Mortal sin and immediate confession

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Now obviously if you are in a state of mortal sin, you should rush to confession as soon as possible. But to what extreme should we take this? If I committed a mortal sin Tuesday night at 11 PM, shouldn’t I want to run to the nearest rectory and bang on the door begging for absolution? Is it morally acceptable to wait until the next day after work? What do others do? I have normally waited until the next day…but I hate going to sleep doubting whether or not I’m in a state of grace…for one I could die in my sleep!
 
I would think that one should…
make a sincere act of penitence, of contrition to God, and trust God to accept it. Then goe to Confession at the earliest reasonable time.
If everyone woke our priests every time they committed a serious sin, our priests might not get much sleep! 🙂
 
If you think you’re in trouble, I’m in worse trouble. When I commit mortal sins, I don’t go (to confession) until the weekend, assuming the sins happened early in the week. Our parish has confessions before mass on the weekends, and that’s when I go. I never let a week slip by, however, without having confessed the mortal sins and I never receive Our Lord when not in a state of grace. Nevertheless, it’s extremely dangerous, what I’m doing by waiting and I realize that. For me it’s a matter of convenience in that I can go to confession and mass in one trip and have it fulfill my Sunday obligation as well. If these factors were not favorable I would go sooner.

The reason I worry is the same as you and others- I’m concerned about dying in a state of mortal sin and going to hell for it, even if dying in a specifically short time frame is highly unlikely. So I think what Trishie has said is very, very important here- that we should make an act of contrition, etc., in preparation for the confession. The hope and faith is that God will “cover us”, until we make it to confession, whenever that is. Of course, admittedly, this makes it easy to be lazy or make excuses for not going sooner. We should want to go even at an inconvenience to us, but in your example, not necessarily at the inconvenience of the priest.

To be honest, I’m in a state of mortal sin right now, and I won’t be going to confession until Saturday afternoon. If it’s not asking too much, please pray for me guys. God bless!
 
Mortal sin sets you apart from God. If one committed mortal sin as you conjectured then died in their sleep (or on the way to work, at work, etc.), one is not making it to Heaven.

If more of us had a true and holy fear of eternal damnation and all the suffering that consists of, more of us would be less prone to committing mortal sin in the first place and we wouldn’t have to conjecture about what to do in such a case.

Prayer strengthens our knowledge of God which strengthens our love of Him which increases our faith in Him which gives us the courage to resist evil and be pure in our actions and our union with Him.
 
We should always try to avoid serious sin but being human we fall short at times. I can understand how you feel having a mortal sin weighing you down. Make a good and sincere act of contrition and go to sacramental confession as soon as possible. You will be fine but remember in the future to do every thing in your power to avoid anything that would tempt you to sin.
 
When I was in the habit of committing sins of impurity, I would go to all sorts of strange lengths to get to confession right away… some of my searching-for-a-priest stories are rather comical actually. 😃 Needless to say sins of impurity can happen at rather odd hours 😛

I discovered all sorts of tricks to getting confessions ASAP though - going to weekday Mass and catching the priest outside immediately afterward being one of my favorites. I never found a priest who was unwilling to oblige a request for a confession. 👍

That said, unless it’s a matter that is graver than grave, I would not recommend banging on rectory doors around midnight. I’d go for an immediate act of contrition and then weekday Mass the next morning… if you can’t make it to weekday Mass for whatever reason, drive to a church after school/work and see if a priest is there. If not, spend some time in front of the Blessed Sacrament. Eventually, you’ll find a priest, probably before Saturday when regular confessions are held 😉
 
OnlyAmbrose said:
When I was in the habit of committing sins of impurity, I would go to all sorts of strange lengths to get to confession right away… some of my searching-for-a-priest stories are rather comical actually. 😃 Needless to say sins of impurity can happen at rather odd hours 😛

I discovered all sorts of tricks to getting confessions ASAP though - going to weekday Mass and catching the priest outside immediately afterward being one of my favorites. I never found a priest who was unwilling to oblige a request for a confession. 👍

That said, unless it’s a matter that is graver than grave, I would not recommend banging on rectory doors around midnight. I’d go for an immediate act of contrition and then weekday Mass the next morning… if you can’t make it to weekday Mass for whatever reason, drive to a church after school/work and see if a priest is there. If not, spend some time in front of the Blessed Sacrament. Eventually, you’ll find a priest, probably before Saturday when regular confessions are held 😉
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I’m going to assume you’re speaking to me specifically since you mention Saturday in your post.

About that. You say you went to great lengths to get to confession right away, but then that begs the same question the OP asked again, but with a different viewpoint- What isn’t considered ASAP? The key word in ASAP is P (possible). This implies we should go when it is humanly possible, or when it is physically possible, regardless of the inconvenience to us, if any.

What does the Church have to say about this? Is it a sin to wait to go to confession if it’s not ASAP? If it’s another sin in itself, then I’ll have to go sooner than I usually do. I’m just not entirely sure, at least in my case, and with my mortal sins and the circumstances around them that “ASAP” really is necessary, as long as I intend, which I always do and follow through with, to go to confession at the next time they are regularly held without having to request it- which would be weekends for me.

