Confession

Confession is one of the seven sacraments of the Church, those signs instituted by Christ to give grace. Through it, the baptized receives from God, by the ministry of the priest, the forgiveness of the sins committed since his baptism. It is also called penance, from the Latin paenitentia, the sorrow that animates it, and reconciliation, because it restores the friendship with God that sin had broken.

A power given by Christ

On the evening of Easter, the Risen One entrusts to his apostles the power to forgive sins in his name. “Receive the Holy Spirit. Those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven them; those whose sins you retain, they are retained.” John 20:22-23 This power he had first promised to Peter. “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 16:19 Forgiveness comes from God alone, yet God willed to give it through men. The priest does not forgive in his own name: he acts in the name of Christ, the instrument through which mercy passes. This is what Scripture calls the ministry of reconciliation. “who hath reconciled us to himself by Christ and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation.” 2 Corinthians 5:18 To confess to a priest is to receive forgiveness where Christ willed to place it. Only the bishop and the priest can absolve, for this power, given to the apostles, is handed on through the sacrament of Orders.

Why a sacrament after baptism

The sacrifice of the Cross redeemed once for all the sins of all men; it is the one source of all forgiveness, and nothing is added to it. “by one oblation he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.” Hebrews 10:14 This forgiveness must yet reach each one and be received. Baptism applies it a first time and gives rebirth to the life of God. But the baptized can fall again, and by a grave sin cut himself off from the grace received: he comes back out of the water where Christ had washed him. The Lord willed that this same forgiveness of the Cross be given back to him through confession. It adds nothing to the sacrifice of Christ: it carries its grace to the sinner who had turned away from it. Tradition calls it the second plank after the shipwreck: to the one who has been shipwrecked, it offers the way back to shore.

Mortal sin and venial sin

Not all sins wound the soul in the same way, and confession does not reach them all in the same manner. Mortal sin deprives the soul of sanctifying grace, the life of God received at baptism, and extinguishes charity within it: it breaks the friendship with God. It bears on a grave matter, committed with full knowledge and full consent. Venial sin, for its part, does not deprive of this grace; it cools charity without extinguishing it, and wounds the friendship without breaking it. Scripture already distinguishes these two weights. “There is a sin unto death. All iniquity is sin. And there is a sin unto death.” 1 John 5:16-17 Mortal sin must be confessed to be remitted, and the penitent states its kind and number as far as he remembers; this is the ordinary way by which lost grace is restored. Venial sin does not oblige to confession, since it leaves the soul in grace; it is also remitted by sorrow, prayer, almsgiving and the Eucharist. “charity covereth a multitude of sins.” 1 Peter 4:8 To confess it remains fruitful nonetheless: the grace of the sacrament revives the charity these faults had cooled and strengthens the soul in good.

He who, after a careful examination, nonetheless forgets a mortal sin sees it forgiven with the others by the absolution, the words by which the priest, in the name of Christ, remits sins. His repentance and his will to confess everything enfold it. If this sin returns to his memory, he is bound to confess it at the next occasion. As for the faults one does not even perceive, that depth of disorder no one wholly discerns in himself, they are remitted to the sinner whose heart repents of all, the known as the unknown. David already prayed thus. “Who can understand sins? from my secret ones cleanse me, O Lord.” Psalm 19:13

The acts of the penitent

The penitent prepares for it by the examination of conscience: to stand before God and review his life in the light of his Word, to recognise his faults. Three acts then form the matter of the sacrament: contrition, avowal and satisfaction.

Contrition first, the most important act, for without sorrow there is no forgiveness: the pain of having sinned, joined to the firm resolve to do so no more. This sorrow takes two forms. It is perfect contrition when it is born of the love of God: the sinner grieves at having offended the one he loves above all. It is imperfect contrition, also called attrition, when it is born of the fear of punishment or of disgust at sin. Both dispose to forgiveness, but do not touch the sacrament in the same way. Attrition suffices to receive forgiveness in confession. Perfect contrition obtains forgiveness as soon as it rises in the heart, even before the sacrament, provided it is accompanied by the will to confess; it therefore does not dispense from confession, whose desire it already carries. By it is saved the one who, repentant through love, dies without having been able to reach a priest. Christ says it of the sinful woman at his feet. “Her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she has loved much.” Luke 7:47 The Church affirmed it at the Council of Trent, in 1551.

