With this important point established, I can now say boldly that today’s Gospel is all about confession! Yes, it is about the confession and forgiveness of our sins – and I’ll talk more about that in turn – but first the Gospel is about confession in an older and currently more obscure sense.
When Jesus asks His Apostles “who do people say that the Son of Man is,” they tell Him that some think He is “John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” But then Jesus asks the question He is really interested in. He asks, “Who do you say that I am”
In the course of our lives Jesus asks each and every one of us this very same question. It is, for believers, the single most important question in human history and the quality of our discipleship depends on the answer we give.
Throughout the past two thousand years, and up to the current day, there have been plenty of people who admire Jesus. They appreciate His message of peace, they respect Him as an ethical teacher, perhaps they even follow Him as a moral exemplar. But while all of this is true and significant it is simply insufficient for true discipleship.
If all of that were a sufficient answer to the question, “Who do you say that I am?” then Jesus would merely be another Buddha, or Mohammed: a human spiritual guru or a founder of a movement.
But for the true disciple, Jesus is always much more than that. In the Gospel, Peter provides the truest and best answer to this all-important question: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Peter’s confession, his declaration of belief, is the essence of faith which the entire Church never tires of confessing throughout history. We proclaim our belief that Jesus is nothing less than “the Christ, the Son of the living God.” He is more than an ethical teacher, more than a moral exemplar: Jesus is God Himself!
Acceptance or rejection of this singular fact was the distinguishing factor between those who followed Jesus and those who sought to have Him killed. Recall that when the leaders and chief priests have Jesus arrested and brought before Herod and Pilate it is because “He claimed to be the Son of God.” And recall that they said this because Jesus had forgiven people’s sins, and the Pharisees rightly asked, “who can forgive sins but God alone.”
Of course, the correct conclusion still eluded them: they failed to recognize that Jesus was indeed the Son of God whose entire mission and purpose was to reconcile all creation to the Father through the forgiveness of sins.
It’s precisely in this realization that we believers can rightly see that Peter’s confession and the faith of the Church in Jesus’ Divinity are the essential foundation upon which one can then speak about the other meaning of confession: which we have already said is the admission and forgiveness of sin.
Immediately after Peter makes his startling confession of faith, Jesus promises Peter that he will be the rock upon which the Church is built and then He says, “I will give you the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
The Church has always, from the time of the Apostles until now, understood Jesus to have thereby given His Apostles the power to forgive sins in His name, and thus perpetuate in the Church His ministry of reconciliation.
And yet it is fair to say that this second definition of confession, this public and sacramental acknowledgement and forgiveness of our sins has always been a source of confusion for those outside the Church. And now, confession is even undergoing a crisis of identity among otherwise practicing Catholics.
Catholics today have seemingly lost faith in the Sacrament of Confession and it is less and less a part of their lives. In 1990 the US Bishops conducted a survey of American Catholics and wrote a study about some of the reasons we do not make use of confession anymore. I’m going to summarize what they said into five brief reasons – see if any of them resonate with you:
1. We don’t want to face our sinfulness.
This is the most fundamental and perhaps the most honest reason for avoiding confession: none of us likes having to face and admit our own sinfulness. It’s only honest to admit that confession of sin is not, at first, a pleasant experience.
To make things worse, “our fiercely competitive society pushes people to always project the most positive possible image of themselves; an image which allows no room for any admission of weakness, let alone failure.” But we cannot think that this is somehow justification for not confessing our sins.
During the Olympic Games the sportscasters made frequent reference to the fact that Michael Phelps, now perhaps the greatest athlete of all time, spends hours with his coaches looking at video of his races finding the flaws and mistakes in his performance.
Being great means that we are humble enough and brave enough to examine our faults. The saints, who universally loved confession, teach us the same lesson. They show us that the reward of our confession “is the experience not of the contempt, rejection, or derision that” the world “might lead us to expect, but the acceptance, understanding, compassion and love of our merciful and forgiving God.”
