; there were among the saints kings and warriors, shepherds and artisans, married people and the celibate, and even robbers—and all of them are in the Kingdom of Heaven.

4) There are people who think that the Kingdom of Heaven can be attained by almsgiving and charity alone—and this is quite true, for Jesus Christ Himself at His second coming will call into the Kingdom of Heaven only those who fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, clothed the naked, and visited the sick. But does this mean that he who gives alms will necessarily be in the Kingdom of Heaven? No—for almsgiving is only one of the conditions for attaining the Kingdom of Heaven, but not the only one.

5) There are also people who say: fulfill the law of God, and you will be in the Kingdom of Heaven. This is true—for the Saviour Himself said that those who fulfill the will of the Heavenly Father will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. But who among men fulfills the will of God perfectly? Who does not sin and does not transgress the law of God? Absolutely everyone sins—there is no person without sin.

6) Finally, some think that the Kingdom of Heaven can be attained by fasting and prayer. True, all the saints fasted; Jesus Christ Himself fasted forty days and forty nights. True, by prayer one can accomplish all things—one can even raise the dead. But what kind of prayer? Perfect prayer—the kind the saints prayed. And how many of us pray as the saints prayed?

From this you see that to attain the Kingdom of Heaven, it is not enough to withdraw from the world, to give alms, to fulfill the Ten Commandments, to fast and to pray—all this is not sufficient. Just as to become a painter it is not enough merely to know how to prepare paints and how to draw—one must have a special talent or gift—so too to attain the Kingdom of Heaven and become an heir of it, one must become a saint.

To be a saint! Is this possible for man? Yes, it is true that many say that it is impossible for us, weak men, to be saints. We are born in sins and cannot live without sinning. True, we are weak and sinful. But were those whom we count as saints not weak and sinful? Surely they too were human beings like us, born in sin, with a body subject to lusts and passions. Yet they became saints and received the Kingdom of Heaven.

Yes, say many—granted that it is possible for man to be a saint, but it is difficult. True, my brethren, truly it is difficult to become a saint—difficult, and let us say frankly, very difficult. But tell me, what comes to us without effort? What can we obtain lying idle? Under a lying stone, water does not flow. Everything valuable, everything good, is obtained with effort. A man of means differs from a beggar in this: the man of means is willing to labor to have what he needs, while the beggar is not willing to labor and therefore has nothing.

It is difficult to become a saint! True—but what is difficult for man and what is not difficult? For man, everything seems difficult and hard that he himself does not desire and that is imposed upon him—even if it is in reality quite easy. On the contrary, everything seems easy and not difficult to him that he himself earnestly desires—even if it is in reality quite hard. So it is with the Kingdom of Heaven and becoming a saint: to him who does not desire it, it seems difficult and impossible; but to him who desires it earnestly, it is not at all difficult.

And so, attaining the Kingdom of Heaven seems impossible and difficult only to one who does not yet have an earnest desire to attain it; but to one who earnestly desires it, who cares about the Kingdom of Heaven day and night, it is not at all difficult or burdensome. And it is even so easy and sweet to his heart that no promises, no enticements can divert him from his path—as every saint shows by example.

Many think that if we think and care only about the Kingdom of Heaven, all our worldly affairs and duties will stop and collapse. Ah! How unjust this is—how even offensive to God to think this way! Jesus Christ does not command us to abandon and completely forsake all the duties of this life. He commanded us to seek the Kingdom of Heaven, but added at once: Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. So you see that He does not order us to leave the world—only to love it less.

Therefore, brethren! If we wish to be happy and blessed, let us seek the Kingdom of Heaven with earnestness, let us strive to receive the Holy Spirit and to become holy.

But how to receive the Holy Spirit—of this we shall speak another time.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you, brethren! Amen.

Homily Two—On Receiving the Holy Spirit and Repentance

Thus preached Jesus Christ. In our last conversation we spoke about how all our happiness and well-being consist in the Kingdom of Heaven; and that to attain the Kingdom of Heaven it is not enough to fulfill the law of God, or to withdraw from the world, or to give alms, to fast and to pray—but one must receive the Holy Spirit.

Let us now see how one can receive the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is God, the third Person of the Holy Trinity. He is just as omnipotent as the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit is just as omnipresent as the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit need not be sought somewhere in some special place. He is always with us, always surrounds us; and as soon as He finds in someone—even in the greatest sinner—even the slightest receptiveness and readiness, He immediately begins to act in him.

