The
meaning and use of sacramental confession in Western Christianity has long been
undermined by a pervasive legalism that both distorts the origin of this rite and undermines its proper, regular (and joyous) use today.
The
Reconciliation of a Penitent (a.k.a. "confession") is based on
Christ's commission to the Apostles to "bind and loose" sins on
earth, thus continuing in the Church Our Lord's work of reconciling God and
humanity through declaring forgiveness and speaking truthfully about the nature
and character of sin. As part of their ordination, bishops and priests
are given the authority to declare God's forgiveness. This is exercised
in Liturgy though the absolution following general confession, as well
as at sacramental confession.
Originally,
the Church knew nothing of the practice of making a confession alone to a
priest. In the early period of Christianity (and in some traditions still),
confession was made out loud to the entire assembly. This demonstrates
a deep and courageous understanding of the Church as Christ's redemptive Body at work in the world, and as a body of
people all in need of forgiveness, all desiring to be reconciled with each
other and to pray for each other's reconciliation. In the Eastern Orthodox
tradition, this ancient practice is echoed in the still-current way of
making a confession privately to a priest during the liturgy, off to the side
of the chancel area, but still in a semi-public location.
The
significance of confession for ancient Christianity was deeply connected to
baptism. When one became a part of Christ's body through birth in the font and
receiving the Holy Spirit in anointing, the Christian was no longer an
alienated individual, but a person in the deepest sense: one who was now
in a restored relationship with God the Holy Trinity, the Creation, the neighbor, and the true self in
Christ. Sin after baptism damages the health of this "spiritual
organism," requiring healing to repair the damage done to this loving communion. Thus, confession's true meaning is connected to the healing ministry
of Christ seen in the Gospels and lived out in the Church's continual offering
of pastoral care, intercession, and reconciliation.
In
the Western part of the Church, confession of sins was gradually removed to the
privacy of a meeting between the penitent and the confessor at a time outside of the public conduct of the Liturgy,
though often in the church building itself. This was accompanied by a change in
expressed character. Now confession came to have a judicial character,
based on the image of the Last Judgment in the Gospels and the Book of
Revelation. Slowly and at times imperceptibly, the priest moved from being a physician
of the soul to a deputy judge. The entire nature of confession became
a type of transaction: I commit this infraction against the Church's "code
of legal conduct" and must pay the prescribed penalty through a penance
imposed by a spiritual bureaucrat. Once this was done, one could feel
"justified" and then make a "worthy" communion or (more
importantly) be "properly" prepared to die and meet the criteria for
escaping damnation. All this undermined the deep connection with baptism or the profound
personal encounter between one in need of healing and the Church's mission of healing.
By
the time of the Reformation, this transition in the nature of confession had
become so complete that many saw it not as a way back to God through repentance and spiritual
healing, but as an obstacle to God. Many reformers sought to bring
confession back to its origins (confession to the entire assembly, or, more
commonly, private confession within the assembly gathered for worship). Private
sacramental confession was largely stripped from the life of the Reformed
tradition in Christianity.
But,
in the Anglican tradition, a curious thing occurred. While the stand-alone rite
of sacramental confession was removed and largely replaced with a general
confession in most services, it did survive in one particular context: the
service of healing (then called "The Visitation of the Sick").
Indeed, in this service, a great deal of effort was put into a thorough examination
of one's faith and practice. Everything from a recommitment to basic baptismal
faith (the Apostles' Creed was reaffirmed), to forgiveness of those with whom
the sick person was at enmity, to the right use of one's possessions and
wealth (with emphasis on giving to the poor and needy) was covered in
detail.
Thus,
in Anglicanism the long process of returning confession to its origins as
baptismal healing--not judicial retribution--had begun.
While
this service was intended for use in cases of serious sickness (remembering
that, in times past, many sicknesses fell into this category), some clergy used
it more liberally, seeing it as an excellent means of periodic examination of conscience
for members of the Church, especially in Lent. Indeed, there exist records of
some Anglican bishops growing concerned that certain priests were using this
rite rather too liberally...perhaps dangerously akin to the Roman Catholic
practice of confession! Oddly enough, the "official" emphasis in Anglicanism, for all of
its reformed intent, continued the medieval coupling of confession and
absolution before death so that the individual Christian could face God's
judgment with hope and a clear conscience.
In
the nineteenth century, straightforward sacramental
confession reappeared in the Anglican tradition for the first time since the Reformation. Though not expressly permitted by the Prayer Book, its practice gradually blossomed in many parishes, monastic communities, and other settings. This meant that confession was no longer directly linked to
sickness and death—a good thing for the wider pastoral ministry of the Church.
But, it also meant that the model most at hand used at the time of this renewal was the
juridical view of confession then current in nineteenth century Roman
Catholicism.
This
colored the view of sacramental confession in Anglicanism—partly because of
anti-Roman Catholic bigotry, but also out of a deep concern that the
obstructive mechanism of medieval “Penance” would undermine the "blessed
liberty wherewith Christ has made us free" so valued by Anglicans. While
Roman Catholicism had produced many clergy with a distinctly deeper, broader,
and more holistic view of confession (e.g. the Curé d'Ars), the prevailing view
remained transactional, with the priest very much understood as judge rather
than witness, representative of the Body, or spiritual physician.
