Rev. Fr. Charles E. Irvin, M.B.A.,
M.Div., J.D
Why do Catholics speak of "going to confession"?
Aren't we supposed to confess
our sins to God? Why do Catholics have to go to a
priest to confess their
sins?
The answer is ever so brief: When one "goes" to
confession one goes to Jesus
Christ to confess one's sins. Sacraments (the
Great Eastern Churches refer to
them as The Mysteries) are the actions of the
Person who is God the Son
reaching out to touch us and become one with us
through His Mystical Body, in
the power of the Holy Spirit. Christ in His
humanity is present to us and
encounters us in His body, as St. Paul so clearly
teaches, in His risen body,
in His Mystical Body. He is the same Jesus of
Nazareth who becomes, raised
from the dead in the power of the Holy Spirit,
the Christ of faith, the
Spirit-Filled and glorified Christ whom God has
anointed to bring His presence
and life to us, to live within is, in our own
humanity. We go to Him to
confess our sins when we "go to confession". We
encounter Him in His Body; it
is there we receive His forgiveness.
Sacraments are the great signs given off by the
risen Body of Christ. They are
"outward and visible signs communicating an inner
spiritual grace", instituted
by Christ to communicate His Holy Spirit into us.
Christ's words of
institution in this case are found in Matthew
16:17-19, Matthew 18:18, and John 20:19-23. Bodies give off signs revealing the
mind and heart (the spirit) of
the person acting within and through those signs.
We call it "body language".
For instance, what is a kiss? It is body
language. But try to define one!
Definitions collapse - a kiss is a "sacrament",
something that we can only
describe, never really define. Only descriptive
language is strong enough to
carry the weight of the Reality within
Sacraments; definitional language lacks
the power to convey their total gravity.
THE WORK OF CHRIST
Jesus Christ is continually redeeming humanity
both collectively and
individually. He has not redeemed us, He is
redeeming us. He is always in
being, is-ing, in our humanity now. He is always
forgiving, sacrificing, and
offering Himself to us in His Body, the Church.
There, in His Body, He
forgives us and in turn gathers us into one holy
union, presenting us in His
sacrifice to His Father, thereby making His
Father our Father. Sacraments are
moments when we can enter (actively and
personally) by our own free choice
into the dynamic, on-going and never static
activity of Christ returning us to
His Father in
His resurrected and Spirit-filled, glorified
humanity.
We can only respond to God's initiative and God's
invitation. He loves us
first, He takes the first initiative. And so He
forgives us first. In His
reaching out to us He has set up the way back to
Him. Therefore we cannot
chart our own way back to God (cf. Genesis
11:1-9, the Tower of Babel). We can
only respond to His invitation and attend His
banquet as He bids us. We are
not in control - He is. The Church and the
Church's Sacraments come from
above, from God, and they retain their own
integrity (and truth) apart from
any perceptions or decisions on our part. We do
not determine for ourselves
what their reality truly is, God does! Being
invited guests to the Lord's
Messianic Banquet we only discover their reality
and inner truth, and humbly
accept them from Him. The ecclesia, namely the
"called out and unified
assembly", comes from above; it is not the
creation of men and women, rather
it is formed in the faith response of men and
women to God's gathering-in Holy
Spirit. It is when we open ourselves to God that
the Holy Spirit assembles us,
unites us, and causes us to be the Ecclesia, the
Church, the Mystical Body of
Christ. Holy Communion is His work, not ours. If
Christ is essential to the
plan of God, then so is the Church! Without the
Ecclesia where is the risen
Body of Christ? While it is true that God is
everywhere it is nevertheless
true also that the Church is the privileged and
sacramental locus of the Risen
Christ among us.
SACRED SCRIPTURE
The Catholic Church grounds the Sacrament of
Forgiveness (going to confession)
in Sacred Scripture. See Matthew 16:13-19 and
18:18-20, also Mark 2:1-17 and
Luke 7:36-50. St. John's Gospel, as always (c.f.
John 11:1-46; John 20:19-23),
is special. It is theologically highly developed;
sometimes it is referred to
as "The Book of Signs". The "Signs" are the seven
great miracles of St. John's
Gospel. Note the continual connection in John's
Gospel between physical
healing and forgiveness of sin. St. John always
sees the physical as revealing
the spiritual. And, in John, Christ's great
ministry is that of
reconciliation. Read John 11:1-46, then read John
20:19- 23. In John's Gospel,
forgiveness, deliverance, healing, freedom, and
life are all inter-connected
realities. The "baptism for the remission of
sins" is our immersion into the
death/resurrection event of Jesus Christ. All
sacraments emerge out of this
"baptism" and are constituted by the events of
Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and
Easter Sunday. Those three sacred days (the
Sacred Triduum) constitute the
"hour" He spoke of at Cana, the "baptism" he
longed to be baptized with. In
them He transmits over into us the Divine Life
and Divine Power that is His,
His power over life and death, redemption and
sin. Again, see John 20:19-23.
So why must we go to the Church to confess our
sins? Why not confess directly
to God? Why must we confess and acknowledge our
sins and/or sinfulness to a
priest? Because scripture bids us to! And because
Christ has empowered and
commissioned his priests to do so. They are
ordained to carry on His work, the
ministry of reconciliation and the work of our
redemption.
Baptism remains the basic and fundamental
sacrament of repentance, conversion
and reconciliation with God. It constitutes us in
the essential ministry of
the Church, namely the ministry of reconciliation
(Christ's fundamental
mission). But what happens to those who sin, and
repeatedly sin, after being
baptized? How does the Lord, living and working
in His Mystical Body the
Church, relate to them?
