Failing Daily, Forgiven Always: Finding Humility Through Orthodox Faith

What eight hours in church yesterday and a difficult Lent is teaching me

One of my closest friends called yesterday and shared something their priest has been saying throughout this Lenten season:

“Lent is an opportunity for us to see how much we fail, and how much we are forgiven by God and shown grace.”

I love that, because my physical suffering aside, this Lent has been one of the more emotionally and spiritually difficult ones I have known. Each day has brought with it a renewed awareness of my own weakness and sin. Yet it has also brought a deeper realization of God’s mercy, which meets me unfailingly where I fall.

I have known the friend who called for decades. They are the kind of person who could confront me about nearly any sin or failure, and I would not be offended. I respect them deeply, not because they are flawless, but because they are so open about their own shortcomings. There is something profoundly disarming about humility. When people do not hide behind a “holier than thou” attitude, it becomes far easier to accept their criticism. At least for me, it does.

My spiritual father is much the same. He does not conceal his failures or pretend that he walks without sin. More often than not, he will tell me, “Who am I? I am nothing. All I have is Christ. So I have no reason to have pride, because I am nothing, and He is everything.” In those words lies a truth that is both sobering and liberating. Pride is suffocated when we remember that everything we possess comes from Him.

As I write this, it is early in the morning on April 10. Yesterday was Holy Thursday. Perhaps I should have stayed home, as I am still in the final stages of recovering from a month-long battle with illness and back problems. But because of the great sinner I am, I wanted only to spend as much time as possible in the sanctuary, whispering, “Lord, have mercy.”

And so I was in church for nearly eight hours yesterday between the two services. Last night was the service of the Twelve Gospels. If you have never experienced it, it is one of the most grueling and yet most beautiful services of the year.

It can last nearly four hours as we listen to readings that feel like the very heart of the Gospels laid bare before us.

Midway through the service, after the sun has set, all the lights in the church are extinguished. Candles are lit, and in their trembling glow the priest processes through the sanctuary carrying a great cross bearing our crucified Lord, while a hymn of mourning and thanksgiving is chanted. People kneel. People prostrate themselves. People bow.

In that solemn darkness, time itself seems to slow. The world beyond the church walls fades into silence, and one stands not merely as an observer of history, but as a witness to it. The Cross is no longer a distant symbol, but a present reality. We are reminded that our sins are not abstractions, but wounds forgiven by Christ Himself.

It is a gift of the ancient Church to offer such a miraculous and beautiful moment in the midst of standing for hours to hear the Gospel proclaimed. The body grows weary, yet the soul is awakened. What appears burdensome becomes, by grace, a blessing.

Beauty and sorrow intertwine. We are reminded of what sinners we are, and of how completely God’s grace covers the penitent. So many emotions filled me last night that I left feeling far lighter than when I arrived, as though some invisible weight had been lifted from my shoulders.

For in beholding the Cross, we do not merely see suffering. We behold love, poured out without measure, calling even the most unworthy of us to repentance and to hope.

There is something about praying with the Body of Christ that transcends solitude. To pray with one’s closest friends and family for four hours late into the night on Holy Thursday is an experience that transforms the soul. The candles, the hymns, the solemn readings, and the quiet reverence of the faithful seem to lift the heart beyond the limits of this world and place it gently at the foot of the Cross.

Yet even there, I struggled. Some older parishioners managed to irritate me for things I shouldn’t have been irritated by, and so I found myself repenting even on Holy Thursday for judging others, when my entire attention should have been fixed on Christ and Christ alone.

Once again, even in the midst of a multi-hour service of repentance, there I was sinning against others once again.

Throughout this Lenten period, I have written more honestly on Becoming Orthodox than usual. Personal essays have flowed almost unbidden. It has been difficult to do otherwise.

Later today, I will spend most of the day teaching classes on Church history, yet in the back of my mind will remain the persistent awareness of how often I fail during Lent, and how faithfully God forgives me.

I can easily become discouraged. There lingers within me a skewed notion that I ought to be above making mistakes. When I judge, when I speak out of turn, when I correct others unnecessarily, I am reminded that I am still a work in progress. Grace does not erase our humanity; it redeems it. Sanctification is not a sudden transformation but a patient and lifelong surrender.

I am learning to live more quietly.

Perhaps that is what is changing in me more than anything else. I am beginning to see that the obsession with extroversion in Western culture does not amount to much that is meaningful. Noise is not the same as substance, and visibility is not the same as virtue.

There is a holiness in quietness, a sanctity in restraint. To stand silently before the presence of the Lord, to pray softly as we walk through the chaos of everyday life, to speak less and listen more, these are disciplines that shape the soul.

It is hard to do.

Silence exposes us. In the stillness, we cannot hide from ourselves or from God. We discover the restlessness of our hearts and the depth of our need for mercy. Yet it is precisely there, in that sacred quiet, that Christ meets us. He does not shout above the clamor of the world; He waits patiently for us to turn toward Him.

Lent, then, is not merely a season of sorrow but a school of grace. It teaches us that failure is not the end of the story. Each confession is a doorway, each repentance a return home. The God who reveals our sins is the same God who forgives them, and He reveals them not to condemn us, but to heal us.

And so I press forward, chastened yet encouraged, wounded yet healed, humbled yet hopeful. For if Lent teaches me anything, it is this: that my failures are many, but God’s grace is greater still. In that truth, I find both my comfort and my salvation.

~Kenneth

Furthermore,

Tonight we will commemorate Holy Friday, and tomorrow we will celebrate Pascha. The joy of anticipation that fills me as I contemplate yet another year of experiencing this heavenly worship is difficult to put into words. It feels as though the soul stands at the threshold of eternity, waiting for the stone to be rolled away and for the first light of the Resurrection to dawn.

For this is the great rhythm of the Christian life. We pass through sorrow to joy, through darkness to light, through death to life. The Cross is not the end of the story, but its beginning, and the tomb is not a prison, but a doorway. In Christ, even the grave is transformed into a place of hope.

Thank you for spending this Lenten season with me and for reading my reflections. Your encouragement and kindness have meant more than I can adequately express. I pray that each of you may be mightily blessed by God for the generosity you have shown toward me.

No matter what thread of Christianity you come from, or what denomination you attend each Sunday, may your hearts be blessed with the peace that comes from the Risen Lord.