Penthos - Sorrow of the Heart
“For godly sorrow produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret, but worldly sorrow produces death. For godly sorrow produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret, but worldly sorrow produces death””
"Whoever knows the weight of his sins
is greater than the one who raises the dead through his prayer.Whoever groans for one hour over his own soul
is greater than the one who benefits the whole world.Whoever has been granted to see himself
is greater than the one who has been granted to see angels.To the one who has come to know himself,
the knowledge of all things is given.
For the knowledge of oneself is the fullness
of the knowledge of all things."- Isaac the Syrian
Positive Psychology vs. Holy Sorrow
When the West emphasizes positive psychology, it often focuses on cultivating values like gratitude, resilience, optimism, and well-being. These are good and necessary aspects of human flourishing, but too often they bypass the deeper work of contrition and repentance. The contemporary Western mind sometimes seeks to manage suffering rather than redeem it, treating symptoms rather than digging out the spiritual roots.
By contrast, Eastern Christianity, Orthodox and Eastern Catholic, preserves an ancient understanding that true healing comes not just through behavior modification or mindset shifts, but through a broken and contrite heart (Ps 51).
The East continues to carry the gift of tears, a charism not of despair, but of cleansing. In this tradition, tears are seen not as weakness, but as a powerful sign of grace: a response to the awareness of sin and a longing for union with God. The East teaches that repentance is not a one-time act, but a way of life, a continuous turning back to God, and it is precisely this path that leads to joy and healing at the deepest levels of the human soul.
“First pray for the gift of tears, so that through sorrowing you may tame what is savage in your soul. And having confessed your transgressions to the Lord, you will obtain forgiveness from Him.”
On May 14, 2025 in his address to members of the Eastern Catholic Churches, Pope Leo XIV recalled the figure of Pope Leo XIII, who invited Eastern Christians to “cultivate their traditions, to preserve their identity and to avoid any form of ‘Latinization.’”
In a time when the Western world often turns to therapeutic models that promote emotional resilience, mental reframing, and optimistic self-talk, hallmarks of positive psychology, the Eastern Christian tradition offers something far older, deeper, and spiritually transformative: the path of compunction. Pope Leo XIV continues in his prophetic voice:
“It is likewise important to rediscover, especially in the Christian West, a sense of the primacy of God, the importance of mystagogy and the values so typical of Eastern spirituality: constant intercession, penance, fasting, and weeping for one’s own sins and for those of all humanity (penthos)!”
The Gift of Tears: Healing Through Compunction
I see more and more positive psychology in the Charismatic circles. While some of its value agrees with science and can be helpful, without a theology of the cross, of sin, and of redemptive suffering, the help that is proposed based on just this framework risks becoming shallow. In the modern West, even within much of charismatic Christianity, we see a tendency to replace repentance with affirmation, sorrow with motivation. We focus so heavily on breakthrough, gifts, identity, and inner healing, that we bypass the desert - the very place where the Holy Spirit led Christ right after His baptism. We seek fire without purification, joy without sorrow, resurrection without crucifixion. Emotional health, positivity, empowerment - these are now considered the high marks of spirituality. While not inherently bad, they can become substitutes for the deeper spiritual realities: contrition, holy sorrow, mourning, humility, purification, compunction, true peace.
Where the West might look to regulate emotions or optimize happiness through cognitive tools, the East enters into the sacred wound. It does not fear sorrow when it is holy. It treasures tears when they are born of genuine contrition. The East has not forgotten that healing flows not from denial of sin but from its naming, and its transformation through grace. Fasting, prostrations, litanies of mercy - these are not outdated practices, but soul medicine for a world still bleeding from pride, injustice, and unconfessed sin followed by God given guilt. The human person is not whole without reconciliation, not only psychological integration, but reconciliation with God, with others, and with one’s deepest self made in the image of God.
We live in a world that is obsessed with happiness - with managing, maximizing, and constantly monitoring whether people feel good. We’ve carried that obsession into the spiritual life. We desperately want everyone to feel happy instead of feel peace. But peace often comes not through cheerfulness, but through the valley of tears. Western approaches often ask, “How can we feel better?” Eastern Christianity responds with a different question: “How can we become truly healed?”
That path includes tears, not as defeat, but as resurrection's beginning. The Church needs the East, not just geographically or ritually, but existentially. We need liturgical glory, four seasonal fasting practices, the sacred silences, the deep bass chants, the Jesus Prayer but more so we need the heart that connects mysteriously to the core of all what it posesses - true repentance brining joy. These are not things the modern world easily understands, but they are exactly what it desperately needs. The West, with its emphasis on self-actualization, must be reminded by the East that true healing is not about becoming best versions of ourselves, but becoming repentant, humbled, forgiven, and transformed. The language of tears, of fasting, of heartfelt repentance is not opposed to psychological healing but it goes deeper, offering healing at the root. The way up is the way down.
The Christian concept you are looking for is PENTHOS (holy sorrow, mourning), which Pope Leo included in his speech. Penthos is not pathology. It is not depressive. It is medicine. It is the soul’s ache for God and the world’s return to Him.
We now cry for suffering animals, stress at work, personal frustrations, political upheavals, and don’t forget movies. But these are often feel good tears, disconnected from any sense of sin or communion. They may ease us emotionally for a moment, but they do not lead us deeper into the mystery of Christ.
We cry over our struggles, but not over our sins. This is not tenderness. It is spiritual amnesia.
From Grief to Mourning: The Way of the Heart
“Almighty and most gentle God, who brought forth from the rock a fountain of living water for your thirsty people, bring forth we pray, from the hardness of our heart, tears of sorrow, that we may lament our sins and merit forgiveness from your mercy.”
Grief is what we feel. Mourning is what we do with what we feel. Grief processes pain, mourning heals it.
Grief is widely explored in psychology. Mourning is the patrimony of Christian spirituality from early days. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” — Matthew 5:4
While grief is internal, mournful sorrow crosses to the external - it integrates body and soul, mind and heart. When we mourn from the heart - tears shed in repentance, prayers pleading for mercy, prostrations in humility, laments in songs, all of it is not about only grieving losses where I is in the center, but grieving separation from God, where HE stand in the center of longing. Our bodies, connected to our hearts and minds, are able to admit the sin, the severance, the responsibility, the need for repentance, reconciliation and reparations for sins committed. We will be comforted when we mourn, when we manifest grief and come to realization of our great smallness and God’s great mercy.
The Medicine of Repentance in an Age of Self-Actualization
When was the last time you’ve heard a homily on compunction? It’s the word translated from metanoia - change of the inner man, repentance. Compunction is a grace-filled sorrow of the soul, a wounding of the heart by love, when one becomes aware of their sin, weakness, or distance from God. It is not mere sadness, but a holy tenderness awakened by the encounter with God’s mercy and majesty. Compunction is the pain of love.
Desert fathers and mothers were often asked for advise by their followers by pleading:“Give me a word.” And the word that often came was, “Weep.” Not as self-punishment, but as the holy washing of the soul. In recovering this, perhaps the whole Church, West and East, can remember again, how to heal the root causes of evil not with performance or positivity, declarations to shift minds without transforming the heart, but through the holy labor of the heart.