CATHOLIC CONFESSION: is it about past or future?

Of all the seven sacraments in the catholic doctrine, it is confession which people have the biggest problems with. The sacrament of reconciliation or confession is explained in the Catholic catechism in a way that you as parents or children can understand. However, one frequently-asked question by non Catholics, sometimes even the Catholics remains: Why do Catholics confess to a priest?  Paradoxically I have also witnessed vividly in Protestant revival meetings, Penitents rush to the front of a church or auditorium, sometimes making public confession of their sins, longing for a word of absolution from minister or evangelist, for a visible sign of their faith and redemption, but confession in Catholic Church is questioned. It is certain we are not spirits floating in a void in direct relationship with God. We are flesh and blood, bodies in world and as such we are imperfect and prone to make mistakes, sometimes soiled our relationship with God, in fact bible teaches “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” and the wages of sin is death (Romance 3:23, 6:23), This means everyone need salvation. To amend our relationship with God, sometime is mediated to us through others - pastors, teachers, parents, spouses, friends or ourselves, etc. We need that human element; the audible word of affirmation, the visible sign, and the question is no longer why confessed to a priest but catholic confession: is it about past, or future?

CREATED HOLY, BORN SINNERS:

Contrary to the belief that we are all born holy, Scripture teaches that we do not become sinners, but that we are born sinners. David, whom God described as a “man after my own heart” (Act 13:22) said “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me” (Psalm 51:5). This always proof one fact that we are imperfect striving towards perfection. Through the Sacrament of Baptism, a person is cleansed of original sin and receives the grace of a new birth in God the Father, through His Son, in the Holy Spirit (CCC no. 683). Through this regeneration in water and the Spirit, a person becomes a Christian, born again as a son or daughter of God (Jn. 3:3-6; Rom. 8:14-17).

After becoming a child of God, one may freely damage or break off his relationship with God through sin. Venial sin damages our relationship with God while mortal sin actually severs the relationship through the loss of God’s supernatural life of grace within us (CCC nos. 1854-64). When a person chooses to kill that life of grace through mortal sin, God, who is full of mercy, seeks to reconcile His prodigal son or daughter to Himself (Lk. 15:11-32). God alone can forgive sins (CCC, no. 1441), yet God the son empowered the Apostles and their successors (bishops and priests) to carry out His ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:18-21). St. John writes: [Jesus said,] As the Father has sent Me [with all authority, Mt. 28:18], even so I send you. And with this, He breathed on them, and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained (Jn. 20:21-23; Lk. 10:16; Mt. 16:19, 28:18-20).

The Church’s power to bind and loose (Mt.16:19, 18:18) provides further scriptural evidence for this sacrament. As the Church has taught for years, that priest exercises this ministry in persona Christi (that is, in the person of Christ). This means that in confessing one’s sins to a priest, one truly confesses one’s sins to Christ Himself and receives pardon from God. Because the priest acts in persona Christi, he is the spiritual head or father of the community (1 Cor. 4:14-15). Thus, Confession reconciles us with Christ and His Body, the Church, whom we have wounded by sin.  Again At the ascension, Jesus again charged His Apostles with this ministry: "Thus it is written that the Messiah must suffer and rise from the dead on the third day. In His name penance for the remission of sins is to be preached to all the nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of this (Lk 24:46). Clearly, Jesus came to forgive sins, He wanted that reconciliation to continue and He gave the Church a sacrament through which priests would continue to act as the ministers of this reconciliation. Twice in Sacred Scripture do we find God breathing into human beings. We can recall that First, in the Genesis account of creation, God breathes the life of a soul into the man He has created. (Gen 2:7) Now, Jesus, the Son, breathes His life into His Apostles His priests, so that through them He will "breathe" life into the souls of contrite sinners (Jn 20:21-23). In this scene, Christ instituted the sacrament of penance and made His Apostles the ministers of it.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE SACRAMENT

The Catholic Catechism (1447) states: “Over the centuries the concrete form in which the church has exercised this power received from the Lord, has varied considerably.”

