To pray for forgiveness?

[CatholicDenmark]

I am a Catholic convert, wondering about forgiveness.

All sins including grave and mortal ones are forgiven in confession, and venial sins are forgiven in holy Mass?

But is it not possible for Jesus to forgive us when we pray to Him ?
I’m a bit confused about that.

Thanks so much.

 

[chero23]

You have to realize that Jesus came for everyone not just “me”. When somebody says I can go straight to Jesus in a way that is being egocentric. Yesterday’s reading from the Gospel was from John 20:20-23, and I’m paraphrasing here, Jesus says to the apostles on the day of his resurrection, whoever sins you forgive their sins are forgiven, whoever sins you don’t forgive their not forgiven.

You have to remember that in Matthew 16:18 when Jesus tells Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in Heaven and whatever you loosen in Earth will be loosed in Heaven; and in Matthew 18:18, Jesus says if your at fault with your brother take it to the church. What Jesus is basically telling us that, yes we can always pray to him and speak to him whenever we want, but he has set up an institution to carry the message, his word, to do what he wants it to do. In this case forgive sins.

 

[shelly5254]

Of course you can pray directly to Christ for forgiveness. He is after all our Advocate. This simple answer is: yes we are forgiven of our venial sins during Mass so long as you have them in mind and are truly sorry. Yes we are forgiven our mortal sins during confession, again if you understand the gravity of those sins and are truly sorry.
I too am a convert and struggled with the idea of confession since I was taught previously that we just go to Jesus for forgiveness. One of the wonderful things I’m finding is that the Catholic Church has many “ands”.
Through my talks with our religious ed teacher and through some reading by Scott Hahn I’ve found that…confession for mortal sins is necessary because it holds us accountable in the sense that by having to say it allowed you can more fully be made aware of the gravity of the sin and so greatly helps a person to keep from falling into that sin again AND we can find in the bible the necessity as posted earlier. Remember too that asking forgiveness was difficult for people in the bible. They had to make that long journey with an animal in tow. The process of sacrificing the animal. And the fact that the animal was often much needed for feeding the family so the loss of it in sacrifice was a great loss. Thankfully we do not need to sacrifice an animal any longer but Jesus does tell us that we do need to make that journey to the confessor and endure the difficulty of saying our sins allowed and doing our penance.
This was the most simple way of explaining I’ve found

 

[CatholicDenmark]

Thanks to both of you.

I am grateful for the sacrament of confession, I just was confused, but your answers clarified things for me.

By the way, I read online, that confession should be humbling but not humiliating. I agree, and it´s not a punishment but a mercyful gift from God.