I had gone to confession that morning. No I'm not a Roman Catholic. I'm an Episcopalian and confession is not something I had ever done. Well, yes, I had said the General Confession found in The Book of Common Prayer plenty enough, but that seemed less focused somehow. I wanted something focused, you see, and Episcopalians do have personal confession or the reconciliation of the penitent as it is called in the Prayer Book. I'd never done it, and come to think of it, I never knew anyone who did, for that matter.
I had been thinking about doing it for quite some time, like for several years. I'd always heard that confession is good for the soul. I'd had this hankering to maybe look into it for - well - quite a few years, you know, to wash away some of my more raucous youthful indiscretions. I suppose I had a few middle-aged ones, too. Here I was in my midlife and it had slowly dawned on me, as I matured, just how immature I had been. Oh no, not truly dreadful crimes, or anything like that, you know. I had just done some - well - awful stuff in my fifty some-odd years of existence. So after resolving that I had to get the load off my chest, I started making a list. At first I kept trying to keep mental notes of my sins, but it became much like trying to remember a grocery list that flies out of your head the moment you set foot in the grocery. So I decided to write my list down. The problem was that I kept the list hidden because it would not be a good thing if it fell into enemy hands. The problem with the hidden list is that it isn't at hand - being hidden and all - when you remember an infraction. So, I found myself keeping cryptic notes on scraps of paper and whatnot. After much labor, time and cryptic notes, I finally compiled a list, though it continued being a living work of art.
Once the list had grown ponderous my conscience started poking me more roughly to get on with things. I asked it "why?"
"Because at this rate you'll write war and peace again, and it will take a week to confess," my conscience said.
"Yes, but I am certain that I'm leaving stuff out."
"You can't remember everything."
"With time I can," I whined.
"But what if your time runs out? Then you'll go to hell."
"Not so, I say the General Confession at Church and that gets me off the hook."
"Really? Do you feel relieved after reciting something out of a book over and over again like it is going to sandpaper your soul and get you into Heaven?"
I paused.
"See," said my conscience, "you aren't at all certain, are you?"
"Well, I never heard of anyone other than the Roman Catholics doing private confessions."
"And that's only because they make a big deal out of it with confessional booths and all."
"There are no confessionals in my Church, and I've never seen one any place other than a Roman Church."
"Maybe Episcopalians do it, well, privately, so no one knows it goes on. Episcopalians might be confessing all the time privately, and for that matter, maybe the Methodists, Presbyterians and Baptists, too. It may be a great secret cabal of confessing people, and you're just un-initiated. It's a vast conspiracy of confessing people that have kept you in darkness so you'll go to hell and leave extra space for them in heaven."
"The Baptists?" I asked.
"Well, maybe not them 'cause they don't sin, and they're not worried about there not being enough room in Heaven since they're going to be the only ones there."
Finally, my conscience convinced me to give it a try, and I began the mighty task of cutting my litany of penance to something portable. That took another year or two just to pare the thing in size, but I finally shrunk the thing to all fit on one page. I did this by annotation and categorization lumping several like sins into one catchall bin that took up only a line or so. When all was said and done, it resembled the General Confession found in The Book of Common Prayer. I figured the test of its virility as a panacea for sin could be determined by asking myself if anyone saw it would I be embarrassed and ashamed. Reading it I decided it was too tame and general, so I started to add a bit of lurid detail here and there, and finally ended with seven pages and a warm fuzzy feeling.
Then the devil got to talking with me and called me a blithering idiot for putting all these sins on paper where anyone could read them. I mean what if I dropped dead and my relatives found them going through my personal effects? That would be a send off! I could only imagine the psychological disturbance it might cause my children, scarring them for life! Oh, how they would remember good old Dad then! So, taking Ol' Scratch's advice, I placed the whole thing on the gas grill outside, said the General Confession and burnt it up. I didn't feel better or particularly forgiven, so I started the note taking process again. Shortly after that, say another year or so, and many more sins later, I decided this was endless procrastination, and I was getting nowhere. I canned any further listing behavior, came up with one comprehensive list and resolved to call the Priest to set up an appointment.