How sins act in man we know, and to our misfortune experience very often in ourselves; but how does the Holy Spirit act in the man in whom He dwells? The Holy Spirit acts inwardly in man—directing his will toward good; giving him strength to resist temptations; brightening his mind; warming his heart with love for God and for his neighbor; and finally, in the person who has received the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit produces prayer and contrition—and through these gradually removes and cleanses from him all impurity of soul, and fills him with love and peace and joy, leading him in time to perfect holiness and to the Kingdom of Heaven.

Many say that the gift of the Holy Spirit such as the Apostles had cannot be received by anyone else. Let us grant this is true—for the Apostles had, so to speak, the fullness of the Holy Spirit, and such fullness was needed for the planting of the faith. But everyone can receive the Holy Spirit to the degree necessary for his own personal salvation and blessedness—just as all the saints received Him and acted in His power.

As the Holy Spirit acted in all the saints, or as all the saints acted in the power of the Holy Spirit, so likewise can every man act who is counted worthy to receive the Holy Spirit and in whom the Holy Spirit dwells.

But who today receives the Holy Spirit?

But how merciful is our God! Ah, how untiringly and unceasingly He cares for our salvation! Although man by his iniquities and depravity drives the Holy Spirit away from himself, yet the Holy Spirit does not abandon and does not forsake the sinner until death itself. However sinful and depraved a man may be, the Holy Spirit is always near him—and as soon as he shows the least desire and effort to reform himself, the Holy Spirit is already at work in him.

We read in the Acts of the Apostles that the Holy Spirit visibly descended upon the centurion Cornelius, who had not yet been baptized, did not yet believe in Jesus Christ, and was only then for the first time hearing the preaching of the Apostle Peter—yet notwithstanding, the Holy Spirit visibly descended upon him and upon all the pagans who were with him.

So then, by what means can one receive the Holy Spirit? First—by holy baptism, by which the soul of man is washed from every sin and sealed with the eternal, indelible seal of the Gift of the Holy Spirit; second—by strict fulfillment of the law of God and the preservation of purity of heart and morals.

But how can those sinners who have not kept the law of God and have not preserved purity of heart and morals receive the Holy Spirit? How can those who, having been baptized, cannot be baptized a second time, receive the Holy Spirit?

For such people, God in His great mercy has granted two means—namely, repentance and Holy Communion: repentance, which the Church calls the second baptism, while Holy Communion is the beginning of man’s sanctification. These are for us sinners the two most effective means of receiving the Holy Spirit.

Let us now look at the repentance of the prodigal son. Jesus Christ says that the prodigal son, tormented by hunger, finally came to himself—that is, began to reflect on his situation; and seeing his inevitable ruin, he said: Ah! How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, while I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father.—And he arose and went to his father. This is what Jesus Christ calls repentance.

Here is an example of true repentance. See how the repentant prodigal son acted. 1) He came to himself, examined his whole life, reflected, came to his senses, and saw that he had lost and squandered the inheritance of his good father; that he had offended him by his insolence and grieved his tender heart; and that he, who had been a free son and heir, had become the last of slaves—a swineherd. And having thus reflected and come to himself, he was overcome with sorrow, shame, and grief.

So every man, always—and especially in affliction or misfortune—must first of all turn his attention to the state of his soul; must ponder and feel the whole ugliness and magnitude of his sins, and grieve, be sorry, and repent from the heart that he has angered God, his gracious Father. All this is called repentance.

2) The prodigal son felt the whole magnitude of his guilt, but did not despair of his father’s mercy; he entertained a firm hope in him as a good father, and was even confident that he would receive him.—So likewise, every penitent sinner must never despair of God’s mercy, but must always and firmly hope in His goodness.

3) The prodigal son, having conceived hope in his father, did not remain any longer in his former place, did not postpone his return, but straightway arose and went to his father—and once set upon his way, did not turn back to the place and objects of his debauchery, but immediately and without stopping, went straight to his father.

So every man who wishes to return to God must not delay, must not put off his conversion from time to time, but must immediately bring repentance—and return no more to his former sins.

