These disciplines are contained in the various Canons of the Church and cover sins of the flesh and so on.

Sometimes the Canons prescribe barring a penitent from receiving Holy Communion for a period of time, depending on the weight of the sin or state of habitual sinfulness.

In this, the epitimia is "similar" to an excommunication except that the latter is by far more severe and involves actually being cut off from the Church itself.

At Ecumenical Councils, for example, those found guilty of espousing heresy were often given a period of sixty days to reconsider their views and submit to the doctrine of the Church. If they did not, they were excommunicated.

Excommunication or to be put out of the Church is tantamount to pronouncing a person spiritually "dead" and in other times Christians were not allowed to associate with the excommunicates. Should a Sovereign be excommunicated, his or her Christian subjects no longer owed him or her allegiance. One could not contract business with an excommunicate and the like.

The Epitimia need not be limited to an imposed period of time when a person may not approach Holy Communion. The priest may also prescribe additional fasting, prayers, scripture readings, good works and other spiritual remedies. It sounds like a punishment, but it is, in fact, a canonical process of inner healing.

The Epitimia may be imposed on someone who keeps returning to confession with the same sins to help that person deepen a sense of his or her own contrition and penitence. It is also a time to strengthen the will to resolve not to sin.

The narthex of the Church wasn't always designed for purposes of distributing candles and collecting weekly parish bulletins!

In former times, it was where people under an Epitimia or the Excommunicate in repentance could pray and ask those going into the Church of the Faithful to pray for them.

A Canon of the Sixth Ecumenical Council states that: "Receiving from God the power to bind and oose, the priest must evaluate the nature of sin and preparedness of the repentant, and thus make use of the appropriate means of healing. But if not applying appropriate means to this or the other, salvation will not be available to the sinner. For all sins are not similar, but different and specific, and represent many aspects of harm from which evil develops and disperses further, unless it is stopped by the healing Power."

Priests must, nevertheless, take care to exercise a gentle hand lest they harm rather than help the salvation of souls.

An Orthodox Archbishop once went to confession to a Holy Elder (St Ambrose of Optina). Afterwards the Archbishop complained to him that he had not given him an Epitimia. To this the Elder replied, "I have observed for myself that a kind word acts with more strength than anything else."