How to prepare for Confession

To understand why we celebrate Easter, why it is so important a feast day, we need a stronger understanding of sin and a deeper appreciation of the Sacrament of Confession. Most of us have never properly learned how to make a good confession, often because we learned as children and never had another occasion to learn as adults. The keys to a good confession are (1) prayer, (2) a good examination of conscience, and (3) a real desire to be a made into saint - to have the love of God perfected in you.

A priest hearing Confessions

You see how it is written that the Christ would suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that, in his name, repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be preached to all the nations.

This past week, I took my first extended break off Island since November. One of the things both I and Canon Dominic do when we leave the island, is take the opportunity to go to Confession: it’s generally not a good idea to go to Confession with a priest you live with, and so whenever we’re off island is a golden opportunity to have the state of our own souls seen to.

One of the things that struck me, when I began to deepen my faith after university and then again when I entered seminary, is how poor the state of catechesis on the sacrament of Confession actually is. Most Catholics, especially cradle Catholics learn how to “do” Confession as very young children. Sometimes, if we’re lucky, we get a little refresher as teenagers before Confirmation. To the extent we even get these preparations at all, the preparation is often of poor quality - either simplified for children or for brevity, and after that we’re on our own and just expected to know what to do, when to do it and how to do it. Very rarely is it properly explained, very rarely is it adequately preached about.

The danger that we find ourselves in now, is that we’ve lost even the language to be able to talk about sin - and without that language to express it we don’t really understand it - and lacking that understanding we can often feel like the practice of going to Confession is more of a chore than a necessity or a life-giving joy. How many of us are confident we could give an account of the difference between mortal and venial sin? How many of us are confident we could adequately list the precepts of the Church, or the corporal and spiritual works of mercy?

This is our fault. By our, I mean the institutional Church, your ordained clergy - we so often want to shy away from preaching about Sin or giving this kind of Catechesis. Even as I was writing this homily, there was something squirming inside of me - are you really sure you want to talk about sin during Eastertide?  

Eastertide is the Church’s great celebration, an eruption of joy after 40 days of fasting and penance, but even this celebration is bound up with a proper understanding of sin. What is Easter if not a celebration of Christ’s victory over Sin? What are we celebrating if not our own liberation? How then, can we celebrate the joy of Easter without equal joy that Christ has not only broken the power of sin, but has given us a Sacrament of healing to free us from our own sins?

If we don’t understand Confession, then we don’t understand what Christ did for us at Easter. So, begging your pardon for talking about Sin in a festal season, I want to offer some guidance and help, on how to think about sin, and how to approach the sacrament of Confession.

There are two common phrases I often hear in Confession, almost always from good, well-meaning, practicing Catholics who only come to Confession maybe once a year or once every few years. One is “Well Father, I’m not a bad person” and the other is “I’ve not done anything really wrong.” I’ll be honest and say, it’s the way most of us think, most of the time.

How do we break ourselves out of this way of thinking? By doing just one thing at the end of every day before we go to bed. The Church calls it, an examination of conscience, which is a technical way of saying, praying, then asking ourselves questions.

Now, the question to ask yourself is not, ‘am I a bad person?’ Rather, ask yourself ‘Am I a saint?’ It is, of course, entirely possible that you are a Saint. However, I would caution that the one thing that all of the saints have in common is an acute awareness of their own sins (even the little ones) and a total repulsion for them. If this isn’t you, I would suggest that you probably aren’t yet a saint. It’s at this moment then, you should ask yourself: in what ways have I not been a saint? What have I done today and how might a saintly version of myself have done today differently?

Very often this throws up all sorts of answers, I could have made some time for prayer, I could have been kinder or more patient with so-and-so at work, I could have avoiding that gossip around the water cooler, I could have said something positive instead.

If these questions aren’t throwing up any answers, if you know you aren’t a saint but don’t know how to be more saint-like - then turn to the sacred scriptures and make those your questions. Chapters 5, 6, and 7 of Saint Matthew’s Gospel (what we commonly call the Sermon on the Mount) offer a great wealth of reflections on this exact subject.

But asking questions is just the first step. Our Blessed Lord doesn’t want us to wallow in our sins - He wants us to be free from them. What do we do after we have sat down and asked ourselves these questions? We turn to the one who offers us freedom, we turn to Christ, and we ask Him to free us: we say a short prayer like the Jesus prayer (Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.) or a longer prayer like the I confess prayer we said at the beginning of Mass, or one of the acts of Contrition. Ask the Lord for His immediate forgiveness, ask Him to help you grow into a real, canonizable Saint.

Lastly, there is an intimate and special link between Confession and the Eucharist: one heals us of our sickness, the other feeds us to make us strong again. An ideal practice (in fact, the perfect practice) would be to come to Confession on the last day of each week, on the Saturday, and to receive Communion on the Sunday freed from the burden of Sin. Bring those things you have thought about in your nightly examination of conscience with you to the Confessional.

Each of us is called, out of the world, to become a Saint, to be Holy - to allow, as St John writes in the second reading, God’s love to come to perfection in us.

Pray for this grace, but know that when you stumble it isn’t the end;

If anyone should sin, we have our advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, who is just; he is the sacrifice that takes our sins away.