Is that not considered ASAP? Or is ASAP always and can never be anything short of the next possible moment? For me, it’s more like NAPT (Next Available/Possible Time, where available is when confessions are regularly held, and time is the weekends). Is it ok to operate this way, provided you make the act of contrition leading up to the day you will go, pray or fast, etc? Or must we break ranks and inconvenience others if necessary and contact a priest sooner (possibly inconveniencing him as well) to set an appointment or whatever getting a confession sooner would require?
 
All the more reason to keep the First Five Saturdays devotion:

"I promise to assist at the hour of death with the graces necessary for salvation all those who, in order to make reparation to me, on the First Saturday of five successive months, go to confession, receive Holy Communion, say five decades of the Rosary, and keep me company for a quarter of an hour, meditating on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary.”

Then at least you know even if you have committed a mortal sin you’ll have Our Lady to help you either find confession or make a perfect act of contrition or whatever she needs to do to give you a chance to make it to Heaven.

Of course, you’ll have to choose to work with those graces. But at least they’ll be there for you.
 
How about we just let God be the infinitely loving and merciful essence that He is? We seem, at least here, to make God out to be an essence that tries to find that legalistic loophole to grant us eternal death. Good grief! God is love. He created us to be with Him and would do anything to find us worthy of eternal life. He is not there to separate Himself from us. That’s what we do and His death on the cross allows for us to return to Him at anytime.

Yes, Jesus instituted the Sacrament of Reconciliation and for a very good reason. As with all of the Sacraments, we need tangible reinforcement in order to experience God with the senses that He created us with. So while we are bound to the sacraments, God is not. Why do we put Him in a box and say what He can and can’t do??

Know the love of God and experience that love in the sacraments especially the Eucharist and Reconciliation. Fear the Lord out of love as you would a parent and experience His forgiveness as you would from a parent except know it to be infinitely more.

Before anyone throws tomatoes, know that I frequent the sacrament of reconciliation weekly and that I find this sacrament of healing extremely beneficial for my sanctification in everyday life. And I would recommend many others to do the same. But if I ran there daily because I thought that God would not love me until I went, I would be reducing infinite Love to an idea that lives within the boundaries that I set. I cannot bring myself to do that…teachccd 🙂
 
teachccd said:
How about we just let God be the infinitely loving and merciful essence that He is? We seem, at least here, to make God out to be an essence that tries to find that legalistic loophole to grant us eternal death. Good grief! God is love. He created us to be with Him and would do anything to find us worthy of eternal life. He is not there to separate Himself from us. That’s what we do and His death on the cross allows for us to return to Him at anytime.

Yes, Jesus instituted the Sacrament of Reconciliation and for a very good reason. As with all of the Sacraments, we need tangible reinforcement in order to experience God with the senses that He created us with. So while we are bound to the sacraments, God is not. Why do we put Him in a box and say what He can and can’t do??

Know the love of God and experience that love in the sacraments especially the Eucharist and Reconciliation. Fear the Lord out of love as you would a parent and experience His forgiveness as you would from a parent except know it to be infinitely more.

Before anyone throws tomatoes, know that I frequent the sacrament of reconciliation weekly and that I find this sacrament of healing extremely beneficial for my sanctification in everyday life. And I would recommend many others to do the same. But if I ran there daily because I thought that God would not love me until I went, I would be reducing infinite Love to an idea that lives within the boundaries that I set. I cannot bring myself to do that…teachccd 🙂
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Exactly - God isn’t some malicious ghoul just hovering over us waiting for that gap in between sin and confession in order to catch us at our weakest. To think this way is totally inconsistent with His own teaching that He desires the salvation of all.

Certainly we should be distressed at being in a state of mortal sin. But that should be because it’s wounded our souls and maybe those of others, and separated us from the love and life of God. Not just because the consequence might be damnation.
 
I think there is a reason most parishes schedule once a week on Saturday. The Priests know that there are many mortal sins committed during the week.

Just curious, how often do you go Otaku?
 
LeroyCRHP said:
I think there is a reason most parishes schedule once a week on Saturday. The Priests know that there are many mortal sins committed during the week.

Just curious, how often do you go Otaku?
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If they were REALLY smart they’d probably schedule 'em on Sunday - I reckon Saturday night would be prime-time for mortal sin, no?
 
LilyM said:
Exactly - God isn’t some malicious ghoul just hovering over us waiting for that gap in between sin and confession in order to catch us at our weakest. To think this way is totally inconsistent with His own teaching that He desires the salvation of all.

Certainly we should be distressed at being in a state of mortal sin. But that should be because it’s wounded our souls and maybe those of others, and separated us from the love and life of God. Not just because the consequence might be damnation.
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Thank you. I agree…God Bless…teachccd 🙂
 
LeroyCRHP said:
I think there is a reason most parishes schedule once a week on Saturday. The Priests know that there are many mortal sins committed during the week.

Just curious, how often do you go Otaku?
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Yeah. We need to consider all the other people who will need it as well.

I go the same week I commit the mortal sin(s), so it all happens within the same week, both the sins and the confession. I know it’s not perfectly air tight, but it’s better than nothing. As far as the frequency of the mortal sins, I would say I commit them once a month, within the same week and it’s usually the first or last week of the month. Because these are ingrained habits I realize the need to control them, and I’ve managed to contain them within a specific time frame and I’ve been good at doing this for about a year now. My hope is that eventually, I’ll starve the temptations to death and the sins will be committed even less frequently.
 
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