Are there any practical steps to support us in the life of repentance?

First: Involve children in crying with us to God . How wonderful is the participation of the children when we offer communal repentance as did the people of Nineveh.

St. Basil the Great says, “Oh, what concerted repentance! What wise and intense affliction! They did not even leave the animals outside this discipline but devised a way to compel them to cry out as well. They separated the calf from its mother and prevented the lamb from nursing; took suckling children from the arms of their mothers. The mothers were placed in one enclosure, the children in another, calling out and replying to one another with plaintive voices. The hungry children sought the source of their milk, while the mothers were pierced by the sufferings of maternal instinct and cried out to their children with anguished voices. Hungry infants screamed and grasped with the most urgent cries, while the mothers’ hearts were tormented with the pangs of natural affection. And for this reason, the inspired word preserved the account of their repentance as a universal example of how to live. The elders mourned on account of the threatened chastisement, tearing at their gray hairs. The young and those in their prime lamented even more fervently. Paupers groaned, while the rich forgot their comforts and put on sackcloth as befits those who mourn. The king of Nineveh himself turned his glory and splendor into shame. He put aside his crown and poured dust on his head; he cast off his royal garment and put on sackcloth. He left his high and exalted throne and crawled pitifully on the ground. He forsook luxuries that belonged to him as king in order to grieve together with the people; he became one of them, when he saw the wrath of the common Master of all (Jonah 3:6–10).”¹⁴⁴⁹

Second: Imitate the blessed David , who drenched his couch with his tears (Ps. 6:6).

Third: Support repentance with fasting . St. Basil the Great says, “If Eve had practiced fasting and avoided eating from the fruit of this tree, we would not have needed this fast now. For ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick’ (Matt. 9:12). For our sin brought sickness upon us, so let us be healed through repentance, yet repentance without fasting is futile. ‘Cursed is the ground for your sake … both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you’ (Gen. 3:17–18).”