In the midst of this heart-warming picture of the future, John the Baptist stands as a sobering voice. He points out that the road towards that Kingdom must begin with repentance. The context is helpful. Here in the desert, he attracts a crowd. From Jerusalem to Judaea, they converge on this voice in the desert because they are keenly mindful of their sinfulness. To the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the holy elite and the powerful intellectuals, who feel themselves above the rest, the Baptist addresses them without mincing his words. He calls them a brood of vipers. As the Kingdom is close at hand, he offers them a path to redemption through the forgiveness of sin.
Imagine the crowd gathered around the Baptist, confessing their sins as they enter the waters of the Jordan symbolically to be washed clean of their sins. Each one of us is familiar with this route. Now, you would think that this path describes our baptism but it does not. Instead, the dilemma is that we may have forgotten their confession at baptism is akin to our Sacrament of Penance.
Has Confession fallen into disuse? Given that John announced that we should repent, maybe we should take a look at our approach to the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (#1084) states that “Seated at the right hand of the Father and pouring out the Holy Spirit on His Body which is the Church, Christ now acts through the Sacraments He instituted to communicate His grace”. Briefly, this statement can be summarised as: the Sacraments are the actions of Christ done through the Church.
This means that even in the present, every Sacrament is an action of Christ. In the past He called, strengthened, fed, forgave, healed and sent. Today He continues to call (through Baptism), to strengthen (through Confirmation), to feed (through the Eucharist), to forgive (in Confession), to heal (through anointing) and to send. These 6 actions of Jesus gives us the 7 Sacraments because His mission to the world is effected through the Sacraments of Matrimony and Holy Orders.
We may need to reappraise our approach to one of the most difficult Sacraments. The usual excuse is why the need for the agency of men if one can confess directly to God. The same excuse cannot hold up when we discuss the Sacrament of the Eucharist. Just imagine a situation that the entire congregation is gathered for Mass and the priest collapses and dies just after making the sign of the Cross. The celebration would have to be suspended. No man would dare put himself forward in place of the deceased priest. Why?
Agency. And not just any agency but that the Eucharist for its validity requires the Sacrament of Holy Orders. This negates the argument against human agency when it comes to Confession. In fact, the entire Sacramental system we have is based wholly on the principle of agency, instrumentalisation or mediation. It is derived from the fundamental as well as historical event that set creation on the course of salvation. In the fullness of time God sent His Son. How? Through the event called the Incarnation. “The Word became Flesh” has the meaning that salvation is mediated through the instrumentalisation or the agency of human nature.
Without the Incarnation, there are no Sacraments to speak of. If Christ did not take flesh, He would have to save us in another manner. It is precisely through the principle of agency that Christ continues to feed us with His Body and Blood and forgive our sins in Confession. No one has ever heard of anyone, taking Holy Water and pouring over his or her own head, recite the formula, “I baptise myself in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”.
Perhaps our dilemma with regard to human agency in Confession is more psychological than spiritual? Meaning that we actually believe in God’s forgiveness but we are more fearful of the priest’s judgement? So, we stay away from Confession because we are too ashamed, not of our sins, but of facing another human person, and being vulnerable to him.
This psychological barrier is not entirely the challenge we have when it comes to the Sacrament of Confession. Perhaps it is more subtle as it exposes the inconsistency of our personal belief in the Church’s Sacramental system. On the one hand, we believe the Eucharist to be the Body of Christ truly, really and substantially. We come to daily Mass most religiously and we receive Holy Communion most reverently. But with regard to the Sacrament of Confession, we hesitate.
Call it a psychological barrier but actually to receive Holy Communion regularly and religiously but never go for Confession even once a year is to engaged in a performative contradiction. Why? To believe that the Bread and Wine becomes the Body and Blood of Christ through the agency of a priest but staying from Confession, for whatever reason, runs the danger of reducing the Eucharist to a cypher. It cannot be that one believes that this particular action of Christ (the Eucharist) gives life while at the same time refrains from another action (Confession) that also gives life.
Our problem is also compounded by a modern liturgical development. When should one go for Confession? At least once a year is the canonical response. But this is tied to the obligation of receiving Holy Communion at least once a year. We go for Confession not only when we are conscious of grave sin but also because we want to uproot venial sins from our lives. But what has happened is that Confessions have been grouped into penitential services. By doing this, we may have severed the connexion between sin and forgiveness. With this link broken, penitential services has become a matter of convenience, not a matter of repentance. This is not the problem of the laity but of the Church. By delaying confession, we may have rendered sin unimportant and repentance superfluous.
When there is no need for repentance and the forgiveness of sin, then the Sacrament of the Eucharist is nothing more than a health supplement. This is our predicament, a hint that we are living in a therapeutic society. Almost everyone receives Holy Communion habitually but so few go for confession regularly. Some may be squirming in the seats but the fact that few avail themselves of Confession here is not a proof that nobody goes for it. For all we know, everyone is diligently and regularly going for Confession in CIC, St Joseph in Plentong, St Theresa in Masai. However, if a person rarely goes for Confession but regularly receives Holy Communion, then the point made here is that there is an inconsistency in behaviour.
Should you go for Confession this Advent? The answer is obvious after all the Baptist has asked everyone to make straight the Lord’s path. But there is another response to this question. If you are not a psychopath or a pathological liar, then lying would presumably make you uncomfortable. The gap between what we profess and how we act is a form of lying or dishonesty. In general, our instinct is such that we all yearn for the authenticity of matching what we say with what we do. Provided that we are not compulsive liars, the fact is nobody wants to be a liar. Anyone who lives a lie knows how that feels.
Confession fallen into disuse merely demonstrates that our approach to the Sacraments may be a kind of dishonesty or disbelief. Why? Our belief is that He comes to us through human mediation when He gives us His Body and Blood. But where is our belief in mediation when it comes to His forgiveness? Either He does and therefore He is powerful or we have become selective. The result is that God is not as powerful as we profess Him to be. Or what is worse is that the Communion we receive, no matter what we profess, is no more than a piece of dry and bland wafer. That is the most inconvenient truth of our inconsistency. Believing in one action of Christ and not the other renders what we believe in, empty. Sometimes we do hear the lament about the loss of reverence for the Eucharist. The lack can easily arise because we do not know how to respect the Eucharist and that is ignorance. But closer to the truth, the reality of the loss of reverence for the Eucharist is that essentially we no longer believe in the power of the Sacrament of Confession.
Christ is powerful in His Sacraments because they are His personal actions mediated through the agencies of the Holy Spirit and the Church. When there is a discrepancy in our belief, the temptation is to augment His Sacraments by programmes and formation. Consistency in our belief and practice is the key to the efficacy of both the Sacraments of Confession and Communion. Christmas is around the corner. Should one go for Confession? The Baptist would say so. But more in character with who we are as decent people, we should narrow the gap between what we believe and what we do so that our reception of Him at Communion or at Christmas can be more authentic and our witnessing to Him more persuasive.
