2nd Sunday of Advent - How to Make a Good Confession

 

 Why would the Church have John the Baptist as its focus during the Advent Season? Aren’t we preparing for the birth of Jesus? Let us recall John the Baptist was sent to prepare the people for the coming of Jesus. In order for the people to prepare for the coming of Jesus, God wanted the people to repent of their sins. In another words, one cannot prepare for the coming of Jesus, if one does not first acknowledge one is a sinner and needs His loving mercy.

Pride prevents repentance and one who is proud will not listen to what another person is saying…they think they know better. The Pharisees and the Sadducees were too proud to accept the fact Jesus is the Messiah and because of their pride, refused to repent and because they refused to repent, they would not become one of His followers. To prepare for the way of the Lord, John preached repentance and the forgiveness of sins.

Advent is a time to prepare for the Lord, by making an act of repentance through Confession. I would like to give you helpful advice when going to confession. Much of this came from a talk I heard while I was in Medjugorje. When we come to Confession, we are supposed to say our state of life. Are we married or single?

If we commit a mortal sin, we are supposed to say how many times we committed a moral sin and also the circumstances of the sin. For a sin to be mortal, it needs to be grave matter, you must know its grave matter and full consent must be given. If any of these is lacking then its a venial sin. The circumstance is like saying, “I missed Mass on Sunday, because I went hunting.”

A venial sin is like stealing a piece of candy, or having angry thoughts, or gossiping. While we are not obliged to confess venial sins, the Church recommends we confess venial sins regularly. When confessing venial sins, we should not confess the number of times. Some priests will tell the people that they don’t need to confess venial sins. But this is really bad advice. Catechism of the Catholic Church encourages confessing venial sins: “Without being strictly necessary, confession of everyday faults (venial sins) is nevertheless strongly recommended by the Church. Indeed the regular confession of our venial sins helps us form our conscience, fight against evil tendencies, let ourselves be healed by Christ and progress in the life of the Spirit. By receiving more frequently through this sacrament the gift of the Father's mercy, we are spurred to be merciful as he is merciful...” (CCC 1458).

If we forget to confess a mortal sin, it is still forgiven. However, the next time you go to confession, you should tell the priest, that you forgot to confess it. Not because it wasn’t forgiven, but so that you will receive extra penance for the sin you forgot to confess.

If we commit an objectively grave action, though we didn’t know it was sinful at the time, we should still confess it, to break any attachment to the bad action. For example, if we didn’t know birth control was a mortal sin or didn’t know playing the Ouija board was sinful, we should confess them.

We shouldn’t confess another person’s sins. For example, “My wife nags at me all the time and she constantly charges up the credit card.” Or “My husband is lazy. He doesn’t help me clean the house and he never listens to me.” Rather, we should just confess our own sins.

We also shouldn’t tell stories. For example, “On my way to work, I got a flat tire, and then a stray dog came by while I was changing the tire and barked at me. Even though I was late for work, my mother called and all this made me angry.” Rather, we should just say, “I had angry thoughts”.

If you have never confessed a serious sin from the past, its important to confess it. Once we confessed a big sin from the past, we need to trust in God’s mercy. However, its okay to say, for example, “I am sorry for all my sins, especially for the sin of getting into a fight and knocking someone out, when I was in high school.”

If we ever steal something, we have an obligation to return the item. If its no longer possible to return it, we must still pay for it. We should do it anonymously. We can put the money in an envelope without a return address or name and anonymously mail it to the person or business it was stolen. If you don’t know where the person is or if the business is no longer in existence, you should donate the amount the item cost to a charitable organization, but you only do that if you cannot repay what you took or can’t return the item.

When we confess the sins, we should have the intention of not doing them again. If we look at a crucifix or meditate on the sufferings of Jesus, it helps us to be sorry.

Every day, we should examine our conscience and ask God for forgiveness for what we did during the day. If we do this regularly, we will actually begin to see how the motivation behind our sins and we can even eventually give up some sins.

We should not lose heart if we keep re-confessing the same sins over and over. Welcome to humanity! Saints confessed the same sins repeatedly such as St. Jerome, who had terrible temper his whole life. Jesus called James and John, “Sons of Thunder” because they both had a temper.

We should ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten us to know all our sins and make a good confession. We should also pray for the priest before confession, so Jesus will help the priest to give good advice.

The devil doesn’t want us to go to confession. He does not want us to tell all our sins. He does not want us to bring sins into the light. He wants us to think, we don’t need confession. The devil wants us to doubt God’s mercy. For example, he will place in our mind the idea, that a sin is too big, that God will never forgive me. Or the devil uses our pride to keep us from confessing sins perhaps because we are too embarrassed.

