Why Frequent Confession?

Confession is one of the sacraments of the Holy Catholic Church that is probably the most important of all the sacraments in order to assure ourselves that our sins have been forgiven. And once we receive absolution from God, only then do we know within ourselves that we are able to receive Christ worthily in Holy Communion, as God wants us to do. Receiving frequent communion, then, also wipes away venial sin and helps us to stay away from mortal sin.

There is always a lot of discussion of how often a person should go to confession. It was made known to us that Blessed John Paul II went to confession once a week. At that time I thought to myself, what sins do a pope do? It seemed impossible that the great man Pope John Paul II would have to go to confession once a week. But maybe that is what has made him 'Great'.

After I heard that the Pope did this, I thought that maybe I should try and go once a month. It always seemed like I was bothering the priest in asking him to hear my confession. In the parish I had been in there wasn't a set time. He just made himself available as people needed.

When we moved to another parish in 2004, I was very happy to know that the Church had set times for confession every week. And later, they added another hour for people on two different days of the week, making it almost always possible to go to confession anytime.

It was at this time in my life that I started going every two or three weeks. After I did that, though, I began becoming more aware of my sins and my conscience would eat at me until I would go to confession again.
Now after going once every two months for years, it shocked me that I became so aware of my sins now that I was going more often.

Recently I had a period of spiritual dryness, and for the first time in a long time, it was another two months before I went to confession again, and then it was only after a struggle within myself. But I noticed, this time, that the longer I stayed away, the less aware I became of my sins. It was so bad that I didn't even know for sure what I had done to warrant going to confession. So each week I convinced myself not to go.

Then the 'I wonder if I confessed that' thought came in to my mind. I started having attacks of sorrow over sins I know I've confessed in the past, but not sure if I did it right. This came about after I was reading in a very old missal (1878) that said: "In examining your conscience, remember you have to find out what sins you have committed and how many times you have committed them".

I thought, shoot, I haven't thought about how many times I have committed a sin since I was a pre-vatican II kid. And I didn't even think they still did it until I read somewhere else that we ARE supposed to remember how many times of each sin we did. So I got worried.

Then I read 'You are obliged to confess all your mortal sins, and one mortal sin omitted either wilfully or through a careless examination of your conscience, renders your confession of no avail, and makes you guilty of the sin of sacrilege. Examine your conscience, therefore, with great care; and often during your examination make a little aspiration, "Jesus, give me your grace," or "Mary, my Mother, help me"'.

Continuing on, it said 'if you confess often, every week or month, go through your examination of conscience and always confess, in addition to your present sins, some sin of your past life; one you feel most sorrow for.'

I thought, wow. I had been told not to be so scrupulous in repeating a sin and here this little book is telling us to do it.

Finally, I was reading the book "Dogma of Hell" tonight. It talked about a man who had committed a mortal sin but refused to confess it because it embarrassed him. So he would go to confession for everything but that sin, and
still continued to receive Holy Communion. However his conscience was killing him because not only did he not confess the mortal sin, but he committed grave sacrilege by going to Holy Communion. This went on and on and he decided to become a priest. He thought maybe that would help him confess it, and when he did confess it, he got it so mixed up, it wasn't even right. Well he decided he would wait until the day he was on his death bed to confess it and unfortunately, he died without getting the chance to confess it. He showed up to someone after he died and told the person to stop praying for him because he was in hell and that person's prayers were to no avail. I thought, whoa!

Now tell me, after all I have said, do we still want to hide our mortal sins from the priest? Jesus knows what we have done. And Jesus is there and is speaking through the priest in telling us what to do. We must not ignore confession and forget our pride and confess everything or else we'll end up like that guy in the book I am reading. We shouldn't ever wish that on our worst enemy.

So the answer to the question "Why Frequent Confession?" So we go to heaven and not hell. THAT is the answer. It's all up to us. God gives us the way to become holy, but we must participate in our own salvation walk.