Why is Confession necessary?

---

Here is the crux of my problem: on the one hand, I want to go to church and make a confession; on the other hand - I don’t want to go to church and make a confession.

Having been baptized three years ago, I thought I had fulfilled my obligations with regard to the Church. Further, I felt that the Church should also meet me halfway, that is, I thought it should stimulate my curiosity and do something to attract me. And if the Church doesn’t see any need for this, then I can still believe in God without any help from it. And that’s how it turned out; the whole time my faith consisted of discussions and judgments of church rituals and undertakings, behavior of the priests and simple believers. In the end, after three years nothing in me had changed at all; I had not acquired any virtues, only proved myself to be a real bad-mouther. And the majority of my friends took my words and my behavior to heart as they formed their impression of the Church.

It’s shameful, but I took to criticizing the inner workings of the Church without even once taking part in any of its sacraments. Therefore I consciously wanted to go to confession, for as far as I understood, without being cleansed of one’s sins it’s impossible to lead a true Christian life in faith. Don’t think that I am trying to find a new avenue to criticize, I am totally sincere in my desire to get to the bottom of and understand the meaning of this sacrament for man’s soul. Perhaps this is the real reason for my not wanting to go to confession. The most important thing for me is not the striving to be rid of my sins or to admit my inadequacies, but rather a desire to logically prove the necessity of this sacrament. But can one come to a sacrament without being aware of its meaning and without accepting its form?

I try to understand it all by myself. I take the booklet "Help For the Penitent," with a list of possible sins. I read it and feel a certain irritation arising, "Hey wait a minute, why is that considered a sin? I don’t agree." And on it goes for a good number of the points listed. I want so much to just throw the book away and come to the conclusion, "No way am I going to go to such fanatics." Then my irritation begins to recede, but my questions remain. All the same, what are we to do with sins which we don’t consider sins? Confess them just because we’re supposed to? Wait until the awareness comes of our sinfulness? Or perhaps, not to take everything written in these books as the gospel truth?

But let’s suppose that I prepared myself for confession and prepared a black list of my sins. What then? Next I should confess them to God. So what is the priest for? Why is a witness necessary? Where did such a ritual come from in the first place? It must have a very serious basis: because if you look at it realistically, most problems associated with confession arise simply because a priest has to hear it.

There are still few churches and not enough priests, but the number of believers is relatively large. There are huge lines of people waiting to make a confession. What does a person think about while standing in line, especially if he is coming for the first time? More often than not, he wants the whole thing to be over as quickly as possible, since he feels that no one needs him. At best, he feels he will only weigh down an already tired priest, and will least of all be able to maintain an attitude of repentance. Many end up walking away without even waiting in line.

Of course, the ranks of priests are gradually being filled, for the most part, by young Batiushkas. And a large number of people coming to the faith today are not babies. It’s psychologically difficult for such a person to confess to a priest who is old enough to be their son. It’s vitally important for many people not just to have a priest listen to their sins and absolve them. They often need the serious advice of an experienced priest - someone to whom they are important and dear. But such priests are few in number, and it’s very difficult to get to them.

Here I see a contradiction: at first I said that priests are not necessary for confession, and then I said that they are vitally important. But I already warned you that I am full of doubts and can’t find answers to them all. There are still the "buts". One of them concerns the Sacrament of Confession. Perhaps this is rude, but all the same, is there any guarantee that priests will really not tell anyone what they hear? I’m not talking about law enforcement organizations. Near my house there is a rather large church. Four priests serve there. Sometimes I imagine the following happening: their "work day" is over and all four of them gather around a table and begin telling each other: "I had one woman today for confession who...". Even if they don’t mention names, all the same it’s not very pleasant. Does this ever happen?

To end I would like to say that a short while ago I tried to go to confession. I stood in line at our church. When I approached the short, gray-haired priest I had no idea what to say. He himself said: "My dear, you are just not prepared. Think a bit more, question yourself and then come back." So I’m questioning. I want to go back to that priest, only prepared next time.

Respectfully,

Margarita Vyacheslavovna Leskova

Biology teacher

P.S. If you print my letter, feel free to edit it as necessary.

Fr. Artemy Vladimirov answers our reader’s letter

After attentively having read this letter, you feel the depth of a soul seriously trying to get to the essence of something as subtle as Confession. At the same time you become aware that this good, kind soul - after being baptized - has still not met an attentive pastor whose words could have enlightened this catechumen and who could have served as her spiritual instructor. Unfortunately, that’s the way it is in the majority of cases today.