4) The prodigal son went to his father not with hope and confidence alone, but also with a contrite heart: he went specifically in order to give himself up, as a criminal, as a guilty one, to the full justice of his father; he begged his father to receive him out of mercy, not as a son but as one of the hired servants—that is, as the last person of all. Such complete submission to the will of God must also accompany repentance.

So the penitent sinner must not only hope in God, but at the same time give himself over to His full will: let God, if it please Him, punish us for our sins—if only He will receive us to Himself.

How did his father treat the prodigal son? Did he repulse his petition? Did he drive him away? No. His good father could never forget him, grieved for him as for a lost son, and although he had no hope of seeing him again, yet by the drawing of his heart he looked every day in the direction in which he had gone—and at last saw him from afar, and while he was yet a great way off, ran to meet him, fell on his neck, wept, and kissed him. This is how God treats every sinner who repents and returns to Him.

Therefore, my brethren! We, who have imitated the prodigal son in his dissolute conduct—and perhaps have imitated him very zealously—let us imitate him also in his conversion; let us always have the feeling of repentance, let us sincerely and as often as possible be sorry and repent for our sins; let us feel our iniquity and our remoteness from God; and with complete submission let us cast ourselves at the feet of our Heavenly Father—and He will receive us and forgive us everything.

It now remains to show what confession is, and what Holy Communion is—but of this we shall speak another time.

The grace of God the Father be with your spirit, brethren. Amen.

Homily Three—On the Five Conditions for a Fruitful Confession

The words of Jesus Christ Himself.

Jesus Christ calls all and each to repentance; He is ready to receive and forgive all and each penitent; He says that for one sinner who repents there is more joy in heaven than over ninety-nine righteous persons. Do you hear, brethren, how dear the repentance of even one sinner is to God?

In our last conversation I said that we sinners can receive the Holy Spirit through repentance and Holy Communion; and then I said that repentance is one thing, and confession another—and that repentance without confession can be beneficial, but confession without repentance never benefits. Today I intend to speak of confession—what it is, and what must be done at confession.

What is confession? Confession is the consequence and continuation of repentance. The man who feels in his soul sorrow for sins, who grieves and repents in his heart that he has angered God, his merciful Father—this means that this man is making repentance. And when this repentant man goes to the priest and tells him all his sins aloud—that is called confession.

Here we shall offer the simplest analogy and comparison for confession. For example: if you had but one vessel—let us say simply, if you had but one piece of crockery—received as an inheritance from your ancestors, which you, through negligence or carelessness, had defiled and made foul: what would you do? Surely you would think it a pity to break it, and would immediately set about cleaning it—you would pour out the filth, wash it with water, and scour it with fire—that it might become clean again.

To pour out the filth from the vessel means to confess one’s sins before the confessor; and to wash with water and scour with fire means: heartfelt and even tearful contrition, and voluntary taking up of the cross of Jesus Christ—or voluntary resolution to endure all the burdens and sorrows of this life patiently, and to refrain from sins.

1) One must have firm faith and hope in Jesus Christ.

2) One must have contrition and compassion for the fact that we have angered God.

3) One must forgive all one’s enemies and those who have offended us all the wrongs they have done us.

4) Without any concealment, cleanly and openly to declare one’s sins before the confessor.

5) To lay a firm intention to live more carefully in the future.

These are the things that must be done by one who wishes God to forgive his sins.

Let us now examine these obligations in order.

1) First of all, one must know and believe that God is one, in three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; that the second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Son of God, in His mercy was on earth, was born of the Virgin Mary, revealed the truth to us, and by His own will suffered and died on the cross for our salvation; that on the third day He rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father, and again shall come to judge the living and the dead. This is what faith in Jesus Christ means—and without this faith confession is impossible.

2) One must have a contrite heart.

Who is God? And who are we? God is the almighty Creator of heaven and earth; He is the awesome and just Judge—while we? We are weak and worthless mortals. All people—even the greatest—before God are less than dust; and we can never conceive how great and majestic God is. And yet, knowing all this, we dare to sin before Him, to transgress His law, to forget Him—and thereby to grieve His fatherly heart. This is why we ought to grieve and weep.

3) One must forgive all one’s enemies and those who have offended and wronged us in any harmful or insulting way.

At first glance it seems very hard to forgive offenses to one’s enemies; but he who has experience, who has a worldly sense of his own honor and of himself, knows how difficult it is—knows how hard it is to forgive one who has insulted our innocent honor, who shamelessly and basely lied about us, who ruined our reputation, who offended our dearest loved ones. These are the bitterest offenses—and yet we must forgive even these.