2. We think psychology is sufficient.
Thanks to truly wonderful advances in the human sciences we moderns have come to think as if psychology renders confession obsolete. Psychoanalysis, psychotherapy and counseling, we imagine, offer a sufficient means of healing the human person. But this kind of thinking reduces the human being: we are not merely biological beings, and neither are we merely psychological beings: we are spiritual beings.
The healing of our psychic or mental health is an important thing – but it is insufficient, in and of itself, because it ignores the supernatural, spiritual essence of humanity which concerns our relationship to God. Sinfulness is more than a neurosis, and therefore it requires not treatment, but God’s forgiveness. Sin requires confession.
3. We think there are other ways to find God’s forgiveness.
Even when we admit to needing and even wanting God’s forgiveness we can sometimes convince ourselves that God’s forgiveness can be obtained solely through personal prayer, or by coming to Mass, or by taking a walk in nature.
While we do indeed experience proof of God’s loving mercy in a myriad of ways, it is sheer wishful thinking to believe that we don’t need confession. There is simply no way around the fact that Jesus Himself established confession as the ordinary means of receiving God’s forgiveness. Put bluntly, since we are sinners, and God is God, it’s His right to determine how we are to be reconciled to Him – and that way is confession.
4. We don’t want to confess to a priest.
This is undoubtedly the classic Protestant objection to confession. No mere human being, it is said, is capable of forgiving someone’s sins. But “no Catholic believes that a priest simply as an individual man, however pious or learned, has the power to forgive sins.” It is only because Jesus “the Christ, the Son of the living God,” gave His Apostles the ability to forgive sins in His name that the Church remains faithful to this mission – just as surely as it remains faithful to Jesus’ command to “baptize all the nations” and to His command to “do this in remembrance of me.” The sacramental life of the Church is administered through her priests.
It is perfectly appropriate, however, to admit that whatever the circumstance, confessing one’s sins to another person requires the virtue of humility. We might benefit, therefore, from thinking about why the Lord might ask for this kind of humility from us. What might be the spiritual benefit?
I think there are at least two: First, we all know well the human tendency to self-justify and rationalize. We all want to mitigate our culpability and to absolve ourselves of wrongdoing. Often, it is only when we say something out-loud, to another person that we allow ourselves to stare reality in the face and accept that we are in fact guilty. And as any true program of personal growth recognizes, this is the essential first step toward healing. Speaking to a priest in the secrecy of the confessional gives us a safe dose of the reality we sometimes need.
But confession also soothes the sting of that reality by giving us clear access to God’s gentle mercy and forgiveness. Confession ensures that we don’t fall into the other extreme of despair and self-loathing. When we hear the advice the priest gives, and especially when we hear the Prayer of Absolution, God speaks to us not in silence, but through a human face and a human voice – making His mercy humanly tangible and undeniable.
For my money, that’s a decent shorthand answer for why Jesus gave us the gift of confession in the manner he chose.
5. We simply don’t know what to do or to say in confession.
Finally, and perhaps most sadly, the fifth reason that many people fail to make use of confession is because they feel they don’t know, or have never been taught, what to do or to say. If you feel that way, I strongly urge you to make use of instruction sheets like the ones we offer in the vestibule of the church. They not only give simple directions for what to do and say, but also offer powerful suggestions for ways to experience the depth and beauty of this most precious Sacrament.
Please believe me when I say that Fr. Joe and I are most eager for more of our parishioners to make more regular use of confession, and we promise to gently lead you through the newness or nervousness you might experience.
Friends, in today’s Gospel, Peter gives voice to the confession of the entire Church, that Jesus is the Son of God. In turn, Jesus founds His Church on Peter and gives Her the gift of the Sacrament of Confession. May we never stray from the Church’s confession of faith and may we find in the confession of our sins the reconciliation that Christ came to give.
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