A person who is sincerely seeking, will accept Baptism, believing in the depth of his soul, that a great event has taken place. The soul takes a step: a watershed experience. The newly baptized enters the Church. But he still hasn’t obtained his place in the bosom of the Mother Church. Being literally a small branch on the tree of the Church, he still does not know how to be nurtured by the grace-filled nectar that gives life to the entire trunk. Just like a newborn child, the newly baptized seeks its mother’s breast, for in it and through it life is given. But since he is still untaught, he feels himself helpless. The soul enters into a struggle. It recognizes the lack of true life within itself, but is not able to come to the source of eternal life.

Without a doubt, this letter is a testimony "from the opposite standpoint" that true spirituality requires the development of mind and heart. The mind is bursting with questions - one more essential than the other - but the heart, which has not yet acquired the experience of God’s grace, either agrees with or disagrees with the mind.

Of course, God’s servant Margarita is right when she states the necessity of finding an experienced priest - a person to whom she is important and dear. I think all these psychological obstacles would disappear by themselves from her pathway to Church if she prayed and received from God such a spiritual friendship with an experienced pastor. So I call on Margarita Vyacheslavovna, not only to pray, but to seek such a pastor. If her soul is bothered by the crowd of people around a priest, then I think nothing prevents her from going up to the priest and asking to meet with him apart - a so-called general confession - which is necessary when one enters the Church. I want to believe that Margarita will find such a possibility and that God Himself will comfort her with a talk with an experienced pastor.

Various thoughts trouble her soul: "I thought I had fulfilled my obligations with regard to the Church". Does a new-born child feel he has fulfilled his obligations to his mother?! The relationship with his mother is not so much a duty and obligation as it is a vital necessity! A child does not exist without his mother. He will never learn to walk, to eat, or to think right if he is raised "apart", if he doesn’t feel the warmth of his mother’s touch or hear the lullabies over his little bed.

That’s how we should think about ourselves and about the Church after the sacrament of Baptism. A Sunday spent outside the Lord’s Church, truthfully, grows dark in our eyes - for a single "Lord have mercy" spoken in church, is greater than any podvig at home or prayer in one’s monastic cell. Just as a child comes alive, thrives and feels safe, protected and happy in the presence of his mother, so too are we called to peer into the endlessly dear face of the Mother Church, penetrated with light and holiness, living warmth, to know her and try to become living stones in this magnificent temple, comprised of all tribes and peoples and existing outside space and time.

"The Church should meet me halfway, stimulate my curiosity and do something to attract me." But how will the Church attract you if you don’t go there? How can it interest you if instead of having contact with her you turn your nose away from her! Experience teaches that three Sunday liturgies completely change the way a person feels about the world. Church Slavonic, hitherto difficult to understand, becomes completely transparent - Church singing becomes intelligible. The soul invisibly is nourished by God’s grace and is freed from deadly passions, sinful thoughts, just like a rose opens up under the rays of the warm summer sun.

"I can believe in God without any help from the Church." St. Cyprian of Carthage (+258) said: "A man cannot have God as his Father if he does not have the Church as his Mother." How then will you believe without help from the Church, when the main object of faith is the Last Supper of Christ which is served inside the Church? "Take, eat - this is My Body..." says the Lord to His disciples and followers. If you believe in Christ - in God - but don’t partake of His Holy Cup, then you only think about pleasing God, but in reality are still at the crossroads.

"I reproach both priests and simple believers for their behavior..." But is this path of general condemnation the correct one to take? If you are so morally pure and free of all human sinfulness and weakness, then, on the contrary, you should be displaying generosity of soul and the ability to co-suffer, instead of lethal irony and merciless criticism. There is a saying that the devil gives special binoculars to the person who condemns which decrease all that we see to the most insignificant size, but overemphasize that which is within us to unbelievable proportions. Our "me" swells up as if it were a soap bubble. A man is not able to look at himself critically when he regards the worth of his fellow man as something totally insignificant. We try to see in others something bad, selfish, insincere, in a literal sense - transferring ideas from a sick head to a healthy one.

Can it be that all priests are ceremonious and mercenary? Can it be that there is not one modest, humble laborer left in Christ’s fields who will offer his soul for his sheep? I very much hope and believe that Margarita sooner or later will obtain such a good pastor, one who will be an authentic authority for her and whose service will to the greatest possible degree correspond to the standard of spirituality - Christ the Saviour.

 
"The sacrament of Confession - I know that this is something we have to do, although I am not fully aware of its meaning. And why do I need an intermediary anyway? - asks the soul. And I ask it: "Can you repent of your sins? Do you understand your life differently? Do you value many things differently? Do you reproach yourself for the mistakes you have made in life? Does your soul grieve over the sins of your early years?" Obviously, the answer of a reasonable reader can only be positive.

Can you forgive yourself? Having forgiven yourself, can you regain for your soul the lost virtues of purity, joy, wisdom, love, peace, meekness, patience, lightness? I think that the answer would be - No.

