Confession!
What a veritable spring of life from the One Who Lives! And, yet, how difficult
it can be to come to that meeting place with God, and to bear our sins to him.
How difficult it can be to overcome our pride and our shame in order to step
out into the river of mercy, which flows ever deeper and deeper. Perhaps, even,
we grow weary of confessing our sins, over and over in our brokenness and our
addictions. God, however, never grows weary of receiving us back joyfully,
forgiving us our sins, healing our wounds, repairing our relationships,
restoring us to joy, and indwelling us with his Spirit. Through the Sacrament
of Penance, Jesus, our humble and gentle physician lovingly calls to us back to
health and peace, continuing the same ministry he started while on earth.
“’But
so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive
sins’—he said to the one who was paralyzed—‘I say to you, stand up and take
your bed and go to your home’” (Luke 5:24 NRSVCE). At the time Jesus said this,
the spiritual leaders and the common folk were astonished that anyone would
claim to have the authority – or the right – to forgive sins on earth. At
first, people laughed and mocked him. But when Jesus was able to confirm his
power to forgive sins by healing people physically, as in “Stand up and take
your bed,” they marveled. St. Luke’s version of the story ends with the people
going home and saying to themselves, “We have seen strange things today” (Luke
5:26 NRSVCE).
St.
Matthew’s Gospel tells a slightly different ending, which seems very relevant.
That is, St. Matthew witnessed that immediately after the paralytic was healed,
and forgiven his sins, “they were filled with awe, and they glorified God, who
had given such authority to human beings” (Matthew 9:8 NRSVCE). The Catholic
Church, believing that all Scripture is inspired by God, also believes that
this verse contains a very important point: that God has given this authority
to forgive sins to “human beings.” That is a plural noun; it is not singular,
as if it were only meant for Christ. On the contrary, keeping in mind the
inspiration of Scripture, we find it no light point that “human beings” is
plural, because the ability, per se, to forgive sins was granted to others
after Christ, specifically, the Apostles.
In
the twentieth chapter of St. John, we read that upon Jesus’ resurrection and
first appearance to the disciples, he has something extremely important to
impart to them. “’Peace be with you. As the Father
has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said
this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if
you retain the sins of any, they are retained’” (21-23). It was at that moment,
the Church teaches us, that Jesus instituted the Sacrament of Penance. For it
was there where he imparted his own authority to forgive sins to mere men; it
was there that he gave them the ministry of peace and of reconciliation. There is
no doubt, however, about the fact that this power has its source in the Holy
Spirit, which he explicitly breathed upon them, and gave to them.
While
the first three centuries after Christ saw almost no dispute on the Church
having the power to forgive sins, there came a time when people started to
disbelieve and falsely teach against it. Ironically, it was not strictly
disputed that forgiveness of sins was possible through the successors of the
Apostles, but it was eventually disputed which kinds of sins could be forgiven.
In the third and fourth century, the Nestorian heresy had followers who denied
that “mortal sins” could be forgiven by the Church, and declared that,
therefore, any believer who fell into grave sin like idolatry or murder would
not be able to receive forgiveness again.
Saints
Athanasius and Augustine had something different to say, and fought forcefully
against these heresies. St. Athanasius, who was instrumental not only in
defining the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, but also in support of the New
Testament list of books we currently hold as inspired, wrote the following
against Nestorians: “As the man whom the priest baptizes is enlightened by the
grace of the Holy Ghost, so does he who in penance confesses his sins, receive
through the priest forgiveness in virtue of the grace of Christ.” 1
The famous St. Augustine of the fourth century, the great Doctor of the Church,
wrote similarly, “Let us not listen to those who deny that the Church of God
has power to forgive all sins" (De agon. Christ., iii).1
Putting
history aside for a moment, it would be good to address the means by which the
Sacrament of Penance is given and received, and its effects. Basically, any
Christian who has committed “grave sin” with full knowledge and full consent of
the will (not by any accident) ends up with two major, natural consequences.
Firstly, they have ruptured their relationship with the God of life and love by
falling from grace similarly to Adam and Eve, but after having been washed by
the blood of Christ. Secondly, they have ruptured their spiritual relationship
with the body of Christ, the Church. Both need reconciling; both need healing.
One cannot be done without the other, for the two are inseparable – that is,
Christ and his body, the Church.
