Going to Confession...

Thou shalt confess thy transgressions in the Church, and shalt not come unto prayer with an evil conscience.
This is the path of life.
     -The Didache, Ch. 4:14. [AD 70]

Fr. Rob Johansen has some very powerful and candid things to say about the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

I also have some things to say about going to confession. Perhaps it was because I didn't yet fully understand its spiritual aspects, even though I understood the sacrament intellectually, but for nearly four years after being baptized and confirmed in the Roman Catholic Church, I went to confession only a handful of times - maybe two or three times at the most. Over the last two years, thanks be to God, I have been successful in my attempts to embrace the sacrament of reconciliation approximately once a month, and it has changed my spiritual life in more ways than I ever anticipated it would. I think a lot of my initial hesitation, or perhaps my initial naivete, regarding the sacrament was because it was not emphasized or even particularly encouraged at the university parish I attended.

Don't get me wrong - the parish did offer private confession, but it only advertised it as being for 30 minutes a week, or by appointment. Suffice it to say, many members of the congregation with whom I spoke about this had never taken the opportunity to go, some not for several decades. I had a very good relationship with the former pastor, and so those times that I did visit the sacrament, I had no problem doing face-to-face confession with him. However, there was never an option for anonymity should the penitant desire it, and I felt as though I easily gave in to the laissez-faire culture of the parish and let laziness and pride take control.

There was always something that ran contrary to my laziness. The longer I went without going to confession, even though I wasn't in a state of mortal sin, the more I felt like I should go, not out of an overwhelming sense of guilt, but of a desire to keep myself in check and embrace the grace of forgiveness freely given through the merits of Christ. But my pride fought that all the way as I began to convince myself that I was no great sinner, that I didn't need reconciliation to develop a healthy communal and spiritual life.

What motivated me to start going again was when I heard a priest friend say that the measure of your pride is the measure of your shame, and the measure of your shame is the measure of how much you need to embrace the sacrament. The Sacrament of Reconciliation is the only place where you can come before Christ, in the ministry of the priest in persona Christi and say I'm 100% guilty and get off scott-free. Before eventually leaving that parish, I began going to regular confession at churches in the surrounding area, and the more frequently I went, the easier it became to conquer pride. I don't consider myself to be an overscrupulous person, but the grace from the sacrament has helped me pin-point the areas of my life that I need to give to God; to allow Him to transform those areas with grace so that I might be more conformed to the image of Christ and reflect that in my relationships with others. It seems perfectly regular, and I couldn't imagine a healthy Christian life without it. Reconciliation is also intimately linked with the Eucharistic Liturgy. Frequent confession and frequent reception of Holy Communion, along with a desire to allow Christ's grace to transform us from the inside out, is a sure way to bring about true holiness and true freedom. Our lives then become ones of service. This is true reformation.

Moreover, how much are they both greater in faith and better in their fear, who, although bound by no crime of sacrifice to idols or of certificate, yet, since they have even thought of such things, with grief and simplicity confess this very thing to God's priests, and make the conscientious avowal, put off from them the load of their minds, and seek out the salutary medicine even for slight and moderate wounds, knowing that it is written, "God is not mocked." God cannot be mocked, nor deceived, nor deluded by any deceptive cunning.
     -St. Cyprian of Carthage, Treatise On The Lapsed, Ch. 28 [AD 251]