Confession advice?

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hausofferni

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So I’ve been confessing like usual for the last few months (after being away from the church for years), but then last week i went online and looked up every possible sin you could commit, like a detailed set of sins deriving from the 10 commandments, and it made me think back to my past and i ended up having a list of over 50 sins!!! At the time i didn’t know they were sins because i was ignorant, going through some tough things, and “left” the church, but now i want to confess all of them but don’t know if i should, and also i don’t know what the priest would say?? will he listen to me? Im thinking of going to a different church to confess because im so embarrassed. I did terrible things that hurt other people/myself and i regret them so much now and yearn for Gods mercy. I don’t know what to do? How do i even tell the priest that i have a huge list of sins?? Any advice is appreciated.Thank you all and God bless! :confused:
 
Yeah buddy join the club. I was out of sync for a few years too. When I came back it was on pretty shaky legs. Look I still don’t think I’m good enough for communion. I keep going back to confession as I remember stuff I did, but even with that there are some things I still can’t really admit to. I mean I’ve done a lot of stuff. And I don’t think I’m ever really going to be on the level of a lot of others here. But the main thing is that we try, right? We keep trying and we do our best. In the here and now. Man, I bet you dollars and cents that if you read a list of what I’ve done you’d think whatever you’ve got to confess is no big deal. So don’t worry about it.

Peace.

-Trident
 
hausofferni said:
I did terrible things that hurt other people/myself and i regret them so much now and yearn for Gods mercy. I don’t know what to do? How do i even tell the priest that i have a huge list of sins??
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Just what saying what you’ve said above is fine. Start with that, tell the priest it’s been long time since you last confessed and let the him take things from there. Don’t worry about being embarrassed - you’re not going to tell him anything he hasn’t heard before!
 
Make a list. Call the priest and ask for an appointment. I say this because if this is going to be very lengthy, don’t tie up the confessional on Saturday. In my church, there is only one priest hearing confessions and I’ve waited once two hours to confess. Or, if you don’t want to make an appointment, get there early so you are the first in.

I can understand going to a different parish. I’m sure many do. We are human. 👍

I think many priests are very happy when they have a person return after so many years and are really trying to make a good confession. He’s going to be very pleased. Prodigal Son returning to Him. Joy in Heaven! Good for you! 👍
 
If you have **not **been **deliberately **holding back any mortal sins, you are fine. All you have to do is to tell the priest the number and kind of sin, so if your 50 sins include a lot of doing the same thing over and over, just go to confession and say, “I shoplifted 45 times, told 3 lies, and robbed a bank twice.”

If you think it will take longer than 5 or 10 minutes to list all your sins, then make an appointment. You can ask that Fr meet you in the confessional so it will remain anonymous. Just tell him you just found out about the sinfullness of these acts and list them off.

No matter what you confess, he has probably heard worse, so don’t worry!
 
Trident_H said:
Yeah buddy join the club. I was out of sync for a few years too. When I came back it was on pretty shaky legs. Look I still don’t think I’m good enough for communion. I keep going back to confession as I remember stuff I did, but even with that there are some things I still can’t really admit to. I mean I’ve done a lot of stuff. And I don’t think I’m ever really going to be on the level of a lot of others here. But the main thing is that we try, right? We keep trying and we do our best. In the here and now. Man, I bet you dollars and cents that if you read a list of what I’ve done you’d think whatever you’ve got to confess is no big deal. So don’t worry about it.

Peace.

-Trident
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If you are deliberately holding back mortal sins, you are making sacriligious confessions, and will need to confess the sacrilege *and *reconfess all the sins you have confessed at and since your orginal sacriligious confession. So it’s probably good that you haven’t received Communion, since you would also have to confess that as well.

Sins which you leave out *inadvertantly *are forgiven, but if they are mortal you should conffess them as soon as you go back to confession.

