Confession of sins - how do YOU do it?

[Ag_not]

As some of you may know, I’m preparing to be received into the Catholic Church. I will make my first confession to a priest, and pray to God for his mercy and forgiveness.
(As an aside, please pray for the priest that hears my confession that he does not lose the will to live half way through it - I have been bad. Believe me. )

Anyhow, all this thinking about confession got me thinking. If you are a christian, and you believe you are saved already, and assured of your salvation regardless - do you confess sins? Do you commit sins? If you commit a sin, and you MUST as you are a human being, who doo you confess to? Jesus? Privately? How does that work? Do you pray and just say something like, ‘‘Forgive me Lord’’ and that’s it. Job Done. Or is there something else you do? Or do you not confess at all as you dont think you need to as it wont in any way affect your salvation.

Im also interested to know if theres such a concept in the Jewish, Islamic and other faiths?

I’m asking out of a genuine desire to know how others confess and what confession means to them. No agenda other than to know.

 

[tGette]

As some of you may know, I’m preparing to be received into the Catholic Church. I will make my first confession to a priest, and pray to God for his mercy and forgiveness.
(As an aside, please pray for the priest that hears my confession that he does not lose the will to live half way through it - I have been bad. Believe me. )

Anyhow, all this thinking about confession got me thinking. If you are a christian, and you believe you are saved already, and assured of your salvation regardless - do you confess sins? Do you commit sins? If you commit a sin, and you MUST as you are a human being, who doo you confess to? Jesus? Privately? How does that work? Do you pray and just say something like, ‘‘Forgive me Lord’’ and that’s it. Job Done. Or is there something else you do? Or do you not confess at all as you dont think you need to as it wont in any way affect your salvation.

Im also interested to know if theres such a concept in the Jewish, Islamic and other faiths?

I’m asking out of a genuine desire to know how others confess and what confession means to them. No agenda other than to know.

I will be watching this thread…I could swear you pulled this question out of my head! uch:

 

[Ag_not]

I will be watching this thread…I could swear you pulled this question out of my head! uch:

Sorry.

I meant to use a smaller drill-bit

:hammering:

 

[notsmart]

I can’t confess to a priest yet, so I try to follow a strict exam of consciece for now. I offer my suffering in being seperated by my own free will to God at Mass, and pray for mercy on my soul.

 

[Ag_not]

I can’t confess to a priest yet, so I try to follow a strict exam of consciece for now. I offer my suffering in being seperated by my own free will to God at Mass, and pray for mercy on my soul.

We seem to be sharing a similar experience. :grouphug:

 

[CWBetts]

I can say as a former evangelical, that I was told confessing sins were completely unnecessary, because I was already forgiven for everything I would ever do for the rest of my life. Come to think of it, that brings up questions of what repentance even is to that faith community…but never mind, that is a discussion for another thread. I hope this helps.

 

[Ag_not]

I can say as a former evangelical, that I was told confessing sins were completely unnecessary, because I was already forgiven for everything I would ever do for the rest of my life. Come to think of it, that brings up questions of what repentance even is to that faith community…but never mind, that is a discussion for another thread. I hope this helps.

I thought that might be the case with some.

Interesting.

 

[notsmart]

:grouphug:

We seem to be sharing a similar experience. :grouphug:

I am glad to know it’s not just me wondering these things!

Love,
Monica

 

[CWBetts]

I know this is off topic, but please forgive me. It just occurred to me how much more logical sense the Catholic Church makes than what I used to believe. Thank you for this thread, it is really making me think about wahtI believe, and why. You truly are a blessing with your thought-provoking questions Ag_not!!

 

[dzheremi]

As a Presbyterian youngster, I was told to confess my sins directly to God in prayer. The concept of confessing them to a man would have been looked down upon, I’m sure.

While I’m not willing to condemn the way that I was told to do it, I think it may have helped form a sort of agnosticism that gripped me for several years after I no longer attended any church. I can remember being very young, looking up at the ceiling at night, wondering if anyone was really listening, or if I was just talking to the asbestos. In fact, I remember that for my thirteenth birthday my mother bought me a “Teen Study Bible” (like a regular Bible, I guess, but with lots of brightly colored inserts on certain topics that are apparently especially relevant to teenagers) that defined prayer in that way in one of its “radical” study aid pages: “Talking to the ceiling and wondering if anyone is listening.”

How’s that supposed to help a teenager questioning the efficacy of prayer?!

Y’know, the more I think about it, I’m very surprised that I did not become Catholic much, much sooner than I did!

 

[Danuska]

How about looking at some examins of conscience?

 

[Sam_777]

I can remember being very young, looking up at the ceiling at night, wondering if anyone was really listening, or if I was just talking to the asbestos. In fact, I remember that for my thirteenth birthday my mother bought me a “Teen Study Bible” (like a regular Bible, I guess, but with lots of brightly colored inserts on certain topics that are apparently especially relevant to teenagers) that defined prayer in that way in one of its “radical” study aid pages: “Talking to the ceiling and wondering if anyone is listening.”

