Reflections on Confession

It is hard to imagine a deep friendship or marriage without some sort of forgiveness being asked of one another.  As we dance together in life we have surely stepped on each other’s toes at some point and have felt hurt by the other and for sure have regretfully ‘caused’ suffering as well.

If you have done something that hurts or distorts or distances a deep, loving relationship; naming, claiming it, and saying I’m sorry for what has happened is essential to its restoration.  "Asking for forgiveness is what we do to protect, renew, and restore our relationships when it has been damaged"! 

For the sake of that love and friendship, you confess what you've done, you apologize for what you’ve said, and you strive ‘not’ to do it again.  I am sure you have felt an uncomfortable feeling when you have been hurt or someone has hurt you intentionally or unintentionally.

And you know what it is like when that friendship or relationship is restored and you are able to re-connect and just be you.  Our church is asking you to ‘just be you’, the you that you were created to be, the you that chooses to respond in a loving, peaceful and powerful way, the you that thirsts for a relationship with God.

To assist us in becoming ‘us’ and to help us restore our relationship with God and one another, our church invites and encourages the faithful to come to confession. According to Dn. John Chryssavgis, confession can be looked at as a forward movement ‘into’ life. It is not an invitation to hopeless guilt but to freedom and responsibility.  The purpose is not that we be ashamed or demoralized but it is rather to point us towards life; a life characterized by honesty, integrity and personal accountability to God, to all others, and to oneself.

“To repent is to awaken from the sleep of ignorance, to rediscover our soul, to gain the meaning and purpose of our lives by responding to the incomparable love of the One who is ‘not’ of this world, the One who ‘demonstrates’ His own love toward us.  The focal point should not be our imperfection but the perfect love of Jesus, who is good and loves humankind”. 

We should not conceal or hold private, our pain, our problems, our passions.  ‘If’ we listen to them and respond to them with boldness and with the Grace of God they may show us how to love and be closer to God, others and our self!

Deacon John speaks about the power in being able to confess our peculiarity, our brokenness to someone who does not shame us, who will stand as a representative and as a witness before God, then our healing can begin.

“When we are able to take off our mask, and together with at least one person look clearly at our vulnerability without judgment and full loving acceptance for who we are, then our recovery and restoration has begun.”  

This is not easy, self awareness can be troublesome but nevertheless ‘necessary’ for us to have new life.  Socrates said, “the unexamined life is a life not worth living”.  There is something healing and life-giving in the simple act of examining and verbally sharing one’s private burden with one’s spiritual father. 

It is important to be brutally honest with ourselves before our spiritual father.  “We ought to be wary of any dishonest ‘niceness’ in our relationships, in our marriage, and in our churches, which undermines the process of consultation and the sense of community”.

Having said all this I know it is most difficult to confess our sins and it is never easy admitting doing something that we regret and are ashamed of, an act we’ve kept secret or denied, or blamed someone else.  There are many times we argued to ourself that it wasn’t really ‘that’ bad as others might think. So we bury these sins, these feelings, these secrets deep inside only to have them surface at the most inopportune times of our life.  

Jim Forrest states that, “we were designed for confession and that secrets in general are hard to keep and if they are not confessed rarely go away but have a way of making life harder, heavier, and unbearable as time passes.”  Isn’t this true?  The more we hold on to the lie, the suffering, the blame, the anger, the hurt, the more our heart becomes heavy, the more we feel depressed and hopeless.

“You see we are called to love, not to pretend; to be holy, not to be ‘nice’, to be connected, not disconnected, to be balanced and grounded.   Clearly confession is not only remembering the past wrongs, not only reciting a list of how we hurt God and others,  but confession should be about reconnecting ourselves as members of Christ’s body and one another.”

Repentence is the act of our re-integration into the healing body of the faithful, our way toward reconciliation with the ‘community of saints. As the Evangelist John wrote: "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (1 John 1:9) The Apostle James wrote in a similar vein: "Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed." [James 5:16].

Lets do our best to allow the light of Christ to enlighten our minds, to transform our thoughts, to direct our path to His Kingdom, to His mansion, to His power of life!!!  Let us learn to become vessels of the Holy Spirit, vessels of forgiveness, vessels of peace, people of love.  

Have a blessed Lent!

+fr. tom