Objections to Confession...
So frequently we here all the excuses about why people do not
participate in Confession when this is one of the most loving and
powerful sacraments of the Church. Archimandrite Seraphim Alekslev
examines some of these excuses in his beautiful book The Forgotten
Medicine.
"HOW GREAT must be our wickedness! We do not
turn to Confession not only because we forget about it, but we do not
practice it even when we know about it. What can be more imprudent than
this?
Confession is so important to us sinners that we must
boldly say: there is no salvation for us without Confession. Abba Isaiah
expresses the same thought: "If there were no repentance, nobody would
be saved. just as Baptism cleanses us from original sin and from all
sins committed prior to Baptism, so repentance, involving a confession
of our sins, cleanses us from all lawlessness committed after Baptism."
We do not confess because we have objections to Confession. What are our objections usually?
Here are the main ones:
1) One says: "I am so sinful! Can God forgive my sins?
I do not believe this! That is why there is no use for me to go to Confession."
But if a man repents sincerely, any sin can be forgiven him. "The power
of repentance is based on the power of God. The Doctor is all-powerful,
and the Medicine given by Him is all-powerful" (Bishop Ignatius
Brianchaninov).
St. John Chrysostom, pondering on the
miraculous results of sincere repentance, says: "Repentance is a
medicine which destroys sin. It is a heavenly gift, a marvelous force
which through the grace of God conquers the might and strictness of the
laws. It accepts all and transforms all…
Do not tell me: "I
have sinned much, how can I save myself?" You cannot, but your God can,
and He can do it so that all your sins will be destroyed….
Sin
is to God's love for man what the spark is to the sea, not even that,
but something much smaller! The sea, however big it may be, has an end,
but God's love for man is limitless.
2) Another says: "Why should I go to Confession? I have no special sins.
Let those who have murdered, stolen, raped, or committed some other sin go to Confession."
This objection to Confession is the complete opposite of the first
one... Here, there is a lack of any realization of wickedness….
Let those who say, "I have no special sins," answer whether they have
Christ in their hearts. He likes to inhabit pure hearts. But are their
hearts pure? Hardly! They imagine that they are pure, but imagination is
not reality. lf we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and
the truth is not in us (1 John 1:8). And where there is a lie, there
Christ is not.
The Holy Fathers teach us that It Is very hard for a man to see his sins….
It turns out that those who think that they do not have any great sins
are actually blind. They must pray to God to enable them to perceive
their sins and to save themselves from the extremely fatal spiritual
delusion that they do not have any particular sins. Even if their sins
are as small as specks of dust, if they are not cleaned with constant
Confession, they pile up and dirty the room of the heart so that the
high heavenly Guest cannot enter there.
The small sins are
often more dangerous than the greatest crimes, because the latter weigh
heavily on the conscience and insist on being atoned for, confessed,
settled, erased, while the small sins do not weigh too much on the soul,
but they have that perilous property of making it insensitive to the
grace of God and indifferent to salvation. ….
In order for man to restore his spiritual life, he needs to confess even the smallest of his sins.
3) A third man says: "All this is true. But why should I confess when I
know that tomorrow I will sin again? Is there any point In such
confession? I see that one should confess only if one would sin no more
after that!"
This objection to Confession contains both something
which is very true and something which is not. The right thing here is
the desire not to sin any more after Confession. But we are feeble
humans, and we cannot attain right away such a firmness which makes
falling into voluntary sins impossible. If we cannot reach such
steadfastness in virtue right away, should we surrender to vice? Or
should we stop confessing? Which is better––to roll in the mud of the
spiritual swamp, or to pick yourself up after each fall and go on with
the hope that someday you may reach the solid and beautiful shore of
virtue? If you do not confess, you remain in the mud. If you confess,
you pick yourself up from the mud and clean yourself. "But why should I
get up if tomorrow I will fall again?" you say. When you fall again,
then get up again! Every day begin all over again! This is undoubtedly
better than falling out of the habit of getting up….
Leave your
house unswept, uncleaned, and unventilated for one year! Will it not
turn into a pigsty? Now think about what the soul of a man is like when
he has not cleaned it through Confession, not only for a year, but for
twenty, forty, sixty, or seventy years!...
4) A fourth man says: "I am confessing before God. What need is there for me to go to the priest?"
... God has ordained the priest to administer the Holy Sacraments so
that we can receive through them heavenly all-saving grace. Confession
is a sacrament, too. If you confess before God, you are doing well,
because you are moving your conscience, remembering your sins, and maybe
even shedding tears for them. Yet you do not receive God's grace of
forgiveness through all that. ...until you go to the priest to whom
Jesus Christ Himself has given the power to bind and loose, no matter
how much you confess before God, you do not receive forgiveness for your
sins, because God Himself has condescended to say to the priest: whose
soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them (John 20:23).
Besides, Confession before a priest has an enormous instructive
meaning. It humbles us. It cures our pride; it makes us blush savingly;
It instills in us shame and fear and thus protects us from future sins.
"But how can the priest absolve sins?" you ask. He can, since God has
ordered it so. "But is the priest himself not a sinful man?" If lie is
sinful, what do you lose from that? He is sinful for himself and will
answer before God for his sins. The Holy Sacraments administered by him
do not cease to be active for you because of his sinfulness if you
accept them with faith and humility. Does the sunray get dirty when it
falls on mud? In the same way, God's grace does not lessen by being
transmitted by a priest muddled with sins. He himself may be denied
grace on Judgment Day because of his sinfulness, but you, accepting
through him God's grace, will not deprive yourself of it if you show
yourself to be worthy.
"But will the priest not give away the
secret of my confessed sins?" No! No priest has the right to tell of
that which he has heard during Confession. He has to take the secret of
the Confession to his grave. So do not worry that the shame of your
sinfulness may be announced to society.
But remember that if
you avoid Confession because of zeal for your honor, you will shame
yourself If you are ashamed to admit your weaknesses before one man,
everyone will begin talking about them! Such is the spiritual law.
People sense our weaknesses, no matter how diligently we hide them. If
you confess them before one man, God, because of your humility before
this single witness, will cover you with His grace before the many.
...Your confession will teach you to struggle with your passions; and
if you are really fighting against them, the multitude of people will
not find out about them. You, with God's help, will be healed before you
have shamed yourself. But if you do not want to be healed through
Confession, then you will both expose your name to abuse here and then
be disgraced before the whole universe at the Last Judgment!"
From: The Forgotten Medicine, pp 29-39
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