In the history of this sacrament, one will not find reconciliation rooms for many centuries. In the early years of Christianity, the Church exercised her ministry of reconciliation in a variety of ways. Three such ways were:

Ø  Participation in the Eucharist removed sin. It is stated that “the Eucharist cannot unite us to Christ without at the same time cleansing us from past sins and preserving us from future sins” (CCC 1393).

Ø  Anointing of the Sick. Jas 5:13-15 states that the prayer of faith prayed during the anointing “will save the sick person, and the Lord will raise him up. If he has committed any sins, he will be forgiven.”

Ø  Works of charity. Scripture tells us that charity covers over a multitude of sins (Lk 7:47, 1Pet 4:8).

During the second to the fifth century, an Order of Penitents developed to help the Church deal with serious sins like murder, idolatry and adultery. Penitents had to perform rigorous penances to show that they had converted from their sinful ways. In the seventh century, Irish monks introduced to Europe the practice of private confession, which also introduced people to spiritual direction. This was the beginning of private or one-to-one confession that we know today. In 1974, the Vatican promulgated a new Rite of Penance for the Church. The new Rite has three forms.

Ø  Private, one-to-one confession with an option to confess face-to-face to a priest.

Ø  Communal penance service with individual confession. This form emphasizes the communal nature of sin and reconciliation. No matter how secret sin is, it is never private. It not only hurts our relationship with God but also diminishes our relationship with our Church family. When we are less than we can be, our community is diminished by our failure.

Ø  Communal penance service with General Absolution. This form, which is rarely used, occurs when there is a large number of people and an insufficient number of priests present to administer the sacrament.

EFFECTS OF THE SACRAMENT

 Each sacrament has spiritual effects for the one receiving it. The spiritual effects of the sacrament of reconciliation are threefold:

Ø  Reconciliation with God and the Church

Ø  Restoration of peace to the soul

Ø  Reception of divine strength to fight the battle against temptations to sin (CCC 1496)

CONCLUSION:

Jesus entered this world to forgive sins. Jesus preached about the forgiveness of sins Jesus Himself forgave sins: remember the story of the woman caught in adultery (Jn 8:1) or the woman who washed His feet with her tears. (Lk 7:36) He also taught us to pray for forgiveness in the "Our Father:" "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." His mission of reconciliation would climax in His passion, death and resurrection: Jesus suffered, died and rose to free us from sin and death. Why so, because none of us can carry the load of our sins, we can’t change the past. No one can wipe the past clean but in Jesus we are relieved of these load, he carried the weight of all our sins on the cross. Therefore the movement of return to God, called confession and repentance, entails sorrow for and abhorrence of sins committed, and the firm purpose of sinning no more in the future. Confession touches the past and the future, and is nourished by hope in God’s mercy (CCC1490). Conversion is the way we begin to live the new life of Christ, by having our sins of the past forgiven and receiving the freedom to walk into the future. In his letter to the Irish church Pope Benedict XVI encouraged us to discover anew the sacrament of reconciliation and to avail ourselves more frequently of the transforming power of it grace.

This sacrament is so important in our sharing in the life of Christ; the Church has even mandated its practice. To prevent laxity, the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 required that "every faithful of either sex who has reached the age of discretion should at least once a year faithfully confess all his sins to his own priest. He should strive as far as possible to fulfill the penance imposed on him, and with reverence receive at least during Easter time the sacrament of the Eucharist." This rule is still a precept of the Church. The Council of Trent in 1551 in its Doctrine on the Sacrament of Penance asserted that since mortal sin "kills" the life of God in our souls, these sins must be confessed and absolved through the sacrament of penance, a principle repeated by Pope John Paul II in Veritatis Splendor. This wonderful sacrament is about your future not about your past. Go to confession and Walk in the freedom of your future and not to be enslaved by the sins of the past. Avail yourself for confession regularly.