What is the role of the tears of repentance in our lives?

The first thing that sin does is to destroy one’s spiritual (inner) sight so that he loses his sight of God the Lover of humanity and the acknowledgment of the corruption he is in. Through love, the tears of repentance flow and the Lord opens the person’s sight as He did with the man born blind who washed in the pool of Siloam (John 9). Through tears, we see the divine beauty and cannot tolerate the uncleanness and corruption of sin.

St. Jacob of Sarug says, “Repentance requires me to offer her tears, for they are much loved by her. When the soul commits sin, sin destroys the soul’s love and distorts her vision, so that she does not weep for her corruption … If the soul fixed her eyes on God, regret comes quickly and opens the closed doors. She sees how abhorrent the sin she committed was and sees her weaknesses which she could not see when she committed it.”