Fearing Confession

As someone who returned to confession for the first time in almost 20 years, after a period spent deep in pig-muck, I was able to testify to the beauty and necessity of confession.

During our LIVE show yesterday, a viewer asked a question about confession.

“Could you discuss what to do about confession if you haven’t been for decades! I would love to go but I’m fearful of what to say!”

It was only after the recording finished that I remembered it was the feast of St Mary Magdalene, who, from the depth of her degradation and shame, raised her eyes to Jesus and in all humility bathed his feet with her tears before her sin and stain were removed. She was one whom Jesus so loved.

As someone who returned to confession for the first time in almost 20 years, after a period spent deep in pig-muck, I was able to testify to the beauty and necessity of confession. But I completely understood the reservations of the questioner. Of course there is a very human sense of fear, ‘What do I say?’, ‘How far back do I go?’, ‘What will the priest think?’, ‘How can I make him understand?’, but this is all to miss the key point that you are going to lay your sin at the feet of He who knows you better than you know yourself. We cannot hide things from Him, the point is not to reveal something otherwise unknown to God, but rather to recognise our dependency on Him, to recognise that but for his grace we would be nothing, it is to seek to be reconciled with Him by accepting the free gift of his love so that we may truly begin again.

And so my advice, if it is worth anything at all, was to “make as sincere a confession as you are able, there will be specific things that you will have forgotten over the decades but your desire is to acknowledge that these sins (whatever they were) offended God and that you are sorry for them because they separate you from Him. A good way to conclude is to say, ‘For these’ (the sins clearly remembered) ‘and all my sins, I am truly sorry’. The priest, in my experience, will be overjoyed that you have returned to the father’s house.”

Following that initial return I now attend regularly, often leaving no more than two weeks between confession. Despite how it appears in the Church today, this frequency is not aberrational. According to several accounts, Pope St. John Paul II went to confession daily. He viewed frequent confession as essential for spiritual growth and maintaining a close relationship with God. He understood the confessional from the perspective of the penitent and the priest. He gave the following insight from his priestly role;

“It is in the confessional that [a priest’s] spiritual fatherhood is realized in the fullest way. It is in the confessional that every priest becomes aware of the great miracles which divine mercy works in souls which receive the grace of conversion.”

The more we go, the easier it is to go frequently. It’s never too late and it’s never too early.

I want to finish by sharing the following words from Peter Kreeft’s Letters to his Children about what really matters

• When You Fail

There will come a time when you simply fail, inexcusably, terribly. You will feel yourself standing among the shattered pieces of a beautiful work of art that you just broke. You will surprise yourself that you were that stupid. No, not just stupid, bad. Morally weak.

You will fail at something incomparably important. You will feel that you are a failure. You will feel no compensation. You will feel despair and hopelessness. Perhaps you know what I’m talking about; perhaps you’ve gone through that already.

The experience of our own faults comes as a surprise to us because our teachers no longer talk about fault, or failure, or sin. They no longer tell us about our inner Judas, that spiteful little bastard who lives in the basement of the soul.

You will hurt the ones you love. You will lie about it. You will do something embarrassingly bad and not face up to it. You will give others excuses, because you will first give yourself excuses. (The spiteful little bastard is very good at finding them, and our sick society is very good at supplying them, they work in tandem, those two.) And if you don’t have the inner toughness of spirit, the honesty and courage to confess to yourself, then you won’t be able to confess to God and to those you hurt either. And then the rot will stay there inside the potato and spread until it rots your life so obviously that you can no longer deny it—or, even worse, until it rots your mind so much that you can no longer admit it.

By the way, there are two philosophies of man. One says we rot like lettuce, from outside in. The other says we rot like potatoes, from inside out. The first blames others, “society,” Republicans, Democrats, UFOs, or social structures. The second says, “We have met the enemy and they are us.” The theological term for that idea is “original sin.” It’s a dogma.

We all fail. That’s why one of His sacraments is confession. No one except Jesus and His mother ever lived without sin. The choices we make between the two roads, good and evil, saint and sinner, is the second most important choice. The most important choice comes especially after you sin. Then the two roads are honest confession or covering up and avoidance, light or darkness. The dark way seems easier and more comfortable. But no one has ever found peace at the end of that road, and everyone who has ever taken the other road, the uncomfortably bright one, has found exactly that.

You are not alone, ever. You are loved, always.

• Forgiving

Why must we forgive all offenses? Because we have been forgiven all offenses by the One whom we offend in all offenses. (“Whatever you do to one of the least of these, my brothers, you do to me.”)

And because that One tells us that we cannot be forgiven unless we forgive.

Why? Not because God withholds it. He doesn’t. But we cannot receive it, even though He gives it, when the hands of our souls are closed.

When we don’t forgive others, we make them our masters. When we chew on others’ faults, we make them the masters of our misery.

If we forgive only the forgivable and not the unforgivable, if we proportion our love to dessert, then we subject love to justice. And that is idolatry, for God is love. Justice is only love’s backup. When love is gone, justice is needed to protect us from each other.

Forgive everyone.

Forgive everything.

Forgive always.

Forgive everywhere.

Why? Because God does. You can’t enjoy God’s Heaven until you’re like God.

Below is a list that is sometimes given to those asking the question that we were asked during our LIVE broadcast:

Four Cs for a good confession

1. BE COMPLETE. Don’t leave any serious sins out. Start with the one that’s toughest to say.

2. BE CLEAR. Try not to be subtle or euphemistic.

3. BE CONTRITE. Remember, it’s God you’ve offended, his forgiveness you seek.

4. BE CONCISE. No need to go into meticulous detail. Often when we do, we’re just trying to make excuses for our behaviour.

There are also a number of excellent guides to help you examine your conscience beforehand.

God bless you and St Mary Magdalene Pray for Us.