ARCHBISHOP BRUNO FORTE addresses the mostcommon questions and concerns Catholics haveabout the sacrament of Reconciliation: “Why do wehave to go to Confession?” “Why tell my sins to apriest; can’t I confess directly to God?” “Does sineven exist?” Clear, honest, and pastorally sensitiveanswers help readers better appreciate this sacra-ment of personal encounter with the mercy of God.Archbishop Forte further explores how asking forforgiveness with conviction, receiving it with grati-tude, and generously giving it to others can bring usunrivalled peace.

Includes helpful questions for an examination ofconscience based on the 10 Commandments andprayers of sorrow in preparation for Confession.

Spirituality / How to Pray

$6.95

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WHY GO TO

CONFESSION?

Reconciliation and the Beauty of God

Bruno Forte

BOOKS & MEDIA

Boston

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Forte, Bruno.Why go to confession? : reconciliation and the beauty of God / Bruno

Forte.p. cm.

ISBN 0-8198-8314-X (pbk.)1. Confession. 2. Reconciliation—Religious aspects—Catholic Church.

I.Title.BX2265.3.F67 2007264’.02086—dc22

2006017750

The Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised StandardVersion Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993, Division of ChristianEducation of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the UnitedStates of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Cover design by Rosana Usselmann

Cover art: The Prodigal’s Return, Sir Edward John Poynter (1836–1919) /Private Collection, © The Fine Art Society, London, UK / The Bridgeman ArtLibrary International.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted inany form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without permis-sion in writing from the publisher.

“P” and PAULINE are registered trademarks of the Daughters of St. Paul.

Translated by Matthew Sherry

Copyright © 2007, Bruno Forte

Published by Pauline Books & Media, 50 Saint Paul’s Avenue, Boston, MA02130-3491. www.pauline.org.

Printed in the U.S.A.

Pauline Books & Media is the publishing house of the Daughters of St. Paul, aninternational congregation of women religious serving the Church with thecommunications media.

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Contents

Introduction vii

Part One

Why Go to Confession?

Reconciliation and the Beauty of God 3

Why go to confession? 3

The experience of forgiveness 5

Confess to a priest? 7

A God who is close to our weakness 9

The stages of the encounter with forgiveness 11

The celebration of forgiveness 13

The return to the Father’s house 15

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The encounter with Christ,who died and rose for us 16

New life in the Spirit 18

We must let ourselves be reconciled with God! 20

Part Two

The Father Sets Us Free

A Lectio divina on Luke 15:11–32 25

The Father of mercy: a love that welcomes 26

The younger son: the story of a return 37

The older son: physical closeness and closeness of the heart 44

Part Three

For an Examination of Conscience

Scripture Readings 53

The Ten Commandments 62

Act of Contrition 67

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Introduction

LET’S TRY TO UNDERSTAND, TOGETHER, what confes-sion is. If you truly understand it—in your mindas well as your heart—you will feel the need forthis encounter and experience its joy. It is anencounter in which God, by giving you his for-giveness through the ministry of the Church, cre-ates a new heart and places a new spirit withinyou, so that you may live in reconciliation withGod, with yourself, and with others, becomingcapable of offering forgiveness and love yourself,leaving behind any temptation to distrust or anysense of weariness.

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Part One

Why Go to Confession?

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Reconciliation and the Beauty of God

Why go to confession?

AMONG THE HEARTFELT QUESTIONS that people poseto me as a bishop, there is one that I hear frequent-ly:Why do we have to go to confession? The ques-tion comes in many forms:Why do we have to tellour sins to a priest; why can’t we go directly toGod, who knows and understands us better thanany human being? And to take it even further:Whyshould I talk about personal matters, especiallythings I am ashamed of, with someone who is a

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sinner like myself, who may have a completely dif-ferent view of things that I have experienced, ormay not even understand my problems at all?What does a priest know about my experience ofsin? Some add: Does sin even exist, or is it just apriest’s power-play trick to make us behave? I cananswer the last question immediately, and withoutany fear of misspeaking: sin exists, and it is notonly evil itself; it creates more evil. Just look atwhat goes on every day in the world, with vio-lence, war, injustice, abuse, egoism, jealousy, andvengeance (for example, just think of all the “warbulletins” that are diffused every day in news-papers, on the radio, television, and the internet).

Further, those who believe in the love of Godrealize that sin is love turned back upon itself (amorcurvis, as the theologians of the Middle Ages put it),the ingratitude of those who respond to love withindifference and rejection. This rejection has con-sequences not only for those who experience it,but also for society as a whole, producing tangledstrands of egoism and violence that constitute

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genuine “structures of sin” (one thinks of socialinjustice, of the inequality between rich countriesand poor countries, of the scandal of hunger in the world...). Precisely for this reason we must not hesitate to emphasize how great a tragedy sinis. How profoundly the loss of the sense of sin—which is quite different from the psychologicalneurosis that we call the “guilt complex”—weak-ens the heart in the face of the display of evil andthe seduction of Satan, the Adversary who seeks toseparate us from God.

