“More than all have I sinned;
I alone have sinned against You.
O God my Savior,
Have compassion upon me, Your creature.
There has never been a sin, a deed, an evil act
Which I have not cherished, O Savior.
I have sinned in thoughts, words and deeds,
And no one has sinned more than I.”
Thus begins the penitential canon of St. Andrew of Crete, chanted during the first of Lent in the Orthodox Church. But is it really right to say that I have sinned more than all others and that there is no sin which I have never cherished? Father Thomas Hopko, in his book, The Lenten Spring, provides this response:
Every person stands alone before God….Standing before God, one does not look at others. One looks only at God….In my unique personality, in the life which my Maker has given to me, with what I have received from my bountiful Lord, I have truly surpassed all in my sins!…[Each of us], in the spiritual uniqueness of his or her own life–especially in the Church of Christ where willful, lustful thoughts are fornication and adultery, and hidden movements of anger and judgment are torture and murder, and the failure to share is thievery, and the failure to give is covetous idolatry–will say with St. Paul with perfect conviction that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the first.”