Other than that, welcome back 🙂
 
When we live lives of sin, our conscience eventually goes dormant. Once you are awakened by the Holy Spirit and begin that journey back to the church, your conscience will begin to come out of that dormant state like coming out of a dense fog. This is not unusual if you have listened to other conversion stories. I had a similar experience and was eventually truly shocked and mortified to discover the true depth of my own sinful life. I went back to confession, taking a long list. I was embarrassed, but felt compelled by the Holy Spirit to make a clean breast of it. The priest understood perfectly and pointed out that God was prompting me in this way, so he encouraged me to go ahead, using my notes as necessary. This was truly when I felt the full love and mercy of our lord and also felt the bonds of sin to be truly broken from my spirit. Go back to the confessional and don’t worry. Worry is the devil’s trick to keep us from union with God. Run, don’t walk back to confession. You’ll be so glad you did. May God continue to bless you.🙂
 
Richard_White said:
Seeing your other post about scrupulosity, I would recommend reading this before determining the sinfulness of these 50 things, just to be sure: mission.liguori.org/newsletters/pdf_archive/Ten_Commandments_for_the_Scrupulous_2013.pdf

May God bless you and grant you peace! 🙂
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YES! Read that document!
Also remember, that part of our confession formula is the prayer :
For these and all the sins of my past life, I AM SORRY.

Barring any mortal sins …you’re good.
Remember, venial sins are taken away by the proper use of Holy Water before you enter the church, the absolution at the conclusion of the Penitential Rite, and the worthy reception of Holy Communion.
 
hausofferni said:
So I’ve been confessing like usual for the last few months (after being away from the church for years), but then last week i went online and looked up every possible sin you could commit, like a detailed set of sins deriving from the 10 commandments, and it made me think back to my past and i ended up having a list of over 50 sins!!! At the time i didn’t know they were sins because i was ignorant, going through some tough things, and “left” the church, but now i want to confess all of them but don’t know if i should, and also i don’t know what the priest would say?? will he listen to me? Im thinking of going to a different church to confess because im so embarrassed. I did terrible things that hurt other people/myself and i regret them so much now and yearn for Gods mercy. I don’t know what to do? How do i even tell the priest that i have a huge list of sins?? Any advice is appreciated.Thank you all and God bless! :confused:
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What you need to do, is meet privately with a priest for a private appointment, you could email a priest or text a priest (their numbers are on the diocese website), to arrange what’s called a “General Confession.” Which means it’s a long confession where you mention everything from birth until now that is a mortal sin.

Or you could go to a monastery for confession, if you know there will be no one in queue at the confession time.
 
St_Francis said:
If you are deliberately holding back mortal sins, you are making sacriligious confessions, and will need to confess the sacrilege *and *reconfess all the sins you have confessed at and since your orginal sacriligious confession. So it’s probably good that you haven’t received Communion, since you would also have to confess that as well.

Sins which you leave out *inadvertantly *are forgiven, but if they are mortal you should conffess them as soon as you go back to confession.

Other than that, welcome back 🙂
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Hey thanks for that!

But no, I don’t take Communion because I don’t yet have the courage to tell the priest everything. So yeah, there are some hold-backs. But one day I guess I’ll get there. It’s not so much that it is something horrific as it is something that breaks me down when I think about it. I can’t bring it up. I’ve blocked it deep. I mean it’s bad enough alright, but it’s also too close to home. Anyway, that’s about the story of my life.

Peace.

-Trident
 
Trident_H said:
Hey thanks for that!

But no, I don’t take Communion because I don’t yet have the courage to tell the priest everything. So yeah, there are some hold-backs. But one day I guess I’ll get there. It’s not so much that it is something horrific as it is something that breaks me down when I think about it. I can’t bring it up. I’ve blocked it deep. I mean it’s bad enough alright, but it’s also too close to home. Anyway, that’s about the story of my life.

Peace.

-Trident
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You should explain your situation to the priest so he can sort this out. It sounds to me (a regular layperson with no special qualifications) like you are making one big confession little by little, but if you are receiving absolution each time, there might be a problem, so be sure to check it out.

It can be very difficult to lay all our sins out. I hope you will be able to get this all sorted out and feel not only God’s love for you but His full forgiveness.
 
hausofferni said:
So I’ve been confessing like usual for the last few months (after being away from the church for years), but then last week i went online and looked up every possible sin you could commit, like a detailed set of sins deriving from the 10 commandments, and it made me think back to my past and i ended up having a list of over 50 sins!!! At the time i didn’t know they were sins because i was ignorant, going through some tough things, and “left” the church, but now i want to confess all of them but don’t know if i should, and also i don’t know what the priest would say?? will he listen to me? Im thinking of going to a different church to confess because im so embarrassed. I did terrible things that hurt other people/myself and i regret them so much now and yearn for Gods mercy. I don’t know what to do? How do i even tell the priest that i have a huge list of sins?? Any advice is appreciated.Thank you all and God bless! :confused:
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You can provide a brief explanation before confession if you wish. This also would likely merit an appointment instead of going to a regular Confession time.