To forgive: what does it mean? To forgive means never to avenge, either secretly or openly; never to recall; to leave off entirely; to forget completely—and beyond that to love one’s enemy as a friend, as a brother, as a dear one; to defend his honor and render him his due. To forgive thus completely is very, very difficult for us human beings. But we must forgive thus—no other way.

Truly, he who knows how to conquer himself and suppress his ambition, pride, and self-love, and who has the strength to compel himself to show love and render justice to his enemy—such a man is an extraordinary man even in the estimation of the world—and this is truly a heroic feat, greater and more glorious in the eyes of God than any other heroic feat.

But if one must forgive one’s enemies, then it is equally necessary to ask forgiveness of those whom we have offended. If you have personally offended someone, personally ask forgiveness—come and bow at their feet, and say: forgive me; if you offended someone secretly, seek forgiveness secretly; if you offended someone in public, seek forgiveness publicly.

Is asking forgiveness easy? It is both easy and difficult: it is easy to ask forgiveness of one’s superiors and authorities, as many do even without any need. It is also not very hard to ask forgiveness of equals. But to ask forgiveness of those lower than oneself—well, this is very hard. Yet we must do this too.

Here it is fitting to mention one opinion. Many think and say that it is not always or to everyone that one can forgive or ask forgiveness—for in some cases this may weaken the force of civic order and discipline. To this one can reply that no confession or church commandment tells you to forgive the external offense against your honor before civil authorities; confession only requires you to forgive inwardly—in your heart.

4) One must openly and without concealment declare one’s sins. Why declare our sins to One who knows all our secrets, say some? Certainly not in order that God might not know of them—but we must declare them so as thereby to render a guilty plea and accept the judgment of the Church, and that the priest, as the physician of souls, may prescribe the necessary remedy.

5) Finally, one must lay a firm intention to live more carefully in the future.—This is the most difficult obligation! All the other obligations—to believe and hope in Jesus Christ, to have a contrite heart, to conceal nothing at confession—are relatively easy, and even very easy. But a firm intention to reform one’s life and to strive not to sin—this is the most difficult.

But he who has no intention at all of changing his life; he who does not wish to abandon a single sin—let him not approach confession. I say this here before the face of God: he who thinks not at all of reforming himself confesses in vain and receives Communion in vain—this is a fearful thing, brethren, a fearful thing.

Hear, brethren: the Church commands, after confession, to live as carefully as possible and not to return to the former sinful life, but to begin a new and holy life. Therefore, my brethren, I beg you, for God’s sake, for the sake of your salvation, have the intention and try as far as possible to leave off at least the most dangerous and habitual sins.

These are all the obligations that must be fulfilled at confession; and he who fulfills them fully may be assured that all his sins will be forgiven him, and he will little by little receive the grace of the Holy Spirit, and will at last become holy and attain the Kingdom of Heaven.

To this we shall add a few more observations. First, let us say something in general about sins: there are mortal sins and non-mortal sins; there are known sins and unknown sins; and there are voluntary sins and involuntary sins, and so on.

What are mortal sins? On one hand, every sin in itself is mortal—because it makes man a transgressor of the law of God and thereby subjects him to condemnation; but on the other hand, there is no sin that cannot be forgiven to a penitent man—except the sin against the Holy Spirit, which is hardened, deliberate persistence in sin even to death.

And so there is no need to know precisely which sins are mortal and which are not; a man with even the smallest and most ordinary sins can perish eternally, if he does not care for them, grieve over them, and if he does not repent in time. But on the contrary, even the greatest sinner can be saved, if he repents—as we see in the example of the robber on the cross.

And so you see that one must by no means neglect even a small sin, and still less must one consider oneself less sinful than others. Secondly, there are voluntary and involuntary sins.

We shall call involuntary those sins which are committed either from necessity, or from circumstances, or from one’s calling, or even from weakness; but we shall call voluntary those sins which are committed not from human weakness, not from necessity, but solely from an evil habit or from a complete lack of care for the soul.

Those who commit voluntary sins resemble a man who, walking through a swamp, loads himself with various entirely unnecessary burdens—and thereby sinks ever deeper and deeper.

He who has the habit of indulging in voluntary sins shows that he has entirely forgotten God, that he thinks and cares nothing for salvation—and his heart has grown too hard and stony.