That day came and I was all pins and needles about it. I was as nervous as the proverbial prostitute in church. I even went so far as to take a day off work so I would have plenty of prep and recovery time. I told no one what I was doing. My meeting with my Priest was at ten. I showed up sharp at 9:55. He was on the phone but beckoned me in to sit while he finished. He was talking to someone about preparing for our annual summer Church fish fry, about going out to get the deep fryers from some remote place out in the County. Whoever he was talking to had a trailer with which to transport them. He hung up the phone, and beamed at me across his desk.
"Well, Thomas, how are you today?"
"Okay, Father Jim, and you?"
"Can't complain, can't complain at all."
Father Jim is a large and portly man with snow-white hair. With a beard he can easily pass for Santa Claus, which he does for the younger kids at the annual Christmas pageant. He grows a beard every year for the beginning of Advent. He is a dead ringer for jolly St. Nick, and has a great fondness for preaching on St. Nicholas, the Bishop of Myra, and the legends that surround him.
"So Thomas, what brings you into my clutches this morning?"
"Well ... this isn't easy..."
"Out with it. Remember, I am a trained professional."
"Uh, well ... Uh, I want to do confession."
His enlarged eyes blinked at me several time through his wire rim glasses. For a moment I thought his jaw was going to slackly drop open.
"Confession?"
"Yes sir, I want to confess."
He got up and shut the office door. Returning to his seat he leaned forward on his desk to better to observe me.
"Confess what?" he asked.
"Uh, not just one thing in particular. I want to do confession, you know, like the Catholics do."
"I'll remind you, Thomas that we are all Catholics, and we, in particular as Episcopalians, are Anglican Catholics."
"Yes sir, but I'm speaking of confession like the Roman Catholics do confession, you see, to confess particular things."
"Like in a confessional?"
"Yes sir."
"Ah, you'd be referring to the reconciliation of the penitent like in the prayer book, eh?"
"Yes sir."
"You want to confess those particular things that the general confession doesn't seem to cover, I take it?"
"Well, yes sir, particular is the word, but I haven't really done anything particularly nasty, you know. It's not like I have grievous, major, ten commandment-busting sins to confess. Actually, I guess they are fairly ordinary sins, as sins go... probably quite boring, when I think of it... probably, really a waste of time."
"I see," he said.
"Well, I mean, if you think that the general confession covers everything adequately, I suppose that we don't need to do a reconciliation of the penitent," I said, quickly losing nerve, and trying to think of a way to escape.
"No, no," he said waving his big meaty hands, "I think that the reconciliation of the penitent is an excellent thing, and something we do not do enough! If you will remember in the catechism you learned in confirmation class as a youth, you know that reconciliation of a penitent is a sacrament of the Church, one of the lesser sacraments, along with ordination, confirmation, holy matrimony and unction, but a sacrament all the same."
He was now become as agitated as the bull of china shop fame. I feared he was about to knock something over with his sweeping gestures.
"I have often thought that if we used that sacrament more," he said gesticulating broadly, "there would be a lot less mental illness and substance abuse. There's nothing like washing out the dirty laundry, and hanging it out to dry in the sunshine of the Lord and the cooling, freshening breeze of the Holy Spirit... nothing like it at all. I applaud you and will gladly accommodate your request."
He retrieved his Book of Common Prayer from beneath some clutter on the corner of his desk. It was frayed and battered from heavy usage. He started thumbing through the pages. I noticed that many of the pages were stained by major use in the corners. He thumbed past those and arrived at a section where the pages were as clean as when the prayer book was new.
"Here we go," he said. "Pick up that prayer book beside you there and turn to page 446."
I picked up the prayer book on the table beside my seat and turned to the page. I found myself reading the instructions concerning the rite, and noted that the rite of the reconciliation of a penitent itself began on page 447.
"Let's see," Fr. Jim said. "It's been a while since I've done this. It says that we are supposed to go into the Church, and I am to sit inside the altar rail while you kneel at the altar rail. It says here that we can sit face to face. Do you want to do that?"
I shook my head vigorously.
"Yeah, that sounds a little over the top," he agreed. "But, if you want to, you can."
"No sir, I don't believe that will be necessary."
He thumbed forward into the rite. "It says here, on page 450, that you need to be ready to confess 'particular sins.' You ready for that?"
I reached into the back pocket of my khakis and unfolded my culled down page of sins. "Yes sir, I've got 'em written down here, sir."
"Good."
"Uh, Jim, if it makes no difference to you, would you mind, just reading them to yourself when we get into it?"