THE EARLY CHURCH
The big problem of the Early Church was: What do
we do with someone who has
"left" the community via apostasy, open adultery,
murder, or any other serious
and open rejection of the Christian way of
living? Re-baptism was (and is
today) impossible since Christ's covenant
commitment made through the Church
in baptism always remains in force. One can never
be "un-baptized"; we can
never undo God's covenant commitment to us.
The Sacrament of Reconciliation was given to the
one baptized (and who had
subsequently, in sin, left the Faith Community)
in order to return him or her
to the Source of power and holiness, namely
Christ's Holy Spirit, to free him
or her from a world of fear, anxiety, suspicion,
hate, division and alienation
from God. There developed, even in the earliest
time of the Apostolic Church,
a ceremony of public penance followed by a
ceremony of reconciliation
ministered by a Bishop. This followed a LONG (40
days) probationary period of
public penance that demonstrated a genuine
sincerity in the penitent.
Gradually the practice evolved into going to the
Bishop privately to receive
reconciliation with the Community through his mediatorship. The early
Christians understood that true conversion was a
long and difficult process,
one that required the Spirit of the Body of
Christ in order to sustain and
encourage the penitent. God offers, we respond.
Hundreds upon hundreds of
years later the Irish monks, who re-evangelized
Barbarian Europe of the Dark
Ages, introduced their own monastic penitential
practices which included lists
of sins connected with appropriate lists of
penances commensurate with the
degrees of the seriousness of the listed sins!
This outraged the Frankish
bishops who called a Council to denounce this
"novel practice" of the Irish
that so de-formed (they thought) the previous and
commonly shared practices
associated with the Sacrament of Reconciliation,
those prior to the
innovations of "those Irish monks." Nevertheless,
frequent confession of sins
remained the normative practice down to our
times.
THE MINISTRY OF RECONCILIATION
The fundamental nature of the Sacrament of
Forgiveness is found in 2
Corinthians 5:18. For this sacrament is the
celebration of the reconciliation
between the individual repentant sinner with
Christ living and working through
His Body, the Church, and with God in Christ. The
Parable of the Prodigal Son
is the paradigm, the critical elements being open
admission and action, a
"going to" confession in order to receive
forgiveness and reconciliation.
In our human condition there is always a residual
remainder of unredemption
within each one of us, no matter how much we may
try to deny it! Who can
honestly claim that he is without sin? The truth
is that deathbed confessions
are still occurring even though moderns have
tried to do away with the idea of
sin and punishment for sin. We need to do works
of penance in order to bring
light in the darkness, vision in confusion, love
in hate, peace in anxiety,
and union in disunion. Conversion means "moving
from one version of living to
another version." We are talking here more about
a way of life than about
isolated and individual acts. Medieval Monks
became a class of penitents for
the sake of all of humanity; they set themselves
to the task of calling down
the power of God's Spirit into the whole vast and
complex network of our
sin-full human relationships and social order.
The monastery was supposed to
be a microcosm of the macrocosm that is the
Kingdom. The monks were supposed to be a model or a paradigm of the way people
should relate to one another as well as being a paradigm of the entire social and
economic order in the world around them.
Theological Note: God's forgiveness comes first,
our repentance follows. God
offers, we respond; God proposes, man disposes.
Why? Because if a person truly
repents deep within his or her heart it is
because he or she has hope that
change is possible. This hope comes from God;
from God's pre-existing gift (or
grace) of forgiveness. (Read again, now, the
Parable of the Prodigal Son in
Luke 15:11-32). God's pre-existent forgiveness
makes possible human
repentance. We can love God only because He loves
us first!
The act of "going to confession", specifically
the priest's giving of
sacramental absolution, gives us the concrete and
experienced assurance of
God's saving action in our time, in our
condition, and "where we're at". Jesus
Christ acts through His Body, the Church, not to
change His Father's mind, but
rather to change our minds by revealing to us His
saving love. When we are in
sin we are in a state of confusion, of self
doubt, and lack the fullness of
freedom because of our insecurity about our
selves, particularly in terms of
our relationship with God. When we live in a
deadly (mortal) state of sin;
spiritual death has its grip on us and we need
resurrection. (Read now in
John's Gospel, Chapter 20, the first activity of
Jesus Christ when He rose
from the dead).
THE "HOW TO"
How does one "go to confession"? What is the
basic action? The penitent
presents himself to a priest (or bishop) of the
Church to receive the action
of God's forgiveness through the saving work of
Christ ministering to us
through His Body. The penitent acknowledges his
or her sins specifically and
admits his or her need for reconciliation and
penance. Reconciliation with the
Body of Christ IS reconciliation with Christ
acting through His Apostles
(those in Holy Orders) upon whom His Spirit
rests. Such a sign effects what it
signifies - the symbol becomes the reality (which
is true for all of the
Sacraments!).
But forgiveness is effective only to the degree
that the prodigal, the
penitent, acknowledges a need to return to the
Father's house, change his our
her way of living (conversion) and thereupon live
in that set of relationships
present in the household of the Father.
One final theological note: Read again the
Raising of Lazarus (John 11:1-46)
and note that forgiveness, deliverance, healing,
freedom and new life are all
inter-connected realities. The "Baptism for the
remission of sins" is
immersion into the death-resurrection event of
Jesus Christ. All Sacraments
emerge out of the events and works of Christ in
Holy Thursday, Good Friday,
Easter Sunday, and Pentecost, the sum being
called "The Paschal Mystery". For
that is Christ's "hour", the "baptism" He longed
for, and the transmission of
His power into His Body, the Church. Another
definition of the Church is that
she is the continuation of the Christ event down
through human time and
history. And it is in her that we find the
fullness of redemption and the
forgiveness of our sins.