Confession – Some thoughts as we get into Lent.
- Sat 27th February 2010, 9:10 pm
We all know the standard refrain. Lent is a time for fasting and prayer in anticipation of the mysteries of Easter. It’s also a time for self examination and critique. Because of this, often local churches offer communal reconciliation services to make it easier to go to confession as well as to receive absolution for sins. One thing we as contemporary Catholics don’t often do is go to confession. Maybe we do it once before Easter or once before Christmas, or we don’t do it at all. When we don’t do it, we miss out on the great healing and concrete therapy this sacrament can offer in the face of how frail, weak and puny we as humans really are – a sense of which is generally lost in contemporary Catholicism.
At times we say the following prayer at Mass :
I confess to almighty God, and to you my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned through my own fault. In my thoughts and in my words, In what have done, and what I have failed to do, and I ask Blessed Mary ever Virgin, All the Angels and Saints, and you my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God.
While the sentiments conveyed are nice and do express a sense of contrition, the official Latin version of this prayer as used in the Extraordinary Form, or Tridentine rite as well as in some contemporary circles is much more powerful. My translation of it into English is:
I confess to almighty God, Blessed Mary ever Virgin, Blessed Michael Archangel, Blessed John the Baptist, Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, All Saints and you brothers (and sisters) that I have sinned exceedingly by word thought and action, by my fault, by my fault, by my greatest fault. Therefore I ask Blessed Mary ever Virgin, Blessed Michael Archangel, Blessed John the Baptist, Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, All Saints, and you brothers (and sisters) to pray for me to the Lord our God.
While this language may seem over the top and a bit alien to us as English speakers, this is normal for Latin and should make us pause and think about what we have done in word, thought, and action. It should make us be grateful that we have a sacrament where the saving power of God addresses these issues.
With all of this in mind, the question then arises, what do we confess? That’s where the examination of conscience comes in. This is when you take your own personal inventory as to when you screwed up. While there are some standard sins that the church wants you to confess – and you should if you have committed them – the items that really bother you are the ones you should confess. That means if you either did, or were involved wih something and it’s really bothering you, then you should confess it and receive absolution for it. What’s even better is the fact that no matter how heinous a sin it is, you can be forgiven and the priest can’t tell anybody about it nor can he be compelled to. The seal of confession is even respected by the civil authorities in the United States – a decidedly Protestant country. He doesn’t even have to see your face to absolve you, as kneeling behind a screen is still an option.
If all of this is true about the sacrament, then why is it so seldom used? Well, there are a couple of things about that. First of all, it was seen as mandatory in order to receive communion at Mass when the Tridentine rite was still in effect. It was often the practice that confessions happened Saturday afternoon, then the fast and communion followed on Sunday at Mass. If you didn’t do things just right, you seriously impaired your chances of going to heaven when you died – which could happen at any time. Part of the rebellion of Vatican II and the changes that came with it was a certain presumption of God’s mercy regardless of how much we fail as humans. While most "traditional Catholics" today reject this presumption, saying we should not dare to presume the will of the divine, there`s another more pragmatic reason we should start making more use of this sacrament – it’s a way to heal.
This was the initial intent of the sacrament when it came about in the early Middle Ages. It started in the monasteries as a tool for spiritual direction and discernment. Eventually it became a way to deal with sins committed after baptism. This is important because prior to confession becoming a sacrament, there was really no way to return to full fellowship with other Christians after baptism if one sinned. This was also the period where salvation and absolution was over time becoming a bit of a game, due to the limitations of both uneducated clergy and laity. Sadly, as time progressed, it gradually became perceived as a tool of oppression and punishment. The refrain “how many (insert prayer here)s will it take to get this off of my soul” became sadly common, as it became part of a very serious game of trying to keep one’s soul as clean as possible before death – which could occur at any time.
While we don’t have that sense of a high stakes game of keeping one’s soul clean today, since the presumption of mercy is so strong, we should still take advantage of the sacrament of confession because of the healing it provides. As our traditionalist brothers and sisters point out time and time again, the world is full of sin – maybe more so now than in any other era. Therefore, we are in all the more need of the healing that this sacrament offers and we would be wise to take advantage of it en masse at other times of the year as well as Lent.