As the twentieth century wore
on the careful study of the Early Church and the confession practices of the Eastern Orthodox
churches began to have an impact on Roman Catholic and Anglican views of
sacramental confession. Eventually, the Second Vatican Council and various
Anglican synods, councils, and conventions began to reform the confession rites
so that the focus moved from transaction or judgment to healing and
reconciliation with baptismal identity. When the Episcopal Church put forth its
new Book of Common Prayer in 1976/79,
it added back (for the first time since the Reformation) a separate liturgy of
sacramental confession…now called “The Reconciliation of a Penitent.”
When it did so, it
acknowledged the two currents that remain in the Anglican tradition with regard
to this sacramental rite by having two different forms for Reconciliation. While
sacramentally the same, they differ in tone and spiritual emphasis.
The first form is very much
in the style of classic Western confessional services: the penitent asks for a
blessing to make a true and worthy confession and receives this blessing from the confessor. The
confession is made (being clear that it is to God and “the whole Church” through the ministry of the confessor),
opportunity for counsel, direction, and comfort provided for, and then
absolution given (with two optional forms of absolution provided…one being
the classic “I absolve you of your sins” in the name of Christ, the other
emphasizing Christ’s forgiveness first, through the ministry of the confessor).
Short and to-the-point but also powerful and clear: sins are forgiven by God so
that we may return to fullness of life in Christ in this world and the next.
The second form is longer, more deeply connected to the rest of the Sacraments, more Scripturally-focussed, and
more clearly grounded in the concept of baptismal reconciliation and spiritual
healing. It begins with the confessor and penitent both praying a portion of Psalm 51 (the great psalm of penitence),
and saying together the ancient hymn of praise called the “Trisagion,” or
“Thrice holy hymn.” This establishes the truth that confession is a liturgy of the Church, not a private “spiritual
transaction,” and that confessor and the penitent are both members of the Laos
or People of God—not members of two different “castes” of Christians, one
judging the other.
The second form continues
with the penitent asking for and receiving a blessing to make a true and honest
confession, followed by a series of
passages from Holy Scripture long used by Anglicans to give assurance of God’s
desire for our reconciliation and redemption. Thus assured and encouraged by
the confessor (who is a fellow Christian with a special calling and grace to minister
God’s forgiveness), the penitent proceeds to offer a beautiful prayer
recounting God’s gifts of creation, redemption, and baptism—and, the fact that
we have misused these gifts through sin, using the language of
Christ’s parable of the Prodigal about “wondering in a land that is waste.”
The prayer may begin more on
the general level, but moves to the specific when the penitent adds his or her
own personal sins to this prayer. Following these specific sins, the prayer
recognizes that we are confessing not only the sins we can remember, but all
of the involuntary sins, or those we have forgotten, and so opening our
entire selves to God, holding nothing back in this encounter and fully
expecting total forgiveness—such is the
radical nature of this sacramental experience. The prayer comes to a close with
a plea for restoration to the full life of the Church—full realization of the personal life of faith, where
relationship with God, neighbor, and the true self-in-God may occur.
The confessor then is given
opportunity to provide counsel or guidance as part of this ministry of healing.
This is often where the Anglican emphasis on pastoral care, fitted to the
individual, is found.
The second form of Reconciliation
then proceeds to ask two important questions, both of which relate to the baptismal liturgy and point directly to
the restoration of the penitent to baptismal grace and the full life of the Church:
“Will you turn again to Christ as your Lord?” and “Do you, then, forgive those
who have sinned against you?” Once more, we see here the truth of sacramental
confession as something far deeper than mere satisfaction of an exterior code or set of rules: this is about restoration to the active and healed life of the organism of the Church, the Body of Christ and all its
members. This is a dynamic sacramentality.
Only now, with a full
reaffirmation by the penitent of a desire for communion with “that life which
alone is Life,” and thus refuting the deforming and false logic of sin and its spurious promise of salvation through autonomy, does the confessor pronounce Christ’s
absolution and restoration to "the perfect peace of the Church.” That which was
put out of joint, cut off, alienated, has now been re-joined fully to the Body which is truly alive, resurrected, and partaker of the Divine
Nature.
Having gained this moment of
spiritual revivification, the confessor recalls once more the story of the
Prodigal, but now with its ringing affirmation of restoration through this
triumphal “welcome home” from the Father:
Now there is rejoicing in heaven; for you were lost, and are found; you were dead, and are now alive in Christ Jesus our Lord. Go in peace. The Lord has put away all your sins.
To which the
penitent-now-restored gives the response provided at the end of the
Eucharist—to the fullness of which he or she is now brought back: “Thanks be to God.” All
has been healed and all sin forgiven; the long-awaited Lost One has returned, and the all the Church
throughout the ages rejoices before God the Holy Trinity.
* * *
And so, this long reflection
on the history of sacramental confession brings us back to where we began: with
Christ’s commission to the Church to continue his work of
reconciliation-- confronting sin amongst his members not with judicial legalism
but with a profound thirst for our return, our restoration to the truth of personal communion
given at baptism.
What had become distorted
through history and a cooling of human hearts has been set right by God’s grace
in the Church so that a means of healing for wounds and sins perhaps not
visible but nonetheless very real might be made available to the Faithful. Now it is time for more Episcopal parishes to make sacramental confession regularly available to their people, that this gift might be once more part of the common (shared) life of the community--not an adjunct or "extra" sought out by only a few and really understood by even fewer.
It is this hopeful, healing, and joyful understanding of
sacramental confession that is found in the Episcopal Church's Book of Common Prayer, and is offered regularly at St. Timothy’s throughout the year—and especially in the holy season
of Lent.