The experience of forgiveness

DESPITE ALL THIS, I don’t mean to say that theworld is evil and that it is useless to do good. I amconvinced that goodness exists, and that it is muchgreater than evil; that life is beautiful and that liv-ing uprightly, for love and with love, is reallyworth the effort.The basic reason why I think thisway is my own experience of the mercy of Godand the sight of this same experience shining forth

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in many humble persons. It is an experience I havehad many times, both in extending forgiveness asthe Church’s minister and in receiving it. Formany years now I have gone to confession, joyful-

ly, several times a month.Thisjoy comes from feeling Godlove me in a new way everytime his forgiveness comes tome through the priest, whoextends it to me in God’sname. It is a joy that I haveseen so often on the faces ofthose who come to confess.This is not the empty sense oflightness that those who have“taken a load off ” feel (confes-sion is not a psychological

release mechanism or a consolation, or at least notmainly so), but the peace of feeling whole inside,touched in the heart by a love that heals, a lovethat comes from above and transforms us. Askingfor forgiveness with conviction, receiving it with

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Asking for forgivenesswith conviction,

receiving it with gratitude,and giving it

with generosity are the source of a priceless peace.

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gratitude, and giving it with generosity are thesource of a priceless peace.That’s why confessionis such a beautiful thing, and the right thing to do.I hope that everyone who reads this will come tounderstand the reasons for such joy.

Confess to a priest?

WHY IS IT NECESSARY TO CONFESS one’s sins to apriest, and not directly to God? Of course, theconfession of sins is always addressed to God. Butit is God himself who shows that we must confessbefore a priest: by choosing to send his Son in ourflesh, he showed that he wanted to meet usthrough direct contact, using the signs and lan-guage of our human condition. Just as he steppedout of himself for love of us and came to “touch”us with his flesh, so we are called to come out ofourselves for love of him and go with humility andfaith to those who can give us forgiveness person-ally in his name. Only the absolution from sinsthat the priest offers you in the sacrament can give

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you the interior certainty that you have reallybeen forgiven and welcomed back by your heaven-ly Father, because Christ has entrusted to the min-istry of the Church the power to bind and toloose, to exclude from or admit to the communi-ty of the covenant (cf. Mt 18:17). It is he who,risen from the dead, said to the apostles: “Receivethe Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, theyare forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any,they are retained (Jn 20:22ff.).

So confessing to a priest is entirely differentfrom confessing in the secret of your heart, whichis exposed to the many insecurities and ambigui-ties that fill our lives. On your own, you willnever know if what has touched you is the graceof God or your own emotions, if you have forgiv-en yourself or been forgiven by God. When youare absolved by the person the Lord has chosenand sent as the minister of forgiveness, you canexperience the freedom that only God gives, andunderstand why confession is a source of peace.

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A God who is close to our weakness

CONFESSION IS AN ENCOUNTER with divine forgive-ness, which Jesus offers and transmits to usthrough the ministry of the Church. In this effica-cious sign of grace, which is the experience of amercy without limit, we are shown the face of aGod who knows our human condition like no oneelse, and who brings himself near to us with ten-der love. This is seen in countless episodes in thelife of Jesus, from the encounter with theSamaritan woman to the healing of the paralytic,from the Lord’s pardoning the adulterous womanto his tears at the death of Lazarus.We have a greatneed for this tender and compassionate closenessof God, as even a brief glance at our lives willshow: we all live with our own weaknesses, sufferillness, and face death, and we are aware of thechallenging questions that all of this raises in ourhearts. And as much as we desire to do good, thefragility that plagues us all brings the constant riskof our falling into temptation. The Apostle Paul

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described this experience well: “I can will what isright, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the goodI want, but the evil I do not want is what I do”(Rom 7:18–19). It is the interior conflict thatleads to the appeal: “Who will rescue me from thisbody of death?” (Rom 7:24)

The sacrament of forgiveness responds tothis dilemma in a special way,always coming to sustain usafresh in our condition as sin-ners, bringing to us the heal-ing power of divine grace andtransforming our hearts andour habits. That is why theChurch never tires of offer-ing us the grace of this sacra-ment throughout our entire

life’s journey: through the sacrament, it is Jesus,the divine physician, who comes to take our sinsupon himself and accompany us, continuing hiswork of healing and salvation. As is true for anylove relationship, our covenant with the Lord

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It is Jesus,the divine physician,

who comes to takeour sins upon himselfand accompany us...

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must be renewed continually. Fidelity is theundying commitment of the heart that bothgives of itself and welcomes the love that isextended to it, until that day when God shall beall in all.

