Plânsul de bucurie făcător ca însușire nativă a Ortodoxiei
Joy-creating mourning as an innate characteristic of Orthodoxy

Summary/Abstract: Repentance is one of the most precious gifts that God has left to humanity out of love for people. This gift enables man to wash his baptismal garment with which we will enter the Wedding of the Lamb (Rev 19, 9), but with a sure determination to change his life totally and turn it towards God. In the process of repentance, tears are evidence of the most sincere feelings of repentance for the loss of the purpose of life, which is salvation. Just as from a human point of view we weep for the loss of a loved one, from a spiritual point of view the tears are not shed to someone else but towards my own soul, afflicted by sin. If the goal of spiritual sadness is not from this world but is aimed at the attainment of salvation for which God has prepared us, then the tears shed in repentance cannot be compared to bodily tears either, but being the gift and fruit of the Holy Spirit, they can be called „the tears that cause joy”. The Penthikoi saints are those who have lived most intimately in their lives the continuous baptismal gift of purification through tears, and because of that, this study is based on the words and experiences of the saints and especially on the work of Saint John Sinaites.

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