"Nope, we can't do it that way. You have to confess them out loud for the fix to take."
A dread swept over me like the one I feel when the Dentist approaches me with a needle, but I had come too far to back out now. The die was cast - I was in the dental chair - and I had to go through with it.
As if reading my thoughts Fr. Jim sprung up from his chair and said, "let's go then and get this over! I hope no one is in the Church."
There is another door out of his office that leads to the vesting room, and from that room there is a side door leading into the Church up by the altar. We proceeding into the vesting room where he selected a purple stole which he draped about his neck, and opened the door into the Church. The place was deserted. We proceeded to the altar and he gestured for me to kneel at the altar rail. He stepped inside the altar rail and took a seat a short distance off in one of the acolyte's chairs. We both opened our prayer book to the reconciliation rite and began. He nodded to me since I had the opening line.
"'Bless me, for I have sinned.'"
He followed with his part. "'The Lord be in you heart and upon your lips that you may truly and humbly confess your sins: In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.'"
It was my turn again.
"'I confess to Almighty God, to his Church, and to you, that I have sinned by my own fault in thought, word, and deed, in things done and left undone; especially....'"
This is where things get dicey. I did not pull out my list. I left it in my pocket. For some reason I felt that would be less heart-felt. If I was going to go through this kind of embarrassment, I wanted to be sincere so this arduous task would be fruitful. Here I was kneeling before God at the Altar rail of the church I had attended all my life. Here is my chance to make a clean sweep of years of tawdry performance and wipe the slate clean. I resolved that I would do this thing and from the heart, not from some written script.
But, for the longest time, I could say nothing. I just knelt there. Then I spat out of couple of smallish sins. That being done, I gained a bit of confidence and spat out some more. Pretty soon I was telling of things I had never told any living person in my life, and didn't really like to think about myself. I can only liken the experience to being nauseated and throwing up. I vomited up a stream of crimes, sometimes the same ones twice. And just like being nauseated, I began to feel better, and I thought I was through, but just as I felt that way, nausea swept over me again. I vomited out a greater volume of sins and weakness that I had, from time to time, most grievously committed by thought, word and deed against God's divine majesty. And just as it is with being sick, I had this coolly detached side of my mind that was observing and commenting upon the whole thing like some kind of color commentator. That part of my mind was wondering about all the sinful things I was disgorging there in that same Church whose walls had resonated with the voices of my Baptism, my Confirmation, my marriage and the Baptisms and Confirmations of my own children! Here I was staining these same walls and familiar sights with filthy and foul things, with weaknesses and failures. I felt doubly terrible about uttering such things here at the very Altar rail where I had knelt for communion all my life. Who was I to come into God's Holy Church and Presence and speak such filth! It was as if I had flung excrement at the walls, the Altar and Altar Cross!
I finally fell silent. I was overcome with horror at what I had done, but I also felt a growing relief that built with each passing moment. It slowly dawned upon me that just as the body, by God given instinct, knows to vomit out poisons before they can kill, the spirit can do the same. Just as we go into a hospital filthy with illness to emerge from it healed, the Church serves the same purpose for the spirit. I was being healed.
I looked down at the prayer book I was holding atop the Altar rail and continued.
"'For these and all other sins which I cannot now remember, I am truly sorry. I pray God to have mercy on me. I firmly intend amendment of life, and I humbly beg forgiveness of God and his Church, and ask you for counsel, direction and absolution.'"
Suddenly I was swept over with a tremendous feeling of relief. I had done it! I had finally done it! The hard part had come and passed, and I didn't see any stain on the walls, altar or cross!
I looked over at Fr. Jim and he appeared to be in a trance, or he might have been dozing. Hearing my silence he roused himself.
"Good," he said. "That was good. Now you need an act of contrition. Turn to page 656 and read aloud Psalm 51 verses one through eighteen.
After I had done so, we said the Lord's Prayer together, and he continued the rite of reconciliation.
"'Our Lord Jesus Christ, who has left power to his Church to absolve all sinners who truly repent and believe in him, of his great mercy forgive you all your offenses; and by his authority committed to me, I absolve you from all your sins: in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.'"
With his face radiating compassion he looked up at me and said, "'The Lord has put away all your sins.'"
"' Thanks be to God,'" I responded.
"'Go in peace, and pray for me a sinner.'"