Deep within every human heart, there is the desire to be good. We all want to find and be our best selves, to go to bed each night at peace with who we are and how we acted that day. We want to be the kind of person we ourselves would want as a friend: trustworthy, dependable, fair. Yet often we fail -- ourselves and others -- in ways both small and significant.
What can lift this burden and restore our humanity is confession, a word that I use often in my new book, "The Art of Confession." In my own religious tradition, Catholicism, the word "Confession" has a very specific meaning. That is not what I am talking about here. Instead, I'd like you to consider confession with a small c .Religious confession is directed to a higher power, but it is first and foremost a conversation with ourselves.
When we take an honest look at confession, we quickly see that it is a pillar not only of religious belief, but mental health. It demands something for which there is no substitute: that we be honest with ourselves. Confession strips away the veil that we often cast over our actions, realigning our souls with what is best and truest in our natures. I use the word "align," because when we betray ourselves (some would define this as sinning), we fall out of alignment. Until we acknowledge -- confess -- our souls remain confused and fragmented.
This kind of confession, which demands self-reflection and change, has little to do with the flood of confessional disclosures that characterize our age -- on tell-all TV talk shows and social networking sites, even via an iPhone app for confession. In this time of Internet connectivity, amid the din of oversharing, we mistake spasms of self-revelation for honesty. Our inner voice is not so easily found and cannot be parsed into ten-second bursts. That voice needs time to find the right words to say and the right place to say them.
As Thomas Merton, a monk and mystic, wrote:
We are at liberty to be real, or to be unreal. We may be true or false, the choice is ours. We may wear now one mask and now another, and never, if we so desire, appear with our own true face. But we cannot make these choices with impunity. Causes have effects, and if we lie to ourselves and to others, then we cannot expect to find truth and reality whenever we happen to want them. If we have chosen the way of falsity we must not be surprised that truth eludes us when we finally come to need it!
The truth is that confession, as I seek to redefine it in my book and in this series, is wise and strong and necessary, unburdening both the soul and the psyche to live a forthright, productive, and fuller life. Confession is not only for those who have committed some great public or private "sin." For most of us, our "little murders" -- our duplicities, the daily hurts,
neglects, and carelessness we inflict upon others and upon ourselves -- need to be confronted and acknowledged.
When confession becomes a practice, a daily reevaluation of one's actions -- an art -- its power continues to grow, instilling a new sense of confidence, a vision of what life truly can be and hold. Something as simple as a short, nightly reflection, which I present in a later blog, can sort out the chaff from the wheat of the day just past, clearing the mind right then, and setting the tone for the days to come.
Using confession to live honestly and consciously -- the goal in this book -- is an art to be learned and a skill to be practiced. It is neither an easy fix nor a heal-all. Our brash modern optimism assumes that all can be made well if we only will it to be so, but human behavior is complex, requiring deeper thought and actual, sometimes painful recalibration.
Confession is, quite simply, an attitude. It is the cornerstone of the intentional life, not merely a clearing out of the debris, that which is bad or wrong in us, but a realignment of what is best in us, an intention to live a better life. When confession becomes a practice, a daily reevaluation
of one's actions -- an art -- its power continues to grow, instilling a new sense of confidence, a vision of what life truly can be and hold. It is building upon something strong and sure and
ultimately reliable. Confession is about truth, and as Thomas Merton advises us, what follows from an attitude of truth will not fail us.
Wray Herbert: Law and Disorder: The Psychology of False Confessions
Sermons From The Old Testament - The Art Of Confessing Our Sins
The Art of the Confession - New York Magazine
John 20
22 And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
There is a reason there is a direct correlation to how old you are and the number of times you go to confession in a year.
Confession is the remnants of Indulgences. It is a farce and an unnecessary act with one exception. If you think you have sinned you can simply have a conversation with God you don't need any intermediary. Actually Jesus fought against things just like that. So what is the one exception, well if you need some therapeutic help. I mean you could get that from a Therapist but they are more expensive then your local priest. But for some they get a sense of Therapy from the visit. So if that is what you need go for it. But if you think you need the priest for forgiveness. No Way No How.
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You are just wrong:
John 20
22 And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
. I know that by HIS STRIPES WE ARE HEALED. I confess my sins daily to Christ and HE forgives me, for if you give your heart to HIM, HE will be with you always.........................even unto the end of the world. HE is a friend that sticks closer than a brother......................CHRIST IS ALL WE NEED and HE IS JUST A PRAYER AWAY.
When a person sins against God:
Matthew 6:6-12: “When you pray, go into your private room and, after shutting your door, pray to your Father who is in secret . . . ‘Our Father in the heavens, let your name be sanctified . . . and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.’”
Psalms 32:5: “My sin I finally confessed to you [God], and my error I did not cover. I said: ‘I shall make confession over my transgressions to Jehovah.’ And you yourself pardoned the error of my sins.”
1 John 2:1: “If anyone does commit a sin, we have a helper with the Father, Jesus Christ, a righteous one.”
When an individual wrongs his fellowman or when he has been wronged:
Luke 17:3: “If your brother commits a sin give him a rebuke, and if he repents forgive him.”
Ephesians 4:32: “Become kind to one another, tenderly compassionate, freely forgiving one another just as God also by Christ freely forgave you.”
a priest helps channel that goodness.
It is sometimes difficult to know that we are doing good without spending time considering our actions. Through Faith in Christ we are able to be sure that we are doing good.
The priest in not a middle man, he acts in the person of Christ and he acts as a representative for the community, because as you sin you sin against the community. Not just God.
that's what i see, if we're discussing it religiously, like he is spreading the hope or the Word. he's capitalizing on it.
did Jesus charge entry to his sermons? or his wealth of knowledge?
If I have anything to confess out of guild, I'll sooner do it to a therapist, who can at least be helpful.
We lived in the US, but my father was Scottish and my mother a Breton, so we were always going back to Europe. I was a kid, and we had flown back to Scotland. I went into the confessional and said the usual. The priest's response was a delighted, 'Good mornin' Catriona. Happy yer back, lass.' I was horrified.
Of COURSE. I was the only wean in that wee village on a remote island that had an American accent.
We got to France a few weeks later. I want into the confessional, and the same bluidy thing happened. =LOL=
In the first place, we never confess all our sins, therefore, we have still more to go...