By: Arc
Level: 1
(4 votes, average: 4.75 out of 5)
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I have a confession to make, I love to confess. See I’m a catholic born into the church. Been baptized, I’m a communicant and I’ve been confirmed. About holy matrimony or the holy order I’m still undecided. I’m a lieutenant, a soldier, one of Christ in the legion of Mary. In the past years I’ve managed to learn quite a lot about my faith and the church’s doctrine. It helps to know how to talk when doing “word battles” with our separated brethren. They bring up so many issues, what we are doing wrong and what we are not doing at all. Sometimes when they are bored talking about my Mary they bring up confession.
“Why tell your sins to your fellow man?”They ask
“Why don’t you just head to your room, get on your knees and talk to God in private?”
“Hey!!Where’s the fun in that?”My mind screams.
Oh boy! Some people reading this don’t know what I’m talking about; allow me to introduce one of the most intriguing practice of the catholic church-Confession.
Sacrament of penance and reconciliation (confession) is one of seven sacraments of the Catholic Church in which the faithful obtain divine mercy for sins committed against God and neighbor and are reconciled with the community of the church. By this sacrament Christians are freed from sins committed after baptism. The purpose of this sacrament is to provide healing for soul as well as regain grace of God lost by sin.
History of the Sacrament of Penance:
The sacrament dates back to the New Testament and the time of Jesus. Pope Pius X specifically reaffirmed the relevance of the Gospel of John 20:22-23 in the issue of this sacrament being instituted by Christ Himself. John 20:22-23 “Receive the Holy Spirit, whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained.”
Three major periods in its development are:
.Early Christian penance-Apostolic times till 6th-7th century
.Tariff penance-7th century-12th and 13th
.Individual Confessions-12th century onwards
Christians in the early communities of the church obtained forgiveness for sins by practicing prayer, good deeds, fasting and alms giving. This early way of penitential discipline received in modern times the name of public penance. Sometimes sinners did publicly speak about their sins but testimonies of the early church show that in most cases offences were known to the priest alone. When a penitent did publicly confess his/her sins, decision to do it was always “private initiative” of the person, a “free act” of Christian faith for spiritual motives. The public character of the early penance should be understood as prayerful participation and support given by the community to a sinner and not as public humiliation. This early practice was reformed to tariff penance and later to individual confessions.
Elements of the sacrament:
Contrition
Confession
Satisfaction
Absolution by the minister of the sacrament (a priest)
Rite of the sacrament:
It begins with the penitent starting his prayer thus “Bless me Father for I have sinned. It has been (states a time range) since my last confession or It is my first since baptism, these are my sins….”This follows a full description or listing of all sins remembered ending with “For those I remember and those I don’t remember I ask for the Lord’s forgiveness.”The minister offers words of advice and gives the penitent penance then the penitent says the Act Of Contrition(“O my God because you are so good, I’m very sorry for sinning against you and by the help of your grace I would not sin again”) then follows the words of absolution by the minister-“God the father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of his son has reconciled the world to himself and sent the Holy spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins, through the ministry of the church may God give you pardon and peace and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, Son and the Holy spirit.”
For catholic priests, the confidentiality of all statements made by penitents during the course of confession is absolute. This strict confidentiality is known as the “Seal of the confessional.” It is absolutely forbidden for a confessor to betray in any way a penitent in words or in any manner and for any reason. A priest who breaks this confidentiality incurs excommunication. In a criminal matter, a priest may encourage the penitent to surrender to authorities however this is the extent of the leverage he wields, he cannot make this a condition of the absolution and he may not directly or indirectly disclose the matter to civil authorities himself.
Seriously! Did y’all really think I was going to bore you with all the history talk and the rest of the ‘minini.’ I’d get tired myself. No doubt this history and documentations on the teachings of the church are very important but hey, you could always find these on Google and in books. There’s one part that’s not on any search engine or in books or less of course now in this magazine-MY PERSPECTIVE.
The whole system works like a cycle, a cycle geared at driving us sinners closer and closer to perfection. People join this cycle at various points, many join in when the Easter bells are ringing and they feel the need to keep church rules-“once a year at least, during the Easter period.” Some others join in at the beginning of lent when the ash makes all our guilt come to the surface. For me I join in every other day-Sunday masses and weekday masses. This is how it starts for me:
In my parish there’s an ordered system for leaving seats for either offertory or communion. Everyone has to go out of their seats in one order and come back the same. So I’m seated there and it’s time for communion, everyone on my seat leaves except me (not in the state of grace) and the mother by my side actually scowls at me as she moves past me in between pews. Now I actually feel the cold, I’m so ashamed I bite my lips. I make a promise to myself-“Next Sunday, I wouldn’t be left on my seat; I’ll join the line for this sweet bread.”
