Notes on Preparing for a Confession
The purpose of Confession is to get God’s words of love and forgiveness in our ears for our particular sins, to disburden ourselves from guilt that we may have been carrying, so that we can have total assurance of God’s forgiveness towards us.“The Lord has put away all your sins.” So the goal of Confession is not negativity or self-flagellation, but healing, reconciliation, grace, forgiveness, and freedom.
Before making your confession, you’ll want to prepare by making a list beforehand on a sheet of paper that you can bring with you. This prep work is a time of prayerful self-examination, of taking stock of your moral life, to ask for God’s forgiveness for your specific sins. I always begin my list with the sins that are weighing on me the most so that I confess them immediately.
From there, in your preparation, you can either jog your memory by running through things chronologically since your last confession (or over the course of your life if it’s your first confession) or by using a list, like the seven deadly sins. These are: Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Anger, Envy, and Pride. You will also want to jot down an estimate of how many times you committed each sin, if it’s able to be counted. Remember as you prepare that you are ultimately bringing these things not just to the priest but to God to be forgiven, so you want to be thorough.
You may want to give a comment or two with some sins, if you want to give some context; but there isn’t a need to give specific names for people involved in your sins; it’s usually better to leave people unnamed.
The rite of confession is in the Prayer Book on pp. 447-448. At the place where it says, “especially ———,” you say how long it’s been since your last confession (or say that it’s your first confession), and then you talk through your list, and I listen. Then you finish the paragraph, “For these and all other sins,” and so on. Then you pause, and I offer counsel and penance. For my counsel, I usually take this as an opportunity to remind the person how loved they are by God and how Christ takes away all the guilt of our sins by his death and resurrection. If there is any advice I have, it will probably be if I find some common thread underlying different sins. Penance is usually something like a Psalm to read through, or a certain number of Our Fathers or Hail Mary’s. Usually the penance is something that can be said in the church before you leave. Because it’s an act of thanksgiving and a step in the direction of virtue, you should kneel down and say your penance while you’re still in the church as a way of giving thanks to God for his forgiveness and practicing repentance.
After my counsel and penance, I will grant you absolution (top of p. 448) and say, “The Lord has put away all your sins.” Your response is “Thanks be to God.” I will say, “Go in peace, and pray for me, a sinner.” That is the end of confession; and you go your way at that point to say your penance.
Priests hearing confessions are bound by “the seal,” which means that whatever you say in Confession is absolutely confidential. For no reason whatsoever would the priest mention what you said in the confessional, and if a priest does break the seal, he is liable to be defrocked from ministry. Confessors take this confidentiality very seriously, so if you ever want to revisit a sin you mentioned, outside the context of confession, you’ll have to mention it again me. Some confessors have been given “the gift of forgetfulness,” and claim not to remember the content of a person’s confession. In any case, the confessor isn’t allowed to treat you any differently than before, so you can feel totally comfortable that your confession stays between you and God.
This sacrament is God’s gift to us, to get his words of love and forgiveness into our ears, in response to our own particular sins. It shouldn’t only be used when we commit big sins. It is good a few times a year to pause to take inventory of one’s moral life and seek God’s forgiveness in confession—but especially in the season leading up to Easter. God gives us, in this sacrament, a special grace to help us in the life of repentance, such that we come away from the sacrament stronger than we were before.