When converts come into the Church, or you have a revert after many years, a long bucket list of offenses isn’t at all an unusual thing. The priest will have heard it before. Just like Adam & Eve, we have the urge to “cover ourselves up”, but there’s no need for that, and we need to see the Physician. Say a prayer before walking in, or say many, many prayers repetitively as you’re driving there.
 
St_Francis said:
You should explain your situation to the priest so he can sort this out. It sounds to me (a regular layperson with no special qualifications) like you are making one big confession little by little, but if you are receiving absolution each time, there might be a problem, so be sure to check it out.

It can be very difficult to lay all our sins out. I hope you will be able to get this all sorted out and feel not only God’s love for you but His full forgiveness.
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I don’t know. I mean that sounds like good advice. It’s just I didn’t really grow up being Catholic so this stuff is still not really natural for me. I’m trying to get back to the way I was before I went so far off track. I just have a hard time dealing with what I’ve done because I then have to think about the consequences. I mean if I had other things to do with myself it might not be such a big deal.

And somehow bringing it up with the priest is going to mean that I’m prepared to move past it. I’m prepared to admit that this is now in the past. But the trouble is that I can’t do that. Not yet. I can’t let this go. So I don’t want to lie to the priest either. I don’t want to say that I’m ready to bury this.

I’m just hoping God understands. I hope He knows that I’m trying. That I’m trying really hard. But that it’s not going to come all at once.

And I’m not really ready to just sit across from a priest and start talking. I mean I can do that here because none of you are going to follow me home. But a priest is going to know me. He’s going to know and then I’ll know he knows. And then I’m afraid I won’t go back to church because I’ll know he knows. It’s complicated.

Peace.

-Trident
 
Hi Trident,

You can go to a priest a good drive away if you insist - there’s no law to go to your most local priest - but I doubt there’s anything you’re going to say that is going to impress him. We treat our sins like they’re so infamous, but really, they’re petty, impish, and unoriginal, and in every way the opposite of what is glorious.

As long as you acknowledge what you have done/do is sinful, and an obstacle to eternal union with God, and sincerely seek to be rid of it, then you can go to Confession in good conscious. Apart from those necessities, don’t wait to “Be ready”. If you discover you have a serious illness, you don’t wait to “be ready” before going to the doctor. You just go to the doctor. It doesn’t matter if the force of habit is likely going to bring those sins back to light. Continue to combat them and, when necessary, go to Reconciliation.

Try to remember that God is the one that actually provides the healing. You don’t heal yourself. A mortal sinner enters the Confessional as the walking dead, and he leaves as an untarnished, living human being. God brings the dead back to life. Can you do that? A fixed life isn’t going to magically undo what you have already done.
 
Trident, as an Anglican exploring Catholicism I can’t honestly say fully understand the idea of sacramental confession but I am reminded of this verse of Scripture used in the Book of Common Prayer which might help

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9).
 
peter26 said:
Trident, as an Anglican exploring Catholicism I can’t honestly say fully understand the idea of sacramental confession but I am reminded of this verse of Scripture used in the Book of Common Prayer which might help

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9).
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Well thanks for that. And I mean, having actually gone to confession I know it just feels amazing to have stuff out of the way like that. It’s just my case is a bit complicated. I’m not sure I deserve to feel like that over this thing. I mean it’s too deep. It’s too close. I don’t know if I can explain it properly without going into details. And I’d only do that in a private conversation.

Peace.

-Trident
 
Temporal consequences endure even after receiving forgiveness & absolution. You won’t be “over it” after you confess, but you will be forgiven.
 
TK421 said:
Temporal consequences endure even after receiving forgiveness & absolution. You won’t be “over it” after you confess, but you will be forgiven.
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Well thanks for clarifying. Yeah, I guess that’s the score. That’s what I have to face.
 
Thank you everyone for your kind words and encouragement. I confessed yesterday and proudly and happily received holy communion today 😃 I took my list to the priest and immediately started sobbing haha but he completely understood and it was amazing, he said that my confession was a beautiful one because he knew how much i wanted to receive the lord, regardless of my past sins. Just an amazing amazing beautiful experience. and to Trident, I know you may be doubting, but please consider going through with confession, it is one of the most beautiful sacraments that we Catholics have, through Christ you WILL be HEALED. God bless you all! :o
 
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