The stages of the encounter with forgiveness

BECAUSE IT IS WILLED BY A GOD who is profoundly“human,” the encounter with mercy offered to usby Jesus takes places through multiple stages, whichrespect the rhythms of our lives and hearts. At thebeginning there is the hearing of the good news andthe call of Jesus: “The time is fulfilled, and the king-dom of God has come near; repent, and believe inthe good news” (Mk 1:15). Through this voice theHoly Spirit acts in us, lending a sweetness to ourfaith and our consent to the Truth. When webecome docile to this voice and decide to respondwith all our hearts to the one who is calling us, weset out upon the road that leads us to the greatest

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gift, a gift so precious that Paul was compelled tosay: “We entreat you on behalf of Christ, be recon-ciled to God” (2 Cor 5:20).

Reconciliation is this sacrament of encounterwith Christ, who through the ministry of theChurch comes to help in their weakness thosewho have betrayed or refused the covenant withGod. He reconciles them with the Father and withthe Church, and makes them a new creation bythe power of the Holy Spirit. This sacrament isalso called penance, because it expresses the realityof conversion, the journey of the heart thatrepents and comes to ask for God’s forgiveness.The commonly used term, “confession,” refers tothe act of confessing one’s sins before a priest, butalso refers to the triple confession we must makein order to live the sacrament of Reconciliation tothe full. The first of these is the confession ofpraise (confessio laudis), in which we bring to mindthe divine love that precedes and accompanies us,recognizing the signs of this love in our lives andthus understanding better the seriousness of our

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fault. Then there is the confession of sin (confessiopeccati), in which we present to the Father ourhumble and repentant hearts, acknowledging oursins. Finally there is the confession of faith (confes-sio fidei), in which we open ourselves up to theforgiveness that frees and saves us, which isoffered to us in absolution. The actions and thewords by which we express the gift we havereceived confess, in their turn, of the wondersworked within us by the mercy of God.

The celebration of forgiveness

IN THE CHURCH’S HISTORY, penance has been expe-rienced in a great variety of ways, both communaland individual, but these have all maintained thefundamental structure of the personal encounterbetween the repentant sinner and the living God,through the mediation of the ministry of the bish-op or priest. Through the words of absolution,which are spoken by one who is also a sinner buthas been chosen and consecrated for ministry, it is

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Christ himself who welcomes the repentant sinnerand reconciles him or her with the Father, andthrough the gift of the Holy Spirit renews him orher as a living member of the Church. Reconciledwith God, we are welcomed into the life-givingcommunion of the Trinity, and we receive the newlife of grace, the love that only God can pour outwithin our hearts. So the sacrament of forgivenessrenews our relationship with the Father, Son, andHoly Spirit, in whose name we receive absolutionfrom our sins.

As shown by the parable of the prodigal son,the encounter of reconciliation leads to a ban-quet of delicious foods, which one attends in anew garment, with a ring on one’s finger andsandals on one’s feet (cf. Lk 15:22–23). Theseimages express the joy and beauty of the gift thatis offered and received. Truly, to use the wordsof the father in the parable, we must celebrateand rejoice, “for this son of mine was dead and isalive again; he was lost and is found!” (Lk 15:24)How beautiful it is to think that each of us can bethis child!

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The return to the Father’s house

IN RELATION TO GOD THE FATHER, reconciliationcan be seen as a “return home” (this is the mean-ing of teshuvà, the Jewish word for conversion).Through awareness of oursins, we realize that we are inexile, far from our homelandof love. We feel uneasy andsad, because we understandthat sin means breaking thecovenant with the Lord and isa rejection of God’s love. Itmeans that his love receives nolove in return, which is whysin is a source of alienation, because it uproots usfrom our real home: the heart of the Father.

It is then that we must remember the homethat awaits us. Without this memory of love, wecan never have the trust and hope we need todecide to return to God.With the humility of onewho knows he or she is not worthy of being called“child,” we can decide to go knock on the door of

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...Sin is a source ofalienation because ituproots us from ourreal home: the heart

of the Father.

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the Father’s house; what a surprise it is to discov-er that he is at the window, peering into the dis-tance, because he has been waiting so long for usto return! Our open hands and humble and repen-tant hearts receive the free gift of forgiveness,through which the Father reconciles us with him-self, “converting” to us, in a manner of speaking:“While he was still far off, his father saw him andwas filled with compassion; he ran and put hisarms around him and kissed him” (Lk 15:20).With extraordinary tenderness, God brings usback into the condition of children, a conditionoffered by the covenant established in Jesus.

The encounter with Christ,who died and rose for us

IN RELATION TO THE SON, the sacrament of Recon-ciliation offers us the joy of encountering him,the crucified and risen Lord, who through hisPassover gives us new life, pouring out the HolySpirit in our hearts. This encounter takes place

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