Bishop Michael Warfel – Always to Walk in Christ
A few years ago, I read an article about some Protestant groups beginning to practice a form of confession similar to what has been practiced in the Catholic Church for a couple of millennia. They evidently realized the importance of confessing sins to one another as stated in the Letter of James: “Declare your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may find healing.” (James 5:16)
Sadly, the practice of regular confession has diminished importance in the lives of many Catholics except possibly in those parishes where it is regularly fostered and promoted. In the past, a typical parish had people lined up to confess their sins on a Saturday afternoon or a Thursday evening. Now it seems as if few Catholics confess their sins regularly in the Sacrament of Penance.
For many Catholics, the Sacrament of Penance is celebrated only occasionally. Some have simply given up on it altogether. Why? It may be due to a better understanding of what constitutes serious sin and an appreciation of other ways to seek forgiveness. My sense, however, is that people have a poorer sense of the nature of personal sin as well as the importance of the Sacrament of Penance.
An acquaintance once proclaimed to me that she didn’t “go to confession.” If she needed to confess at all, she went directly to God and never to a priest individually to confess her sins. She would not have been on anyone’s list of major sinners, though she would readily admit to having some “rough edges.” One day I discovered the real reason for her resistance to individual confession to a priest. She was struggling with a serious moral issue in her life. She just didn’t want to be honest about it with herself or certainly with another person who might challenge her to turn away from the sin.
While going directly to God to seek forgiveness is important and certainly can lead to healing and forgiveness – the essential element to forgiveness after all is a contrite heart – it can at the same time be a way of being dishonest with ourselves and avoiding a necessary change in lifestyle. When we are accountable to another person, we are more likely to be honest with ourselves. Restricting the confession of sins directly to God alone misses an important element of Christian faith practice, i.e., the sacramental principle.
God has chosen to communicate the message of salvation to us through human flesh: in history and within the human family through visible persons, places and created things. We see this most clearly in the person of Jesus, the great sacrament of God’s presence in the world. In turn, the sacraments of the Church, given to us by Christ, are the instruments by which our encounter with Christ is expressed and celebrated. From beginning to end, God’s saving activity is incarnational. It is mediated activity. Human flesh somehow needs to touch and to be touched by human flesh. It is in this sense that we are asked to express our sins to another (a priest) and then hear words of healing and forgiveness.
There is a story of a mother who was trying to get her three year old to bed. The family had guests and the child was thinking of any kind of an excuse to not go to bed. Patiently, but firmly, the mother took the child upstairs and tucked her in. “Stay with me,” pleaded the little girl, “I don’t want to be alone.” The mother thought and then, with an instinct for right answers said, “You won’t be alone, God will be with you.” A long pause followed and then a plaintive cry pierced the night, “I don’t want God. I want someone with skin on.” If only adults would as readily recognize their need of flesh as a three-year old child. We need to experience God “with skin on.”
Confessing one’s sins to another is important for spiritual growth. When we disclose our sins to another individual, we allow ourselves to be accountable for the personal struggles we have with the real sins in our lives. It is a matter of being responsible for our behavior rather than doing away with moral guilt or seeing sin solely in terms of large social realities such as racism or violence in the world. Confessing our sins to an individual who represents the members of Christ’s body allows us to be accountable for sinful actions we have committed against our sisters and brothers in the Church. When we refuse to be accountable to another for the sins we commit, allowing them to remain abstract, vague and distant rather than concrete and real, they remain obstacles to true conversion and spiritual growth. Stating our sins to another allows us honestly to address the areas in our lives where we need to reform.
This is where the priest comes in. Confessing our sins to an ordained minister forces us to be accountable to our brothers and sisters in the Church and challenges us to be more faithful to God. At the same time, it allows us to hear words of healing and forgiveness concretely in the name of Christ and to know concretely the mercy of God.
Confessing sin is vital for spiritual growth and conversion and why the ministry of a confessor is one of the most important services a priest can offer God’s people. For our spiritual well-being, it is important to take advantage of the Sacrament of Penance with regularity and certainly within the Season of Lent.
The naming and claiming of sin allows us to be accountable for those actions that are detrimental to our faith. The result is that we are loosed from whatever keeps us from growing in our life in Christ. After all, the Sacrament of Penance is not solely an invention of recent times to make the lives of Catholics more difficult. It is sacrament handed on through the Church for God’s people. It is a gift Jesus instituted for the members of the Church to know, concretely, the mercy of God.
“We need to experience God “with skin on.”
Please help us continue
