THE THIRTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST Go, show yourselves to the priests (Luke 17:14). One of the responsibilities of the priests of the Old Testament concerned leprosy. They had to determine if a person had leprosy, what to do if he did and what rites were to be performed if he were cured of the disease so that he may once again join society. In his great work, The Liturgical Year, Dom Guéranger, commentating on today s Gospel, says [The Old Law] gave to the sons of Aaron the power, not of curing, but of discerning leprosy, and passing judgment on its being cured or not. The time, however, has now come for a Law far above that of Sinai. It has a priesthood, whose judgments are not to concern the state of the body, but, by pronouncing the sentence of absolution, are to effectually remove the leprosy of souls. In saying this, Dom Guéranger is in accord with the Church Fathers and Catholic commentators who point out that leprosy in scripture symbolizes grave sin and the priest of Israel has its fulfillment in the Catholic priest who heals souls in confession. I think it is fitting, therefore, that we consider today the sacrament of confession, but since time does not permit us to speak on all aspects of this great sacrament, I would like to limit myself to three points, namely, what confession is, the advantages of confession and answers to certain objections that keep us from confession. The first question to be answered, then, is: What is confession? Confession is a declaration of personal sins to a lawfully authorized priest for the purpose of obtaining absolution. So, the first thing we learn from this definition is that confession is a declaration of sins. This means that in order to go to confession, we must communicate our sins to the priest in some way. The most obvious and common way this is done is by speech. However, if we can t speak the language of the priest or can t speak at all, we may use other signs. For example, if a dying person lost the use of his voice, but is still conscious of his surroundings, the priest can go 1
through a list of sins, asking after each sin that the dying man blink his eyes or squeeze the priest s hand to indicate that he had committed the sin mentioned. Confession is a declaration of personal sins. It is sometimes a temptation when confessing our own sins to also confess the sins of others, particularly of those with whom we live. A child, for example, may confess that he hit his brother because his brother had said something mean to him or a wife may confess that she was angry with her husband because he was lazy. Confessing in this way, especially if it is an attempt to justify our conduct or make our sins not look as bad when compared to the sins of others, is contrary to the spirit of confession in which we must be contrite and humble seeing we are sinners in need of God s mercy. We must confess our sins to a lawfully authorized priest. The priest to whom we confess our sins must not only be validly ordained, but must also have authority from the Church to hear confessions. This authority is called jurisdiction and unless the priest has it, he cannot hear confessions validly. If you ever see the ordination of a priest in the traditional rite, you will notice that, after the priest receives his chasuble, he wears it with the back part folded up into thirds. Towards the end of the ordination Mass, the newly ordained priest kneels before the bishop who asks him if he will be obedient to his lawful superior. The priest responds I promise, and his chasuble is unfolded. This part of the ceremony symbolizes that the priest is granted the jurisdiction he needs in order to exercise his office, but notice, that this is merely symbolic. The ordination and the unfolding of the priest s chasuble, beautiful ceremonies though they may be, do not give to the priest the right to hear confessions. He still needs a letter from the local diocesan bishop which tells him that he can hear confessions. If the bishop does not give this letter, a priest cannot hear confessions validly. 2
We ought to go to confession with the view of obtaining absolution and not to merely list our sins or, God forbid, brag about them. The second thing I would like to speak of is the advantages or benefits of confession. The most obvious and greatest benefit of confession is that, by it, we are forgiven of our sins, and if this were the only benefit we received from confession, we should be only too happy to make use of it. Imagine that Our Lord had not instituted this sacrament and we committed a mortal sin. The only way for us to be forgiven of that sin is to have perfect contrition, that is, we would have to be sorry for our sins purely because we have offended God, Who is all good and deserving of all our love. To have perfect contrition is difficult, if not impossible, for many of us. So many souls would be lost that would otherwise have been saved. But Our Lord has instituted the sacrament of confession and if we confess our sins there, we do not need perfect contrition in order to have them forgiven. We do, however, still need some type of supernatural motive for our sorrow. If we go to confession simply because our parents told us to, that would be insufficient to make a good confession. But if we go because we fear hell or we want to go to heaven, God will still forgive us of our sins and the gates of heaven will be thrown open to us. Another advantage of confession is it alleviates the conscience. It is natural for us, when our conscience bothers us, to speak with someone we trust, who we hope will give us advice and counsel. I have a good friend who used to be a personal trainer. He told me that had he used his degree to be a therapist, he would have become rich because some of his clients would meet him at the gym and instead of working out, they would just want to talk with him about things that were bothering their consciences, even if it meant that they still had to pay him for the time he spent for simply listening to them. Confession is a much easier and cheaper way to attain the 3
same result, namely, the easing of our conscience and the good advice of the priest who will help us trust in God s mercy and help us avoid sinning in the future. There are many other advantages to confession, but I would like to mention only one more. Confession promotes the good of domestic and civil society. The Catechism of the Council of Trent says: Abolish sacramental confession, and that moment you deluge society with all sorts of secret and heinous crimes; crimes too, and others of still greater enormity, which men, once that they have been depraved by vicious habits, will not dread to commit in open day. The salutary shame that attends confession restrains licentiousness, bridles desire and checks wickedness. Despite these advantages, many are able to invent excuses to not go to confession when they need too and, if they be lacking in excuses, the devil is more than happy to supply them. This leads me to my third and final point, namely, to mention and hopefully refute some objections we raise to going to confession. Some say that they do not want to go to confession because they are ashamed to do so. The holy Dominican bishop, St. Antoninus, who died in 1459, relates a story pertaining to this point. He said that he once saw an evil spirit hovering around a penitent who was preparing for confession. St. Antoninus asked the demon what he was doing, to which he responded: I m making restitution when I wanted to lead this man into sin, I took his shame away from him; now that it is a question of confession, I m restoring it to him! This is the way of the devil: he gives confidence to sin by holding out hopes of pardon, but when sin is committed, he inspires shame, to prevent the confession of it. But God does the contrary: He makes sin shameful, that we may abstain from it, and gives us confidence to confess it by promising pardon to all who accuse themselves of their sins. 4
Others do not want to go to confession because they fear what the priest will think or say when they confess this or that sin. But as Fulton Sheen points out, God chose men and not angels to become priests because men understand what it is like to be sinners and are, therefore, able to have compassion on their fellow men. In other words, we should not fear the reaction of the priest, since he wishes to have mercy on us, knowing that he himself, like all persons living on this earth, is prone to sin. We should also not fear that our sins are so strange or great that we will shock the priest. Even if he is not yet an experienced confessor, he has studied moral theology for some years. There is nothing you could tell him that he has not heard before. Finally, there are some who are in mortal sin and are able to go to confession, but will postpone doing so to a latter day. Let us listen to St. Alphonsus, who tells us: What you can do today, defer not till tomorrow In the lives of the saints, there is no tomorrow. Tomorrow is found in the lives of sinners, who always say, Hereafter, hereafter; and in this state they continue till death. If God call you today to do good, do it; for tomorrow it may happen that for you time will be no more, or that God will call you no more. We have considered what confession is, its great advantages and why we should have no fear to make use of it. Now all that remains for us to do is to imitate the ten lepers. We need to bring to Our Lord the diseases of our soul, our sins, and say to Him: Jesus, master, have mercy on me. To which, I have no doubt, he will respond: Go, show yourself to the priest. 5