Just as I make this promise another voice screams “How you going to avoid sins?”I tell the voice to chillax we’d take it one step at a time. I start to go through my sins, I’m a 20 year old male and you know the usual. My mind feeds me a number of ways I could use to avoid them and I decide I’d watch myself for three weeks (sorta probation).See if I let go of my sins and actually feel sorry for them. If I do pass my probation weeks I take the next step and make a date for the priest. If I don’t I take another three weeks, so you see my “Righteous” probation period can actually take a while and two things can happen. I might remember Christ’s fallings on the way to Calvary get inspired and keep on striving or I might just drift away into sin again. For my cycle to continue it has to be the first right? Then I have to take my sins to the priest.
This part right here is the hardest of this cycle and we Catholics need to appreciate what it does for and to us:
- It lets you know you are truly sorry.
- It humbles you, the thought that you are going to tell someone all your “remembered” shameful deeds. Even though you don’t see the priest’s face, hasn’t it occurred to you that he might know your voice? Notice your shirt; see you when you both leave the box? You are going to let go of all your pride and state clearly your sins to a representative of God. Yeah I forgot, sometimes you may have to do face to face confessions, I’ve had the luxury of doing this number of times and trust me its most awkward looking the priest in the eye during mass. Appreciation of this here helps us know that we could always stand up and admit our faults in any circumstance damning the consequence. This builds a fertile ground for a truthful spirit.
- In most cases, it is here that you take the resolve that you would never want to be put in this position again. Your mind tells you that you have to get rid of these acts and even if you have to go for confessions again it would be one where your voice loudly lists “lies, missed mass, hmmm exam malpractice….”you know all the ones tagged “everyday sins.”You wouldn’t ever want to whisper the also tagged “grievous” ones like “masturbation, stealing, fornication, idolatry or self worship, abortion(St. Peter’s case)….”
When I’m through all this thoughts I wait for the appointed day, classic music playing in my ears, I head to church. I wait for my turn, go in, get on my knees and start-”Bless me Father for I have sinned…”I close my eyes so I can envision me talking on my knees in a heavenly gathering the angels smiling at me (Not exactly though, my sins would leave the crowd disgusted. Well a few might still be smiling, happy I came back, Jesus for one). When I’m done, I leave with my penance ringing in my ears. Most times it’s the usual our Lord’s Prayer and the Hail Mary, sometimes Bible passages to help my sojourn or decades of the rosary. I hate to think these prayers are actually surmountable to my sins, I know they are given to help me draw inspiration when meditating on the words. After my prayers and usually having decided on what work I’d do for God as my real penance I leave the church feeling like a newborn(Born Again).This is the best part of this cycle, I don’t know if it’s just me but I know I feel an unmistakable feeling of peace. I know that if I ran across the street and a car ran me over I would be headed to heaven (oops that’d be suicide).I fantasize about being called St. Richard. My life continues, Sunday comes and I march to the altar giving a nod to that mother that scowled at me. I love how I feel and I know I want to do this every time I come to church. Time goes by, and I actually see myself striving to keep away from sins and I keep a routine of going for confession every two weeks. I’m amazed that as the months pass, my confessions finish in record time(less sins).This continues, I’m like a football team on a nice run and you know I might draw some matches here and there, even lose and fall from grace but I rise up again just like Arsenal, march out to the field again and join the cycle again. I believe if I keep at this, one day I’d become like the Arsenal of 2003-2004, The Invincible Team.
Consider a patient who has chicken pox applying Calamine lotion and taking his antibiotics. The lotion provides a soothing effect and prevents itchiness so one does not spread the pox all over the body. On continual application of the lotion and adherence to the dosage regimen, the virus runs its course and leaves even though it might leave nasty scars and patient attains immunity.
Confession does the exact same thing as the lotion. It provides soothing effect and prevents sin from eating deep into us. Antibiotic here we can relate to the body of Christ (communion) and as we all know sick people need good nutrition (fruits and all). Good nutrition we can liken to words of the scripture. All these combined helps us drift far away from sin and attain immunity so that the battle of life over we may reunite without the loss of anyone in the kingdom of love and glory as the legionaries say it.
Joke: A boy about to go to the confessionals wrote down his sins on a piece of paper as a reminder. He put his ‘sin paper’ in his pocket and made his way to the church. While waiting in line, he felt his pockets and didn’t find his paper so he walked up to the priest and shouted-“They Have Stolen My Sins!!!!!!
Romans 8:21-“Salvation is therefore and above all redemption from sin, which hinders friendship with God.”
First published on FECAMDS Medicare 2013
