"Lord, now I understand everything! Save me, save me, at any cost..."! If in such a moment of self-consciousness the Savior suddenly appeared before us, or if He sent His angel or any of His saints, to rebuke us with a stern voice and demand that we should actually repent by changing our lives, we would probably accept it.

But what would happen if, instead of the angel or the saint, or His own presence, Christ sent us our neighbor (and indeed the very one we do not love and who would torture us) and asked us the vital question "Have you repented in words or in action?".

Then we would forget our words, repress our feelings, renounce our repentance, and exclaim, "Get thee out of here! I shall not again be punished by God because of you, you will not teach me a lesson or lead me to new life". We would also let the opportunity and the person sent by the Lord to be the consequence of our sins, the burden that we will bear with patience, be lost; the person sent to heal us and lead us would be lost with humility in the Kingdom of God, the person who would make us accept everything with readiness from the hands of God.