A Good Confession

In my last post, I said that healthy shame will turn toxic unless acted upon and held in health by a power beyond itself. Individuals and communities–including churches–will repeat cycles of toxic shame until someone intervenes. I have seen in pastoral conversations many attempts to ‘manage’ the voice of shame by negating it. We do this either through ignoring it or by trying to persuade ourselves that shame can tell us nothing and is merely a figment of a general atmospheric moralism. But no matter how boldly we shout I am not ashamed!  we still are. Suppressing that voice only sends it under our conscious radar where it can fester. Eventually, all self-talk that does not align with truth is bound to become self-deception. And when it collapses, like all houses built on sand, great will be its fall. Despair is certainly to follow in the form of the message: I have gone way too far to go back now–there is nothing left for me. Our last state will be worse than the first.

Only the Gospel of Jesus Christ can heal toxic shame and hold, with a love that both comforts and demands to the necessary degrees, the message of healthy shame. There is no mature Christian who is not also humble and penitent, who does not confess freely that I am not enough of myself to help myself while also professing there is One who can and does help me. As Fr. Stephen Freeman–a priest who writes prolifically on the notion of shame–has helpfully summarized it: we must all learn to carry our little bit of shame.

In theological terms, the Gospel means reconciliation to God the Father through Jesus Christ the Son by the Holy Spirit in the Body of Christ, the Church. Reconciliation to God is, at once, a reconciliation to the people He has made. In the sacramental world of the Church, we are initiated into this reconciled life through the graces we receive in Baptism, Confirmation, and the Eucharist. We receive the seed of Christ’s life within us, we are empowered by the Spirit to exercise our Christian ministry, and we are nourished by the Body and Blood of the Lord. As we live faithfully cultivating this life, we become more and more His because His Life comes and stays and lives while our old life dies away. 

Reconciliation is God’s work of restoring communion to a world and a humanity that is marked by dissolution as the result of sin. The final horizon of this reconciliation is life together with God and each other in the Kingdom. But at the outset, when we first come to experience that reconciliation, we know it as the practice of forgiveness. Forgiveness is, in essence, the first form of being brought near in love again after a relational wound. It presupposes that something has been broken that needs to be healed, and then acts in every way possible toward that healing. It is thus the beginning of our participation in God’s work and the Church’s ministry of reconciliation. Forgiveness is painful, because it involves a realistic assessment of relational damage and the high cost of repairing that damage. But forgiveness is ultimately freeing, because even in small measures it opens up for the future the possibility of life no longer defined and constrained by brokenness. 

So what does forgiveness look like in our relationship with God? We will look at the form of sacramental confession. I want to focus there rather than on the forms of the general confessions at the Daily Offices or even the Mass, because the substance of the auricular or private confession made with a priest is assumed by the other two, and it is my belief that our practice of general confession will run the risk of becoming superficial unless we anchor it to the experience of addressing wrongdoing, guilt, and shame in the context of a safe, pastoral encounter. There really is no substitute for the experience of being known.

Confession begins before the penitent walks in the door. The Manual for Priests directs confessors to pray before they begin hearing confessions, asking God to be present and to supply whatever is lacking in the person of the minister–to safeguard the encounter and to fill it with grace. As the penitent comes to kneel–almost always before an image of Jesus Christ–their silence represents a breaking away from the conversational patterns outside the confessional. There is no chit chat–all talk is submitted to the work at hand. The penitent strives to know nothing but their need to be restored to God, and the confessor effaces himself, striving not to impede that critical encounter.

The silence is broken by the penitent: Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It is a prayer to God the Father answered through His representative, the priest. The Lord be in your heart and upon your lips that you may truly and humbly confess all your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Amen. This beginning acknowledges that we need grace even before we repent–that it is not the reward of a good confession, but the ground on which a good confession is made. We need grace to receive grace. It situates the confessor, as well, as a friend in this encounter. The priest is praying the whole time of a confession that healing will be found. The presence of the penitent there is already good evidence that God is drawing near His child, and so the priest’s prayer is that nothing would hinder the reconciliation that God clearly wants to create.