Avowal next: to tell one’s sins to the priest, to expose the wound to the light that it may be healed. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive them us.” 1 John 1:9 This avowal must be entire and sincere: knowingly to conceal a mortal sin out of shame makes the confession void and adds a fault to the one concealed, for one does not deceive God, before whom nothing is hidden.

Satisfaction last: to accomplish the penance the priest indicates, a prayer, a fast or a good work.

Absolution

To these three acts responds the absolution, the form of the sacrament: the words by which the priest forgives sins in the name of Christ. The word comes from the Latin absolvere, to unbind: absolution unbinds the sinner from the bond that sin had tied within him. What the priest unbinds on earth, God holds as unbound in heaven. “Whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Matthew 18:18 The priest forgives in the place of Christ, as his ambassador, by a power he holds from the Lord. “For Christ therefore we are ambassadors, God as it were exhorting by us, for Christ, we beseech you, be reconciled to God.” 2 Corinthians 5:20 Lending his voice to the Lord, he declares: “I absolve you from your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” The one who forgives, through this mouth, is Christ himself. Man’s sorrow disposes the heart to receive this gift: the act of the priest carries the power of Christ, the opening of the heart lets it enter.

What confession works

Absolution remits the fault and, with it, the eternal punishment: the soul that had lost grace through a mortal sin recovers it and becomes again the friend of God. The extinguished charity is reborn, the merits that sin had extinguished return, and the reconciled conscience tastes peace. The penitent is also reconciled with the Church, which he had wounded, for no one sins alone: the harm of one member reaches the whole body, and his return gladdens the whole house. “there shall be joy in heaven upon one sinner that doth penance, more than upon ninety-nine just who need not penance.” Luke 15:7

Beyond the fault and the eternal punishment there often remains a temporal punishment: the forgiven sin leaves in man a disordered attachment and a wrong to set right. Satisfaction begins to set it right here below. Scripture shows it in David. “The Lord also hath taken away thy sin: thou shalt not die.” 2 Samuel 12:13 The child born of the fault will nonetheless die: the forgiveness of the fault does not erase every consequence. This reparation does not seek to sway a demanding God, for forgiveness is given freely; it heals the sinner of the attachment left in him and sets right the wrong done. When Zacchaeus is converted, he does not stop at sorrow, he repairs. “If I have wronged anyone, I restore it fourfold.” Luke 19:8 Our satisfactions have value only as received from the one satisfaction of Christ, who repaired on the Cross what no man could repair. What remains to be purified before death is completed in purgatory; and the Church, drawing on the treasury of the merits of Christ and the saints, can remit a part of it through indulgences, the remission of this temporal punishment which she grants to the sinner already forgiven.

Necessity and frequency

Whoever is conscious of a mortal sin is bound to confess it, and to do so before communicating: one does not receive the body of Christ with a soul cut off from him. “But let a man prove himself: and so let him eat of that bread and drink of the chalice.” 1 Corinthians 11:28 The Church has made it a precept: to confess one’s grave sins at least once a year. Regular confession, even for venial faults alone, is not obligatory; it purifies the gaze nonetheless, strengthens against relapse and makes one grow in the friendship of God.

The seal of confession

This secret bears a name: the sacramental seal. It covers all that the penitent confides to receive forgiveness, his sins, their circumstances, all that could make him recognised. The confessor can neither repeat it, nor use it, nor even let it be guessed by a word or an attitude. No reason, however grave, lifts this obligation: neither the order of a judge, nor the danger of another, nor the need to clear himself.

This inviolability holds to what takes place in confession: the penitent does not speak to a man, he speaks to God, of whom the priest is only the instrument. What is avowed is confided to the divine mercy, which blots out and forgets. “I am he that blot out thy iniquities for my own sake, and I will not remember thy sins.” Isaiah 43:25 The priest, mere minister of this forgiveness, is bound to the same forgetting: he has heard as the ear of God, and what he has received belongs to God alone. To betray this secret is one of the gravest faults a priest can commit; confessors have preferred prison or death rather than to deliver what had been confided to them. “He that walketh deceitfully, revealeth secrets: but he that is faithful, concealeth the thing committed to him by his friend.” Proverbs 11:13 The penitent can therefore tell everything without fear: what he deposits in the confessional will never come out of it.