Confession

Confession Times
Saturdays 3:00-4:00 PM or by appointment

Examination of Conscience

Before anything else, it is important to remember that the Mystery of Repentance, or Confession, is a Mystery of healing. In this Mystery, we confess our sins to Jesus Christ in the presence of a priest and receive the grace of God for the forgiveness and washing of our sins (Jn 20:21-23, LLX Psalm 50). In the Byzantine tradition, it is common to stand or sit with a priest and confess your sins while facing an icon of Christ or a crucifix. This reminds us that we are not merely confessing to the priest, but to Christ and that it is Jesus Christ that forgives us.

After you have confessed your sins, the priest will give you some advice and ask you to say a prayer of repentance. In the Byzantine tradition this is most commonly the Jesus Prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner." Once you have said a prayer of repentance, the priest will say a prayer of absolution, showing it is Jesus Christ that forgives us our sins: "May our Lord and God, Jesus Christ, through the grace and mercies of his love for humankind, forgive you all your transgressions. And I, an unworthy priest, by his power given me, forgive and absolve you from all your sins, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen."

We do not confess our sins to Jesus in front of the priest in order to feel bad, rather to restore our relationship with God and each other. Whenever we purposefully leave anything out during confession, it is similar to withholding what ails us to our doctor. If we don't tell our doctor what is wrong, he can't heal us. Likewise, because God has given us free will Jesus Christ, our Divine Physician, cannot heal us fully if we aren't willing to be vulnerable and tell him everything we've done wrong. Without confessing our sins, we cannot truly be free from them. You have most likely not done anything wrong that a priest hasn't heard already. The priest is not there to judge you, only to facilitate your healing through Jesus Christ. For many priests, the greatest joy they have is when they hear a heartfelt, repenant confession.

A common question is "Why do Catholics need to confess their sins to a priest? Why can't we confess our sins directly to God?" While it is true that we can confess our sins directly to God, there are many reasons we confess to a priest.

St. James tells us in his epistle, "Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed." (James 5:16) It is not simply praying for one another that heals us, but confessing our sins to each other. When we sin, we do not only sin against God, but we sin against the whole Body of Christ, the entire Christian community. The priest acts in the place of both the person of Jesus Christ and the Christian community so we can hear Christ and our Christian brethren forgive us. As we hear in the Gospel of St John:

"Jesus said to them again, 'Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.' And when he said this he breathed on them and said to them, 'Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you fogive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.'" (Jn 20:21-23)

This Jesus spoke particularly to his apostles. Through Apostolic Succession, bishops are able to represent Christ in the forgiveness of sins, and likewise the bishops pass this authority to the local priest. We are people of body and spirit, not simply of spirit. For this reason, we need to hear Christ's voice through the priest to be assured that we are forgiven of our sins and that our healing has begun.

In the Early Church, Christians confessed their sins to the entirety of the congregation they worshipped with. The Didache (~A.D. 70) tells us:

"In the church you shall acknowledge your transgressions, and you shall not come near for your prayer with an evil conscience. This is the way of life." (Didache Ch 4) and "But every Lord’s day gather yourselves together, and break bread, and give thanksgiving after having confessed your transgressions, that your sacrifice may be pure." (Didache Ch 14).

As time progressed and monastic life became more widespread, it was understood that private sins do not need to be confessed publically. Slowly, all confessions became private between the confessor and a priest. We hear the words of St. Basil the Great (Basil, Rule Briefly Treated, ~A.D. 379):

“it is necessary to confess our sins to those entrusted with the oikonomia of God’s mysteries. As this has been done by the older ones who were repenting in the time of the saints. As it is written in the Gospels that they entrusted their sins to St. John the Baptist, and in the Acts, that they were confessing to the Apostles, who baptised them all." (See Acts 19:18, James 5:16, 2 Cor 2:10)

Likewise St. John Chrysostom (d. 407) says:

"For they [the bishops and priests] who inhabit the earth and make their abode there are entrusted with the administration of things which are in Heaven, and have received an authority which God has not given to angels or archangels. For it has not been said to them, 'Whatsoever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven, and whatsoever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in Heaven.' (Matthew 18:18) They who rule on earth have indeed authority to bind, but only the body: whereas this binding lays hold of the soul and penetrates the heavens; and what priests do here below God ratifies above, and the Master confirms the sentence of his servants. For indeed what is it but all manner of heavenly authority which He has given them when He says, 'Whose sins ye remit they are remitted, and whose sins ye retain they are retained'? (John 20:23) What authority could be greater than this? 'The Father has committed all judgment to the Son'? (John 5:22) But I see it all put into the hands of these men by the Son."