Therefore, brethren, let us form the intention after confession to avoid, at the very least, voluntary sins by every means. This is quite easy; and in the meantime it will little by little bring us nearer to the Kingdom of Heaven—while God, seeing our intention and effort, will give us the strength to avoid other sins as well.

There are also people who count small sins as great and worry about them too much, while thinking almost nothing of heavy and great sins. For example: inadvertently eating meat on a fast day, or eating before the Liturgy on a feast day, they count as grave sins—while a man can be cruel to those beneath him, can drink, can curse and abuse, and give no thought to it at all.

And so one must be prudently careful: one must not forget oneself entirely, but one need not worry too much over small sins. Strive to change the very heart—and then everything will change: cut down the dry root, and the branches will fall off of themselves, and fresh ones will grow in their place.

This is all that one who wishes to be cleansed from sins through confession needs to know. Believe and hope in Jesus Christ; have a contrite heart and openly confess your sins; forgive all your enemies and adversaries; and finally, strive as far as possible to live more carefully—and then God will forgive you all your sins through the prayer of the priest.

The grace of God be with you. Amen.

Homily Four—On Holy Communion

Our Saviour Jesus Christ offers us the cup of life and immortality, and without any exception calls all and each—whoever will, whoever is tormented by spiritual thirst, whoever is assured that this drink can quench his thirst—to come and drink. What great love! What tender, fatherly care for us! Hear, brethren, the voice of our Saviour: If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink John 7:37.

And what is Holy Communion? It is fire—burning and consuming the root and branches of sins; it is an all-healing medicine for all ailments and sorrows; and it is the foundation or cornerstone of the soul’s sanctification. Holy Communion is the sure pledge of eternal life—the very beginning of the transformation of our mortal, sinful nature into an immortal, holy, and incorruptible nature.

And tell me, brethren—is it not unreasonable of those who do not come and themselves refuse to receive the Holy Mysteries? Ah! They do not know or understand that such conduct is not only unreasonable but even ruinous. By their refusal and negligence they not only deprive themselves of everything—they even incur a new and serious guilt before God.

Many say: no, we do not despise the Holy Sacrament—but we are unworthy to approach it because we are great sinners. True, it is fearful to approach the Holy Mysteries unworthily—for he who receives the Holy Mysteries unworthily eats and drinks judgment to himself. But who, tell me, is worthy of such a great gift?

But if one judges strictly: what man is worthy of the Holy Mysteries? Who in the world can consider himself worthy to receive the most precious Body and Blood of Jesus Christ? Ascetics? Anchorites? No—even the greatest saints counted themselves unworthy. For example, John Chrysostom, in the prayer which all priests read before the Liturgy, says of himself that he is the chief of sinners.

And this means that he is in a very dangerous state—he is mortally sick in soul, he has drunk poison from the cup of Babylon; and woe, woe to him who feels no such inward spiritual thirst! Woe to him when the time of this intoxication has passed—and then, then he will feel what he has lost.

Therefore, brethren, for God’s sake, for the sake of Jesus Christ, have the desire not to refuse the reception of the Holy Mysteries—this is fearful! The ancient Christians received the Holy Mysteries every feast day, every Sunday—and therefore they were and could be true Christians. And that is why they endured so much, suffered so much, and yet remained firm in the faith!

Let me now say briefly what is needed in order to receive the Holy Mysteries worthily.

Jesus Christ says: If any man thirst — that is, if any man feels an inward thirst of soul, feels a spiritual need, sees that he is weak in soul and cannot resist sins and temptations—let him come and drink. But here is what one must observe.

1) One must believe that this sacrament was established and handed down to us by Jesus Christ Himself on the last evening before His passion. Believe that the bread you receive is the very most pure Body of Jesus Christ; believe that the wine you drink from the chalice is the very most precious Blood of Jesus Christ. Without this faith, Communion will bring no benefit.

2) Before receiving the Holy Mysteries, one must enter into oneself and examine one’s soul—whether there are sins in it; and if there are, one must cleanse oneself through confession and receive absolution from sins in the name of the Church.

And 3) The most important: one must have no enmity, no malice—but be reconciled with all and forgive all. Enmity and malice are such an obstacle to receiving the Holy Mysteries that no prayers, no fasting—in a word, no preparations can remove it. And so be reconciled first, and then come.