The
Sacrament of Penance is made up of several parts: contrition (or sorrow) over
sin, confession of our sins, and acts of penance, which are those things we do
to draw nearer to God, whether it be prayer or reading Scripture or giving alms,
whichever the priest justly requires. First, we must truly be sorry for our
sins, or else we cannot rightly receive forgiveness. “ For godly grief produces a repentance that
leads to salvation and brings no regret, but worldly grief produces death,”
wrote St. Paul (2 Corinthian 7:10). Here we certainly do not mean hatred of
ourselves, by the word “sorrow.” For this would be contrary to the Gospel, but
we do mean that there should be sorrow for those things, which caused harm to
others, ourselves, and to our relationship with the God of Love.
Confession
of our sins is the second aspect of the Sacrament. This simply means to confess
our sins to a bishop, who has been handed on the authority to forgive sins, or
his representative, a priest. In the confessional, we bear our sins not only to
God, but also to the Church. In the priest, we find another Christ – Christ’s
own representative – and Christ himself offering the healing words of
forgiveness, which do not come back void. There, he listens to us, perhaps
consoles us and gives us advice for our spiritual life. Most importantly, he
wipes away every sin we’ve committed that has been previously forgiven. Our sin
is taken from us as “far as the East is from the West,” as the Scriptures tell
us; he remembers it no more.
The
healing does not simply stop there, though. We have fallen backward by our sins
in our relationship with God, and have lost ground in our conquest of love. In
fact, there are scars left from our sins. They, too, need to be healed and
erased. We must draw closer to God and regain the virtue for which he tells us
to strive. St. James harshly tells us about what our acts of penance should
look like:
Draw near
to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and
purify your hearts, you double-minded. Lament
and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into
dejection. Humble yourselves before the Lord,
and he will exalt you (James 4:8-10 NRSVCE).
In the act of penance, only by the
grace of Christ and his power do we start to heal the crookedness of our hearts
and the wounds left by sin. Of course, Christ forgives and mends the broken
hearted, but there is a relationship that must be brought to its fullness of
love from within our souls and by our minds and bodies, the whole person. As
before, penances are done by prayer, Scripture reading, alms giving, or some
other act of love.
But
from the moment we leave that confessional, as many individuals have witnessed
and testified, the weight of sin, which was so heavy, is lifted off of our
shoulders, lifted off of our hearts. Our souls are lightened and rejoice. A
steady, inner peace, which surpasses all understanding, gives way to a smile
that one cannot suppress. Freedom. It is the feeling of freedom. Christ has set
us free in the Sacrament. He has restored us to life. At the same time, he has
healed the Body of Christ. Our sin has been forgiven, our sin that wounded the
Church, which is the body of Christ itself, and the unity of the body of Christ
has been restored.
The
thought of this is often ignored, but Christ is one and his body is one. Our
sin has not only an effect on ourselves, but also on the rest of the Church. We
are not living in a vacuum in space, where sin has no effect but on our own
souls. God is a community. We are part of that community, as the Church. When
we sin, it is communal. Sin affects other people, down a line of unspeakable
length. So, confession and repentance, they are not just “between God and me.”
It is between God, everyone else and me. This is why Jesus declared that all
sins will be openly known in the end, and will not be secret (Luke 12:2,3).
Penance
takes humility; it takes courage. We may be ashamed, but to face our sins and
to face evil takes strength. In fact, it takes the strength of God’s grace.
“You can do nothing apart from me,” Jesus said (John 15:5). Through Christ’s
strength and power, we can be freed from sin, even sins of addiction. Perhaps
we might fall many times, but if we continue to go to the God who calls us, we can
only become stronger in his grace. We can only grow closer to God as we
maintain the humility to confess our sins to him and to the Church. For God
exalts the humble, but he opposes the proud. Don’t let pride or shame get in
the way, between yourself and the healing that you so desire. Confess.
1 Hanna, Edward. "The Sacrament of
Penance." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 11. New York: Robert Appleton
Company, 1911. 15 Dec. 2014 .
Go to your confessor; open your
heart to him; display to him all the recesses of your soul; take the advice
that he will give you with the utmost humility and simplicity. For God, Who has
an infinite love for obedience, frequently renders profitable the counsels we
take from others, but especially from those who are the guides of our souls.
-- St. Francis de
Sales
Daughter, when you go to
confession, to this fountain of My mercy, the Blood and Water which came forth
from My Heart always flows down upon your soul and ennobles it. Every time you
go to confession, immerse yourself in My mercy, with great trust, so that I may
pour the bounty of My grace upon your soul. When you approach the confessional,
know this, that I Myself am waiting there for you.
-- Jesus
to St. Faustina (Diary)
