287. Frequent Confession
287. FREQUENT CONFESSION
Should we sacramentally confess frequently, as we should receive the Eucharist frequently?
Man is induced to be merciful by the example of divine mercy, according to Luke 6:36: Be ye . . . merciful, as your Father also is merciful. Now our Lord commanded His disciples to be merciful by frequently pardoning their brethren who had sinned against them; wherefore, as related in Matthew 18:21, when Peter asked: How often shall my brother offend against me, and I forgive him? Till seven times? Jesus answered: I say not to thee, till seven times, but till seventy times seven times. Therefore also God over and over again, through Penance, grants pardon to sinners. . . .
The Novatians went to so far as to say that he who sins after the first Penance . . . cannot be restored again through Penance. . . . [T]hey erred in their estimation of the gravity of sin. For they deemed a sin committed by a man after he had received pardon to be so grave that it could not be forgiven. In this they erred not only with regard to sin . . . but much more did they err against the infinity of divine mercy, which surpasses any number and magnitude of sins. . . . Wherefore the words of Cain were reprehensible when he said (Gen 4:13): My iniquity is greater than that I may deserve pardon. And so God’s mercy, through Penance, grants pardon to sinners without any end. . . .
As Augustine says . . . What sort of a physician is he who knows not how to heal a recurring disease? For if a man ail a hundred times it is for the physician to heal him a hundred times. . . .
A man is a mocker and not a penitent who, while doing penance, does what he repents having done, or intends to do again what he did before. . . . But if a man sin afterwards . . . this does not destroy the fact that his former penance was real, because the reality of a former act is never destroyed by a subsequent contrary act; for even as he truly ran who afterwards sits, so he truly repented who subsequently sins (III,84,10).
God Himself answers our question by commanding us to forgive over and over again. (“Seventy times seven” means, to a pre-scientific culture where mathematical competence was rare, “so many times that you can’t count them”.) In fact, He emphasized this unlimited demand for forgiveness so strongly that He commanded us to pray, in the Lord’s Prayer, for our own damnation if we did not so forgive our neighbor: “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” In other words, “If I forgive my neighbor only some sins, not all, then please forgive me only some sins, not all.” Since God gives us his mercy repeatedly, we should repeatedly pass on that mercy received to all who offend us; but also, first of all, we must receive that repeatedly given mercy repeatedly. That is the basis for frequent Confession. (For most people, “frequent” does not mean “daily”, but perhaps weekly, and at least monthly.)
Augustine’s parallel is apt: a doctor who healed only one occurrence of a disease and not subsequent occurrences would be a poor doctor. God is not a poor doctor. Therefore He heals the disease of sin in us whenever it occurs, if it is repented.
If you feel God cannot be that merciful; if you think there are some sins that are too great to be forgiven even by God; if like the Novatians you say that sinning again after Confession and forgiveness is inexcusable and unforgivable; then you are not exalting God but demeaning Him. To overestimate the gravity of sin in relation to the mercy of God is to underestimate the mercy of God in relation to the gravity of sin. God Himself says that even Cain can be forgiven; who are you to say God is wrong?
This “liberality” does not make a mockery of Penance. What makes a mockery of Penance is the intention to sin while confessing sin, or actually committing the sin while confessing. You cannot will to sin and will not to sin at the same time; it is a psychological contradiction and impossibility. You may fear you will sin again when you are repenting, but you cannot will to sin again when you are repenting.