CONFESSION
by Scott Hahn
from Signs of Life: 40 Catholic Customs and their Biblical Roots
Confession is the way God’s people have always gone about repenting, healing, and reconciling. Read the first pages of the Bible, and you’ll find God asking Adam, “Where are you?” Later, God ask the murderer Cain, “Where is your brother?” The Almighty isn’t looking for information. He already knows everything. He’s looking for the one thing Adam or Cain should have given Him, but didn’t – and that’s a full confession. He wanted it for their sake, so that they might live again in the truth. Unfortunately, it was not forthcoming.
Go through the rest of the Old Testament, however, and you’ll find that God taught the people of Israel many ways to confess their sins and make amends — with sacrifices, sin offerings, and burnt offerings. It was hard work, expensive and bloody. A penitent had to buy his own animal, bring it to the altar, and slaughter it himself. But he could walk away with a certain peace of mind, having made his confession and completed the penance that God required.
The human need for confession didn’t vanish with the coming of Jesus. But now it’s fulfilled in a neater, easier, and more powerful way. Jesus responded to it perfectly by establishing a ministry and a sacrament of penance in the Church.
There are many ways of looking at confession, and all of them are valid. You can look at it as a courtroom with a divine judge. You can look at it as an accounting of debts. I think it’s most helpful to look at it as healing – as health care. Confession does for our souls what doctors, dieticians, physical therapists, and pharmacists do for our bodies.
Think about all we do to keep our bodies in working order. We go for regular checkups with a primary-care physician, a dentist, an eye doctor. And no one has to remind us to brush our teeth, take a shower, and pop the pills for whatever ails us. All this is good for us, and it’s good for everyone around us, too. No one wants to work beside us if we decide to stop showering.
Well, if we spend so much effort on the care of our bodies, shouldn’t we be spending more time on our souls? After all, our bodies will pass away soon enough, but our souls will live on forever.
What’s more, our decisions about our spiritual health and hygiene will have a tremendous effect on the people around us. Nothing serves family life and workplace dynamics so well as a clean soul and the advice of a good confessor. On the other hand, nothing hurts our relationships and our mental health so much as the burden of sin and guilt. Confession is free health care, and free like insurance as well! Christ is the divine physician; and, unlike human physicians, He can guarantee us a cure every time. In fact, He can guarantee us immortality. Any doctor who could do all that would have long lines stretching from his office door. The thing that will make confession less intimidating is a stronger faith in Jesus Christ and what He can do for us.
When your body’s hurting, you need to see a doctor. You might not want to see a doctor. You might not find doctor visits particularly pleasant. Maybe you even have a deep-seated fear of doctors’ offices. But nothing else will do to set your broken limb, purge your body of a bug, or close up your bleeding wound. It won’t help you to visit your accountant or your auto mechanic….
Confession should always be individual, auricular – that is, spoken – and specific. The Church approves communal penance services but clearly states that they should lead the individual believer to an individual confession. Even if you receive general absolution on the battlefield, you’re supposed to get yourself to a priest as soon as you can when the bullets stop flying.
Not long ago, it was customary for devout Catholics to go to confession every week. The lines on Saturday were very long. The saints have recommended that we go at least once a month.
Why has the practice dwindled in recent years, with some parishes offering the sacrament “by appointment only?” Recent popes have attributed this decline to a loss of the sense of sin. I think that’s true. Our is a no-fault culture. We have no-fault auto coverage and no-fault divorce. We’ve convinced ourselves that “I’m okay, you’re okay,” no matter what choices we make in life.
Yet the fact is that we’re not okay, because we all sin, and we all suffer from our own sins and the sins of others. Thus, we’re out of sync with the God who made us and we’re out of sync with the world He made for us. Yes, God loves us just the way we are, but He loves us too much to keep us that way. We need to experience His forgiveness so that we can heal, and grow, and then practice forgiveness ourselves.
We need to recover a healthy sense of sin, so that we can recover spiritual health.
