Reviewing the Conscience

From Monachos Patristic Quotations Index

St Hesychius the Priest (8th/9th cent.?)

'St Basil the Great, mouthpiece of Christ and pillar of the Church, says that a great help towards not sinning and not committing daily the same faults is for us to review in our conscience at the end of each day what we have done wrong and what we have done right. Job did this with regard both to himself and to his children (cf. Job 1.5). These daily reckonings illumine a man's hour-by-hour behaviour.' (On Watchfulness and Holiness, 65; in the Philokalia, vol. i, p. 174.)

Note: For an example of St Basil speaking on these terms, as St Hesychios mentions, see St Basil the Great, An Ascetic Discourse (ed. W. Lowther Clarke, The Ascetic Works of St Basil; London: 1925), p. 139.