"God the Father of mercies has reconciled the world to himself..."

Advent is a time of preparation for the arrival of the king. Just as you would clean up your house in advance of the arrival of special guests for dinner, we should work even harder to prepare our souls to welcome the King of kings & Lord of lords. There are a lot of communal penance services around this time of year, & while these are fine things, remember that we fail to live up to our baptismal dignity as sons of God all year round, so we must train ourselves to seek the remedy all year round, if necessary.

Below is a rather long note I wrote to a friend who is interested in learning more about Christianity, but is put off by the differing beliefs & practices of the various groups who call themselves Christian. Their particular question had to do with confession of sins to a priest:

I wanted to explain a bit more to you about Confession. It is one of the seven sacraments of the Church, that it, a special channel of God's grace for those who receive it. Confession of sins was a Jewish tradition, "In those days John the Baptist appeared, preaching in the wilderness of Judea... At that time Jerusalem, all Judea, & the whole region around the Jordan were going out to him & were being baptized by him in the Jordan River as they acknowledged their sins (Mt 3:14)."

But the origin of the sacrament of Confession is Jesus himself, who gave it as a gift to the Church to continue for all time his very own ability to forgive sins. No one can forgive sins but God (and, of course, Christians believe that Jesus is God the Son), but God can forgive sinners who repent through his priests. It is not all sins that require this sacrament, but only the most serious sins like adultery, theft, murder, & the like. Sins such as being unkind to some or thinking impure thoughts can be remedied by prayer & acts of charity.

This gift of Jesus to his Church is also found in the Bible. After Jesus rose from the dead on Easter Sunday, he gave this power to his 12 astonished apostles when he said, "'As the Father has sent me, so I send you.' And when he had said this, he breathed on them & said to them, 'Receive the holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, & whose sins you retain are retained (Jn 20:21-23)." [Ed.: It logically follows that they would have no idea what to forgive or retain unless they actually witnesses the crime or, more likely, the sinner told them their sin.]

Although I'm sure many people have misused the gift of Confession by thinking they can do anything & then just go to confession (which is, by the way, a very great sin called presumption), I can tell you from my own experience that I have been able to overcome many difficult personal failings through this channel of grace, along with lots of prayer participation in the liturgy, fasting, & other acts of charity. It is also very humbling to have to tell another person the most horrible thoughts of the mind, desires of the soul, & acts of the body. God knows that we need to get this poison out of our system & gives us the means to do so, if we choose.

In ancient times, people would confess their sins to the bishop, who would usually impose a very sever penance, sometimes lasting years before the person was reconciled back to the community. It was very much a public happening back then. It is only since about the 10th century that confession to a priest in private began. After the confession, the priest gives the penitent a penance to perform to help right the wrong that was done & as a symbol making reparations to both his fellow man & to God. The penitent must also promise to do everything possible not to commit that sin again. Also, I have heard from priests that hearing the confessions of others makes them keenly aware of their own sins & increases their desire to become more holy.

I think you already know that a priest can never tell anyone anything that is revealed to them in the confessional, even if they have to go to jail or are threatened with execution. The history of the Church is filled with examples of priest saints who were martyred for refusing to tell something that was revealed to them in the confessional. If a priest did reveal something, he would likely be removed from the priesthood (though he technically remains a priest forever) & he would himself have committed a very great sin.

Finally, I would mention that many other Protestants feel that because they are "saved" that there is nothing they can do to lose their salvation. They believe that once they profess Jesus as their Lord, then they are guaranteed heaven no matter what they do afterward. The Church has always taught that we have the ability to turn our back on God & separate ourselves from him. Being "saved" isn't something that happens at one moment in time, but a continuous struggle throughout one's life to remain faithful to God all the way to the moment of death.

Protestants may say that someone who really believes won't do anything sinful, but I think we all know that that is simply not true. Even though our souls are remade new when we are baptized, the tendency to sin remains our entire lives. Protestants often say that someone who continues to sin after professing Jesus as their Lord is really a "false believer." It seems that if they believed once but later could be a false believer, then no one really knows whether they are saved or not. Protestants really have no solution to this problem, & many will continue to do whatever they want, thinking everything is right between them & God without realizing that they have actually turned their backs on him.

If nothing else, the sacrament of Confession & the Catholic practice of confessing sins to a priest at least keeps a healthy sense of sin alive in our conscience. Most importantly, it is also a beautiful gift that God has given us to raise us back up after we fall.