“A Broken and Contrite Heart, O God, You Will Not Despise”: The Sacrament of Confession

We are all saints; we are all sinners. In the gracious paradox of Christian life, both those statements are true. Though the word “saint” typically calls to mind those figures in Christian history who have been particularly good examples of following Christ, all Christians are members of the “community of saints.” And though the word “sinner” is often used to describe someone whose particular sins are especially visible to onlookers (or perhaps just different from our own), we are all sinners – redeemed sinners, by virtue of Christ’s great act of atonement on the Cross, but all sinners, every one.

We are saved precisely because, without Christ, we are lost. If we could “do it ourselves” we would not need Christ; but we can’t, and we do. And so confession of sin, in one way or another depending on one’s tradition, is part of following Christ.

When I was on the journey toward my conversion to the Christian faith, sin was never a specific topic of discussion, but the idea was waiting in the wings. I knew I had faults, but I’d always consoled myself by knowing I had a strong ethical code. When I got to the point of realizing that God existed not just as the First Cause of the universe, but also as the source of all morality, I found myself in what is best described as “fear and trembling.” I had standards, yes – but now I was recognizing the existence of One whose standards were, literally, infinitely higher.

The night that I accepted Jesus as my Savior, my friend who was praying with me explained that part of the prayer would acknowledge that I was a sinner. He introduced the idea gently, I suspect so as to not make me any more nervous than I already was… but it clicked immediately, and I told him that I didn’t have any reservations whatsoever about admitting I was a sinner. Though we hadn’t discussed it beforehand, I knew that it was a true statement, describing a condition that I had always felt but never been able to identify, let alone articulate.

Confession, then, has been part of my Christian life from quite literally the very beginning. First the recognition of my identity as a sinner; then learning to ask, as part of the Lord’s Prayer, for God to “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Every week, I join in the General Confession as part of the celebration of the Eucharist: “Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves…”

But in addition to the necessary General Confession, in the Anglo-Catholic understanding of the faith, we also have the sacrament of confession, formally called the Sacrament of Reconciliation because it is in the confession of our sins with a contrite heart that we are reconciled to God through the saving action of Our Lord Jesus Christ. We’re not required to make private confession, but it’s recommended, and my church encourages it before Christmas and Easter. A year ago I made my first confession, before Christmas; since then, it has become a regular part of my spiritual life.

The genuinely sacramental nature of confession is something that has been borne out by my experience of God’s grace in the confessional. When I knelt there at the altar rail for the first time, I did not trust that God would heal me; I did not accept that He would forgive me; I did not know that He loved me. When I received absolution after my confession, I rose with a changed heart. I still needed healing; I still needed to discover His love. But I knew – with startling clarity – that God’s forgiveness is real. God’s grace is real.

In looking back on the course that my life has taken over the past year, I recognize that confession was a turning point. It was a few weeks after Christmas that I was able to make the decision to trust God, to really put my life in His hands. It was in the following months that I began to experience real healing of the deep-seated wounds in my soul. And while I can’t say it has gotten a whole lot easier to examine my conscience and confess my sins before God, each time has been an occasion of growth in my relationship with Him.

It’s an interesting irony that before I was a Christian, I would have assessed myself as being a far better person, all around, than I would now. The thing is, when you get to set your own standards, it’s not that hard to meet them… and in this culture, you don’t have to have particularly high standards to feel like you’re a good person. I thought I was a good person, or at least I thought that at the conscious level.

Before I was a Christian, I blindly bought into the anti-Christian (and anti-Catholic) sentiment that I’d heard growing up, that so-called confession meant sinning merrily all week, getting absolution on Sunday, and then going out with a clean slate to sin all over again. Seen that way, confession was the grossest hypocrisy: getting to do “whatever you want” with a get-out-of-Hell-free card from the priest at the end of it all. But that’s a dodge, not acknowledging the reality of sin. Sin isn’t about doing fun things that happen to be on a “no-go” list printed up by an oppressive Church using the threat of Hell to keep people in line. Sin is about being broken, about behaving in ways that are deeply damaging, to oneself and to others; sin is about “doing that which I do not want to do, and not doing what I want to do”; sin is about disconnection and alienation.

I also used to think (when I thought about it at all, which was seldom) that the whole “sin” and “confession” thing sounded really downbeat. As if it were all about saying “I suck” and beating yourself up about how lousy a person you are. Bummer.

But wait – wasn’t I doing that already? Though I was ready to assert that I was a really good, nice person, on deeper levels I was consumed with self-loathing and anxiety – and this self-loathing was reflected in how I struggled with relationships, in my constant low-level anger that only got expression in self-damaging ways, in how I felt like I was obliged to wear a mask all the time but didn’t even know who I was under the mask. And, perhaps more than anything else, I was terrified of not living up to expectations. Of getting exposed as a fraud. Of being mocked and humiliated by so-called friends. On every level you can think of, I was afraid of failure.

But now that I am a Christian, I have to look failure in the eye, because that’s what being a sinner is about. Sin: missing the mark. Screwing up. Failing. And not just in something that doesn’t matter… not in something that I can opt out of… not in something that I can optimistically repackage as “trying my best.” Failing. Trying to be a good and righteous person, and failing. Trying to obey God, and failing. Trying to do it all myself, and… failing.

And then what? Confession and reconciliation; repentance and the sure touch of God’s grace and forgiveness.

The truth is that when I accepted Christ, to say to God “Yes, I am a sinner” was, and is, tremendously freeing. Now I know that if I feel like I can’t get it right on my own, there’s a good reason for it: I can’t. Now I know that there is a way to deal with my sin, my failure; or rather, there is the Way, Jesus Christ. Now I know that I don’t have to pretend that my failure doesn’t matter, or that it doesn’t bother me, or that it isn’t real. All those things were lies, and living a lie takes its toll.

Confession means there’s no place left to hide; it means recognizing that I cannot keep anything hidden from God… and that I no longer want to. It has not been easy to ask for the Sacrament of Reconciliation – a couple of times it was so hard I had to struggle not to make a break for it before entering the chapel – but I know why it was, and is, difficult. It’s because it’s not just a bit of make-believe so I can feel better. It is opening my heart, in fear and trembling, before the living God. It is recognizing the Presence of the Lord Christ, acting in very truth through His servant to grant me absolution. It is difficult and sometimes terrifying because it is real.

And it is a great gift.

Where do we go from here? I think the closing words of the General Confession say it best. With penitent and obedient hearts we ask God for forgiveness and mercy so that we may delight in His will and walk in His ways, to the glory of His Name. Amen.

Related posts:

1. Virginia Tech: Free Will in a Broken World