The Canon of Repentance is a short penitential prayer traditionally attributed to St. Andrew of Crete. Your priest might assign it to you before confession, or you might pray it on your own when you’re struggling to feel genuine sorrow for your sins.
It’s not the same thing as the Great Canon of St. Andrew. That’s the long one we chant during the first week of Great Lent, the one that takes over an hour and walks through the entire Old Testament. The Canon of Repentance is much shorter. You can pray it in about ten minutes.
The structure is simple and repetitive. Each section begins with “Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me!” followed by a short verse that names a specific sin or calls you to repentance. You might read about mistreating the poor, pursuing lust, speaking evil of others, or wasting your life in laziness. The verses don’t pull punches. They’re meant to wake you up.
Between the verses, you’ll find warnings about judgment and hell alongside reminders of God’s mercy. The canon mentions the Prodigal Son and the thief on the cross, those biblical examples of people who turned back to God at the last moment. It ends with a prayer to the Theotokos, asking her to intercede for us sinners.
You’ll find this canon in most Orthodox prayer books and in the Horologion. Some parishes pray it together during the weeks leading up to Great Lent, often on Thursday or Friday evenings. But most people encounter it as a private prayer their priest gives them.
When Your Priest Assigns It
There’s no universal rule about when to pray the Canon of Repentance. Your priest has discretion here. He might assign it if you’re preparing for confession and having trouble examining your conscience. He might give it to you if you’ve fallen into a pattern of sin and need something concrete to pray daily. Some priests recommend it to people who feel spiritually numb, who know they should repent but can’t seem to feel anything.
It’s also used in preparing for Holy Communion, though again, this depends on your priest’s guidance. The canon helps focus your mind on repentance and contrition rather than just going through the motions.
If you’re working offshore on a two-week rotation and can’t make it to confession as often as you’d like, your priest might suggest praying this canon regularly. It’s portable. It doesn’t require anything except the text and a few minutes of privacy.
What Makes It Different
The Canon of Repentance is personal and direct. Where the Great Canon sweeps through salvation history and compares your sins to those of biblical figures, this shorter canon just puts you face-to-face with Christ. It’s less about learning and more about feeling the weight of what you’ve done.
People often say it makes them cry. That’s not weakness. In Orthodox spirituality, tears are a gift. We call them “the baptism of tears,” a second baptism that washes away the sins we’ve committed since our first one. If you pray this canon and find yourself weeping, don’t be embarrassed. That’s repentance breaking through.
But what if you pray it and feel nothing? That happens too. Keep praying it anyway. Repentance isn’t always an emotional experience. Sometimes it’s just the decision to keep showing up, to keep asking for mercy even when you don’t feel particularly sorry. God works with that.
A Word About Legalism
Don’t turn this into a checklist. The Canon of Repentance is medicine, not a requirement for earning God’s love. If your priest assigns it, he’s giving you a tool to help you heal, not adding another burden to your already-busy life. Pray it when you can. If you miss a day, start again the next day.
Some people find it helpful to pray the canon on their knees, making prostrations at each “Have mercy on me.” Others sit in a chair after a long shift at the plant and read it quietly. Both are fine. The posture of your heart matters more than the posture of your body, though the body can help the heart along.
If you’re curious about this prayer, ask your priest for a copy. You might also find it helpful to pray during Lent, even if he hasn’t specifically assigned it. St. Andrew of Crete wrote it for sinners. That means he wrote it for all of us.
