While growing up, I simply knew it as some diabolical practice of telling all your secrets to some man on the other side of a screen. It made no sense. Why should we do that if we can directly confess to God I wondered? Knowing that it was one of the top issues that Protestants take issue with, as I began to learn more about it, I was surprised to realize that this sacrament is much more complex than at first glance. Confession is only a part of the sacrament of Penance. This sacrament contains the concepts of 1) conversion, 2) confession, 3) penance, 4) forgiveness, and 5) reconciliation.
The first part of this sacrament, conversion, is about a return to God through recognizing that we need Him. The Catechism explains it as "the first step in returning to the Father from whom one has strayed by sin." This is the point where you realize you have sinned, you pray and ask God to show you where you have failed, you go through the Ten Commandments and examine your conscience.
The more I understood this part, the more I liked it. The benefits of this part of the sacrament allow one to really take a close look, on a continual basis, at which part of their life they are failing to live up to God's commandments. They can see over time, where they have improved. I could see how this conversion would keep them open and honest in front of God, and keep them close to His Will.
As far as confession, it is the next step after conversion. To disclose these shortcomings to a priest in the sense of a "confession" - is according to the Catechism, also an act of "acknowledgement and praise - of the holiness of God and his mercy toward sinful men."
Penance is the part of this sacrament that first calls for an interior penance, a "sorrow of the soul and detestation for the sin committed, together with the resolution not to sin again". As the Catechism puts it "without this, such penances remain sterile and false; however, interior conversion urges expression in visible signs, gesters and works of penance." As such a interior posture of conversion, of sadness for your offense to God, is the most necessary step, and often the portion of penance prescribed by the Priest at this point of the Sacrament is really a very small token amount of penitential work. It's an outward sign, of an inward reality.
But wait a minute. Who has the power to forgive sins in the New Testament? For a Protestant this is a slam dunk question.
Only Jesus. Obviously!
This is what I thought as well. It was ingrained in my head through powerful mantras such as "Only Jesus can forgive your sins". And although it is very true that Jesus does forgive our sins - I would ask you to read John 20:21-23.
[Jesus] said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." And then he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained."
These verses blew me out of the water! Although, I had read the Gospel of John - it was as if I had never read that part. I think that meditaion on them, will lead one to realize that here - Jesus is not just talking about a brother forgiving the sin committed against him by his brother. Obviously, that is needed. Jesus speaks about the need we all have to forgive one another. But these verses are about the Apostles being given the power to forgive or retain sins. This is one of the verses that relates to the apostolic tradition handed down by Jesus, which according to the Catechism, "by virtue of his divine authority he gives this power to men to excercise in his name."
Through this absolution of sins, we are reconciled to God and to the Church. The Cathecism says that "Those who approach the sacrament of Penance obtain pardon from God's mercy for the offense committed against him, and are, at the same time, reconciled with the Chruch which they have wounded by their sins and which by charity, by example, and by prayer labors for their conversion."
Any Protestant will agree that we need to be reconciled to God (2 Corinthians 5:18-20), but the method is what is disagreed upon. I can say that I have never heard Catholic teaching against the need for us to personally forgive one another, nor that we should not pray and confess our sins to God. This is in agreement. What is missing is the reconciliation to the Church that is offered in the sacrament of Penance. The Church, is infact harmed by our sin because Catholics believe that the Church is the body of Christ. And we, as Christians, are part of that body. Thus the sin we commit, doesn't just harm us, but is harmful to the entire body of Christ, the Church. So how do you ask the Church for forgiveness?
As a new Catholic, Confession has been a very new sacrament for me. By the time it came time for my first confession, I definitely believed in the sacrament, and wanted to make a good confession. But I also was very nervous. And as far as the wonderful effects of absolution that I had heard about - I did not have confidence in that. But I was fairly certain that this whole Confession thing was a good idea, and Biblical. I could see how in my past - there were times I was in active rebellion to God, and remained unrepentant, and that seriously injured my relationship with God and the Church, to the point of moving me in the opposite direction of God's will. I think that there is a safety net for this found in the sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation.
And I must confess, that those wonderful effects I had heard of are not merely myth. There is something amazingly comforting and wonderful in hearing those words
"May God give you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."
I have been quite surprised at how emotional the act of confession has been, and I am quite without words to describe the peace that follows!