The penitent continues: I confess to Almighty God, to all the saints, and to you, Father, that I have sinned very much in thought, word, and deed, and omission, by my own great fault, since my last confession. Already we can begin to see the pattern of forgiveness and reconciliation play out. The penitent understands that they are before God ultimately. No one else can sit in His place. But in these simple words are a profession that God works through and with a community. All the saints are understood as present, dispelling the notion that we are alone and exposed before God. It is a mistake to imagine the saints (both the living and the dead) in this moment as a kind of grave jury. Rather, they are the redeemed, each with their own story of forgiveness and reconciliation to tell, who gather to bear up the penitent and encourage them to make a good confession and be restored. Unlike the angry elder brother in the parable of the prodigal, the saints and angels gather with rejoicing–eager to begin the feast now that one of their estranged brethren have returned home. This whole cosmos of loving relations is focused through the priest, who sits beside the penitent. In the Eastern Orthodox church, this is sometimes expressed by a priest who drapes their stole over the shoulder of the penitent, signifying solidarity with them and enjoining their prayer.

Lord willing, then comes a full unburdening of the heart of all that impedes it from being loved–everything that substantiates the voice of shame within us that we cannot be loved by God and His people. It is good if sins are named with enough precision as it takes for the penitent to actually face the thing as it is. No rationale needs to be given. Absolution and reconciliation are gifts to be given in this encounter–they are not the fruit of effective rhetoric. When all has been named, the penitent concludes: for these and all my sins which I cannot now remember, I am truly sorry. I firmly intend an amendment of life. I ask God and His Church for forgiveness, and I ask thee, Father, for penance, counsel, and absolution. The words that follow are simple. This is not spiritual direction or therapy. It is a time for the confessor to encourage the penitent to make good on this new beginning, to offer a thought on how to resist temptation, and something on which to focus going forward. Penance is no toll or fine for the sin committed–it is the gift of knowing the first thing to do with the new life the penitent is about to receive.

And then, as a gift, comes absolution. Again, the pattern of reconciliation is manifest in the priest’s words: Our Lord Jesus Christ, who has left power to His Church to absolve all sinners who truly repent and believe in Him, of His great mercy forgive thee thine offenses. And by His authority committed to me, I absolve thee of all thy sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Amen. Forgiveness is a gift given by God to His people. As Jesus said to the Apostles: “whose sins ye loose, they are loosed in heaven.” Forgiveness is to be given amongst one another. As St. Paul said to the Ephesians: “forgive one another, just as in Christ God also forgave you.” Forgiveness can even then be given to outsiders and even enemies. As the Cross is ever the symbol of the Christian, so the practice of forgiveness is ever what the Cross looks like in daily practice.

And then it is finished. The encounter ends with the words between priest and penitent: The Lord has put away all your sins, to which the reconciled replies Thanks be to God to acknowledge the gift. Thus restored, the priest grants them leave to go on to live their new life: Go in peace, and pray also for me, a sinner. The penitent becomes, in the end, like the confessor. The priest began by praying for them, and then in the end asks for the gift of that same intercession. The ministry of reconciliation has been, in this way, passed on. A new ambassador of the Gospel has been made.

Whenever I think about these things, I’m reminded that the impact of this encounter can be extraordinary. I am always reminded of a young man who was hounded for years by a vengeful interior voice of shame. That voice defeated in him every effort to remember that God was a loving God, and that God forgives the penitent. Finding himself at the end of his rope, bereft of hope and estranged from God–he finally came for the first time to give a pained account of his life and heard, for the first time, a steady voice speak forgiveness and peace. And the quiet in his heart that followed was the embracing quiet that only comes after years of relentless noise. The tears that flowed were not of chastisement, but of a relief that surpassed understanding. He knew a kind of simplicity and stillness in his heart not known since he had been a young boy. And after many years of running, it was something like coming home.