On Repentance and Confession

Summary

In the sharpest of these talks, Dimitrios Panagopoulos examines financial injustice as an obstacle to genuine repentance. Tax evasion, dishonest dealing, and theft must be brought into confession, and the commandment stands whether the injured party is poor or rich, an individual, a company, or the state (Exodus 20:15); it is better to suffer injustice than to commit it. Confession cannot erase a wrong while restitution remains possible, and stolen money is not sanctified by being given to charity. He names customs fraud, false prices and documents, petty deception in the market, manipulated inheritances, and the seizure of relatives' property, and warns most severely against appropriating what belongs to a church or monastery, illustrating this from Saint Spyridon and Saint Parthenios. Every injustice is to be repaired within this life.