If you have purposely withhold a serious sin in confession, it will not be forgiven, nor are any of our sins forgiven, until that one sin is confessed. To purposely not confess a particular sin is to make a sacrilegious confession.

A common sin not confessed is to have received Holy Communion sacrilegiously after committing a mortal sin and then failing to go to confession before receiving communion.

We should also confess what we have failed to do. Failed to bring children to Mass. Failed teach your children to pray or failed to teach children about the faith. Failed to bring children to confession. We can fail to pray everyday. Failing to financially support the church. Failed to help the poor or needy. We can fail to pay attention at Mass. Fail to help a family member or neighbor who could use our help.

Sometimes, we don’t try to overcome our sins, but only confess them because we are sorry, but don’t have the intention of avoiding the sin again.

You can ask the priest for advice for a particular sin. When the priest gives us advice, we should take it to heart and do what he asks of us. Usually, it is Jesus who speaks to us through the priest.

You can ask the priest to help you examine your conscience by him asking you questions. He can go through the 10 commandments and expound on them. For example, for the 2nd commandment, he will ask you if you took God’s name in vain, such as saying “Oh God!” for no good purpose except as an expression. And would ask if you cussed or used foul language or told dirty or offensive jokes.

When we are finished with our confession, we can tell the priest, “I am sorry for these and all the sins of my past life, especially for the sin of…. (adultery, or getting drunk in college, or yelling at my children, etc…) By saying these words, it helps the priest to know you are finished confessing. You can also ask for specific advice for one particular sin. When we are finished with confession, we should immediately do our penance and always thank Jesus for washing away our sins.

Confession not only washes away our sins, it also give us grace to overcome our sins. The more often we go to confession, the more peace we have. The more often we go to confession, the easier to overcome sins. We are also more able to see the root cause and our motivations behind our sins, which helps us to more easily turn away from them. Then when we do our daily prayer, we can ask Jesus for specific help in overcoming our sins.

It is important to remember, it is Jesus, to whom you are confessing. Jesus --in the priest-- forgives you. Jesus through the priest gives you advice.

Every sin no matter how small, hurts Jesus. We can look at a crucifix and see how sin hurts Jesus. Jesus loved us so much, He died on the Cross, so that our sins could be forgiven. We have a beautiful crucifix here above the altar. But this is not what the crucifixion event really looked like.
When I was a newly ordained priest at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton parish in Wichita, a woman from Peru, visiting her family, came up to me crying. I said, “What’s wrong. Why are you crying?” She pointed the large crucifix above the altar, and said, “That’s a terrible crucifix. Its sanitized. There is no blood on that crucifix. Jesus suffered a lot for us. In my country our crucifixes are life like. Who in their right mind would create an image of the crucifixion that looks like there was not much suffering. It makes me angry and sick of heart to see Jesus depicted like this.”

My dear friends, the woman had a point. She was right. If we look at a crucifix that hides the blood and wounds, we are doing Jesus a disservice. It’s as though we don’t care about what Jesus went through-- out of love for us.

When we go to confession, we are kneeling at the foot of the Cross. In the confessional, we are telling Jesus, we are sorry for having hurt Him. And through His abundant mercy, He forgives us. When Jesus through the priest absolves our sins, our soul is washed in the blood of Jesus and it heals the wounds caused by sin. By telling Jesus our sins, we make an act of humility and admit we are a sinner and have hurt Him. Then when we leave the confessional, we resolve to try not to do the sins again and to make up for them, by doing our penance. We should confess our sins monthly.

I like to use this as an example of what penance is. If a young boy were to throw a rock through the window of an abandoned house and if the owner saw the boy do it, then the owner came up to the boy, and said, “You broke my window.” At the first the boy denies, it saying, “It wasn’t me.” But the owner said, “I saw you.” The boy then admits it, and says, “I am sorry, please forgive me.” The owner replies, “I forgive you, but you need to pay for the window.” There is punishment due to every sin. We tell Jesus we are sorry, but we need to make up for our sins by doing penance. Doing penance is paying the price for our sins.

The devil tries to get us to fear confession. We can be embarrassed to say our sins. But, we need to trust Jesus. And remember when He discovers a lost sheep, He picks it up and presses it to His Heart.

If you prefer to confess to a different priest, Fr. Michael Brungardt is just 10 min. away at Lyons and has confessions before every Mass. He’s a great confessor.

Come to Jesus in the Confessional and trust Him. And know the greater the sinner, the greater one has right to His mercy. Jesus is waiting to give you His mercy and His love. Don’t be afraid. Ask the Virgin Mary to help you to make a good thorough confession. By Her sorrowful Heart, pierced at the foot the cross, the thoughts of many will be revealed and be washed away in the ocean of God’s mercy.