We can - and should - reproach ourselves without any priest, but no one has the power to FORGIVE himself, for only God - before Whom we have sinned - can forgive sins. For this purpose He placed His chosen witnesses - the Apostles, then the priests, who carry the grace-filled gift of Christ Himself on their shoulders, to witness in the name of the Lord to the forgiveness of sins, to pray for the rebirth of the penitent.

Imagine a rusty pipe through which flows the water of life. Thus the personal imperfections of the pastors do not hinder God’s grace according to our faith in the Church and in Christ, the Head of the Church, to flow through prayer and the priestly functions of the pastor.

Confession can be likened to an operation. A sick man is diagnosed with an abscess. The only way to save him is to remove it. The sick man goes voluntarily to the operating room, as if crucifying himself, so that by means of the doctor’s scalpel the abscess can be removed. So it is with the Sacrament of Confession. Christ Himself acts through the hands and the mouth of the priest, healing the sincerely repentant soul by His divine grace.

The Blood of Christ invisibly washes the heart of the Christian, burning up in him the very thorns of vice. Having received remission of his sins, the Christian makes a vow to God to guard himself from his confessed transgressions. As a reward for such determination, the Lord bestows upon the soul His Divine grace, that moral force without which not one of us can follow the law of good and truth.

The priest is like a nurse who meets the patient, helps him prepare himself for the examination, and perhaps even for an operation. The nurse herself doesn’t heal, but much depends on her: the way the sick man prepares for the operation will determine its outcome.

The pastor is not an arbitrator or a bureaucrat from the Department of Religion with a rule-book in his hands to determine what our punishment will be. He also experiences what we are going through, prays, repents, sympathizes with the sinner, and in some way, together with him, takes upon himself the burden of his sins.

The pamphlet "Help for the Penitent" is good, but one must understand that every book approved by the Church is intended for a specific readership and therefore one must use discrimination when studying it. A portion of the material that went into this publication was written in the 19th century; even the vocabulary differs in many ways from contemporary usage. Many sins discussed in it relate primarily to confession by monastics, such as moving from one cell to another, something which can hardly be imagined of as a sin by a modern day teacher. Monastics should indeed spend time in church as well as their cell, but spending time in empty activities in a neighboring cell is considered a breach of monastic practice. Therefore, we recommend that everyone preparing themselves for Confession use various texts, particularly "An Attempt at Making a Confession" by Fr. John Krestyankin, for each spiritual father has a specific flock: monastics, Orthodox Christians living in rural areas, or those living in the city. You don’t need to treat such brochures like you would the Holy Scriptures, or think that they are the final word on how we should make our confession.

In the 17th century young priests did not hear confessions. And even now in Greece one must receive special permission to hear people’s confessions. In Russia it was the tradition for only old priests to hear confessions. Young priests wouldn’t dare. We are now living in a special period in this regard. Each priest, regardless of his age, is called to hear confessions, which, of course, is fraught at times with all types of embarrassments and perplexities for newly-formed Christians. Therefore we require reason and wisdom, and most importantly - faith that our confession is received by Christ Himself, the priest being only a witness, placed there to absolve sins of the sincere penitent.

Little by little as the Christian gets used to making confessions, he will gain experience and will learn not to mix up the divine and human elements in a priest’s actions. He will also understand that the priest must decrease, so that Christ can increase. It’s one thing to confess one’s sins, but it’s another thing to find a spiritual confessor, a pastor whose counsels will serve as guidance for you and with whom you will obtain full spiritual happiness and feel yourself to be a true member of the Mother Church.

The Sacrament of Confession dies along with the priest. The pictures painted in Margarita’s mind certainly do not match reality. Priests do not reveal the names of those confessing and if they consult one another as to perplexing and difficult situations, they do it in such as way that his fellow priests cannot guess who he is talking about.

You have attempted to make a confession - that is already a good thing. Your pastor spoke good words to you: "Pray, my dear, question yourself and then come back." Certainly one must prepare oneself for confession - and prepare oneself deeply, turning to those texts that you are familiar with. It’s a good thing to write down your sins, knowing that you’ll most certainly be nervous during confession. As you read them, you can hear the priest asking questions in order to better define the circumstances in your life and confirm your steps on the road to piety.

I wish that you, Margarita, and that all those who have a hard time going to confession on their own, will all the same go to this saving sacrament and obtain true spiritual healing, for there is no sin which is greater than God’s mercy. Each sincere penitent will be received by the Lord, justified and reborn into life eternal.

I sincerely hope that my thoughts on Margarita’s letter will be useful for all young people reading this Orthodox journal, for those who question, and who, little by little, are moving from doubt to clear and concrete faith.