If you have never done this, after confessing your sins invite God in Jesus name to come into your heart and make you a new creature in Christ Jesus. It is His life within you that enables you to live for Him. He will give you that peace that will pass all understanding and you will know that God has forgiven you.
Dear friend, you seem like a very nice and kind Christian person.
However, when Catholics go to the Sacrament of Confession,
we ARE confessing our sins to God and to those, the ordained ministerial priests,
to whom, united with the Apostles and their successors, Christ in the SCRIPTURES
granted the authority, in his name and the Name of the Trinity, to forgive sins on earth.
And we DO confess our sins directly to God. But confession to the Presbyters, who share in the apostolic office through their communion with the bishop, is ordained by Christ himself in the New Testament.
Also, if you read the teachings of the early church (those taught directly by the apostles and by the teachers the apostles themselves directly taught for decades), you will discover that the ENTIRE early Christian church believed that the Holy Spirit normally regenerates a person when he or she is baptized. This is apostolic teaching, or it would not have been UNIVERSAL in the first and second century church, and it was most certainly the UNIVERSAL early Christian teaching. It was denied, for the first time in Christian history, by the self-anointed Reformers of the 16th century (except for Martin Luther, who definitely kept his belief in it).
So when, after sinning and repenting, a Catholic asks Jesus to come back to him or her,
he is not, and does not need to, come into a relationship with Jesus Christ FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HIS OR HER LIFE. We are already Christians because the Holy Spirit was given to us in our sacramental baptism, even if we didn’t “feel” anything when baptized. Of course, deliberate grave (or “mortal” as it is sometimes called in 1st John) sin causes the indwelling Holy Spirit to depart from indwelling you (although he will still give you influences to bring you back to repentance). When you repent and confess in the sacrament, the Spirit returns in abundance.
People will sometimes ask “what if a Catholic seriously sins, can’t get to confession, but sincerely repents, then dies before formal Confession?”
The answer is that God is BOUND TO His Sacraments (he WILL act in and through them),
but God is not BOUND BY his Sacraments (in emergencies, etc., God can grant the repentance necessary for salvation WITHOUT confession, the same as he CAN make a person born again APART FROM water baptism. Regeneration during water baptism is
NORMATIVE, but there are other ways to be Regenerated by the Holy Spirit if, through no fault of your own, you do not have the opportunity to be baptized. Otherwise, none of the Holy People of the Old Testament could ever be saved, because they did not practice Sacramental Baptism.
But many protestants (well meaning people) wrongly believe that Catholics have never had a living relationship with Jesus Christ and need to “ask Jesus into their hearts” in order to be saved (for the first time!!). This is utterly false. ALL Christians for the first 1054 years of Christianity were CATHOLICS in communion with the Bishop of Rome. In 1054, the Eastern Churches, while KEEPING Catholic DOCTRINES, rejected the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome. They are almost IDENTICAL to Catholics in doctrine, sacraments and practices (such as praying for the prayers of Mary and the Saints, all of it), but they primarily reject the jurisdiction of the Roman Bishop.
Protestantism and it’s belief in adults-only baptism, and the need for baptized people to “ask Jesus into their hearts” for the first time, etc., only came into existence, for the first time in history, beginning with a few tiny European groups (such as the Waldenses), but really came into full bloom (though utterly discordant from EACH OTHER from the beginning) with Martin Luther, John Calvin, Zwingli, etc. By the way, the Protestant Reformers LOATHED AND HATED EACH OTHER with a hatred and malice toward each other that is rarely ever seen in print. Luther, for example, wrote that he wanted the followers of Zwingli and Zwingli to be put on a giant ship and then have the ship sunk.
And if you ever read any of his (Luther’s) unedited writings, you’ll discover to your shock that he had one of the filthiest mouths and pens of any man who EVER lived.
The man used, habitually, filthy, abominable gutter language, again habitually, in his writings, including writings about Christian topics. I hope that he repented of these things before he died. He once wrote that a particular man who was trying to learn too much too soon was “trying to swallow the Holy Ghost feathers and all.”
I laughed at first when I read that comment (it was 20 years ago) because it put in my mind an image of a really fat guy choking while trying to swallow a live bird, but later thought, you can’t speak flippantly about the Holy Spirit like that. So I do hope Martin Luther repented before he died. (I hope that all people repent before they die, including me especially, the very worst of sinners, so I’m not “picking” on Luther).
Please go to
amazon.com and order a copy of
THE CATHOLIC CONTROVERSY by (St.) Frances de Sales
and CATHOLICISM AND FUNDAMENTALISM by Karl Keating (the website you are on here, Catholic Answers Forums, is Karl Keating’s creation).
And may our Lord Jesus Christ richly bless you, now and always.
Kind regards,
Jaypeeto4
+JMJ+