How’s that supposed to help a teenager questioning the efficacy of prayer?!

Y’know, the more I think about it, I’m very surprised that I did not become Catholic much, much sooner than I did!

:hug1:

 

[Zenas]

Confession is not emphasized or talked about very much among the OSAS crowd. Many of them do privately pray to God for forgiveness of their sins but I would say there are more who don’t. A few, during the invitation or alter call part of the church service, will go down front and confess their sins to the pastor who will then say a short prayer for the person. I will often tell my OSAS friends that they ought to clip 1 John 1:9 out of their bibles because it is a verse that is never used and they are carrying around extra weight.

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

 

[Trishie]

You don’t realise yet how light of heart you’ll feel when you’ve made that first Confession. Even my innocent granddaughter leaps with pleasure as we walk hom from the church after Confession. I feel so light, like I’m floating’ she says. There is certainly peace after a good Confession.

 

[SD_Catholic]

You don’t realise yet how light of heart you’ll feel when you’ve made that first Confession. Even my innocent granddaughter leaps with pleasure as we walk hom from the church after Confession. I feel so light, like I’m floating’ she says. There is certainly peace after a good Confession.

This is no joke… I stupidly and lazily procrastinated for 15 yrs before realizing I was an idiot and needed to make things right … After 15 years those sins really start to weight you down… really really weight you down… Getting up to walk out of that confessional is truly probably the most moving and spiritual experience I’ve had in my life… I had to keep looking down to make sure my feet were on the ground… I can actually say I felt like I was floating… It was one of those feelings that there’s no other way to explain…

Ag_not… May God continue to bless you on your journey…

ps… I got a confession guide online, printed it off and went through everything and made side notes to help me remember as much as I could… I’m sure I missed some but my intentions were to remember all that I could (and that was tough!)… Oh and I waited till last because I didn’t want to hold up the line… and I would have … plus my floating feet would have bumped them in the face when I walked out

SD

 

[vee8]

To anyone who thinks they are so bad the priest might scream and run out of the confessional remember priests are human too and also have to go to confession as well.

One example is Fr Don Calloway. You can watch him tell his story here ccgd-media.org/video.aspx which should be very reassuring to any sinner, as it was to me that anyone can be forgiven if they are sorry. Jesus said though your sins be red like blood I will make them whiter than snow. Another example of someone who would have had one heck of a confession is former gangster John Pridmore. You can google him and he has a website and you can also hear his story by searching for his name in the ewtn audio program section ewtn.com/vondemand/audio/intro.asp and listen to him on The Journey Home. So if you are as bad as these guys were you can still be forgiven and if you arent quite as bad well you can feel assured that sinners worse than you have been forgiven.

Also when you confess the priest acts in persona Christi, in the person of Christ. In fact if he were to say Christ absolves you from your sins, instead of I absolve you from your sins it would be an invalid confession. It is hard to walk in to the confessional but it is so incredible to walk out unburdened and clean. Of course we still have to do our penance but as a young person who used to hate confession and avoided it like the plague I really appreciate it now.

 

[Georgia]

Confession is good for the soul. It is there in the confessional that you feel the love and the mercy of God.

I went to confession a couple of days ago and used the guide that the Fathers of Mercy, fathersofmercy.com/, publish. They will mail one to you free. It covers and uncovers everything , so I used the screen for that confession. I wanted to do one that would be a real cleaning of the spiritual house.

 

[cthulhubryan]

Growing up Methodist we had a public prayer of confession that we had all sinned and fallen short of what we should do and then a time of silence as we confessed specific sins to God in prayer.

As I move towards becoming a Catholic I am also curious about how my first confession will go. I want it, but not sure the exact form and such.

Great thread ag_not!

 

[CWBetts]

Growing up Methodist we had a public prayer of confession that we had all sinned and fallen short of what we should do and then a time of silence as we confessed specific sins to God in prayer.

As I move towards becoming a Catholic I am also curious about how my first confession will go. I want it, but not sure the exact form and such.

Great thread ag_not!

My RCIA director and Priest did a great job preparing us

 

[dzheremi]

Our RCIA director gave us a sheet with all the steps to doing confession just prior to when our first confession was scheduled to happen. To all of you converts who are worried about doing your first confession, I have to tell you that the entireity of first confession went like this: “Bless me father, for I have sinned…I lost the sheet that they gave us to tell us how to do this.”

Even worse/better, the priest replied “Is this Jeremy?” (That’s me, so I said “yeah” )…I guess our parish is small enough and there were few enough RCIA candidates that year that he knew automatically it was me! But then he walked me through what I should have known already, very patiently, and I had a good confession after all.

So there is no need to worry about doing it “wrong”!