These are all the things one must observe when wishing to receive the Holy Mysteries worthily—beyond this Jesus Christ requires nothing more of us.

Some say they cannot receive the Holy Mysteries because they have not kept the fast. Of course, our Church commands us to fast and keep the Lenten season, for the Saviour Himself fasted forty days and forty nights; but what is a true fast? Many think that a fast consists only in not eating meat and dairy foods—but this is not the main thing. The main thing is the fast of the soul.

And so, when we are fasting, one must eat only enough not to lose one’s appetite entirely; and especially it will be best for one who has any bad habit or vice—such as cursing, judging others, or drinking—to leave it off at this time. For this is the best and most necessary fast.

Of course, it is unwise to break the fast without need—the consumption of non-fasting food is not permissible; he who can keep the fast by a choice of foods, let him do so. But the main thing is to keep and not break the fast of the soul—and then your fast will be pleasing to God. But he who observes only the external fast while allowing himself to abuse others, to judge, to quarrel, to drink—his fast will be of no benefit.

And so you see, brethren, that apart from enmity and malice, nothing forbids us from receiving the Holy Mysteries! But one must remember that one should never approach the Holy Mysteries with a cold soul and with indifference—rather, every Christian must always have a good and warm desire for the Communion of the Body and Blood of the Lord.

And even if you feel that you are trying to live very carefully and can keep the law of God—even then count yourself unworthy—for all the good you have done has been done not by your own strength, but by the power of God; and therefore this is not your virtue—and therefore you have nothing to boast of.

After all that has been said above, it is necessary to mention what one must observe after receiving the Holy Mysteries.

1) As soon as you have been counted worthy to receive the Holy Mysteries, give thanks to Jesus Christ with all your soul and all your heart for not having rejected you, despite your unworthiness; give thanks that this King of glory has condescended to enter the poor dwelling of your soul. And then beg Him earnestly not to depart from you but to abide in you forever.

2) After receiving the Holy Mysteries, strive for as long as possible to meditate upon the greatness of this sacrament, and do not immediately direct your thoughts to your ordinary occupations.

3) The most important: try at least somewhat to change your life, and thereby keep the Divine Guest in your soul as long as possible; be more careful and attentive in your actions; recall as often as possible—or at least occasionally—the grace that you have received.

Therefore, my brethren! I have told you all that those who fast and keep the Lenten season need to know! Happy and supremely happy is he who fully fulfills all the obligations of a penitent—for he will receive the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit will lead him to the Kingdom of Heaven. Happy also is he who partially fulfills these obligations; for he too will receive a measure of grace, and with grace he can and will improve.

But unhappy is the man who after confession and Holy Communion in no way wishes to change his life and in no way strives to refrain from sins. Wretched is that man who thinks not at all and does not take care that after his Lenten season his life should become somewhat better—who immediately after returning home gives himself over to his former habits.

Therefore I beseech you, my brethren! For the sake of God who created us, for the sake of Jesus Christ who shed His blood for us, for the sake of our salvation which we all desire, and for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven which is destined to be our eternal home—strive, use all your strength and all your care to come to confession and Holy Communion as often as possible—and not to remain empty and cold after them, but to strive with all your strength to change your life. And the Holy Spirit—the Comforter, the Spirit of truth and holiness—will gradually enlighten and purify and warm and strengthen you, and will lead you imperceptibly to where all the saints are.

Scripture Index

Every Scripture reference identified in this book, sorted in canonical Bible order. Tap a reference to jump to the verse where it appears.

John

John 7:375. Homily Four—On Holy Communion

Colophon

Homilies for Fasting Penitents
by Saint Innocent of Alaska.

This edition was produced by
Royal Archives.

The cover features
The Hermit (c. 1888–90, GRM)
by Mikhail Nesterov (Russian, 1862–1942), Wikimedia Commons, which is in the public domain.

The text is set in Palatino and Georgia.

The first edition of this ebook was released on
August 16, 2026.

Table of Contents

- Title Page
- Copyright
- Introduction
- Dedication Prayer
- Homily One—On the Kingdom of Heaven

- Homily Two—On Receiving the Holy Spirit and Repentance

- Homily Three—On the Five Conditions for a Fruitful Confession

- Homily Four—On Holy Communion
- Scripture Index
- Colophon