The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments

by E. E. Holmes

Penance.

The word is derived from the Latin penitentia, penitence, and its root-meaning (poena, punishment) suggests a punitive element in all real repentance. It is used as a comprehensive term for confession of sin, punishment for sin, and the Absolution, or Remission of Sins. As Baptism was designed to recover the soul from original or inherited sin, so Penance was designed to recover the soul from actual or wilful sin....[[1]] It is not, as in the case of infant Baptism, administered wholly irrespective of free will: it must be freely sought ("if he humbly and heartily desire it"[[2]]) before it can be freely bestowed. Thus, Confession must precede Absolution, and Penitence must precede and accompany Confession.

Confession.

Here we all start on common ground. We all agree upon one point, viz. the necessity of Confession (1) to God ("If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins") and (2) to man ("Confess your faults one to another"). Further, we all agree that confession to man is in reality confession to God ("Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned"). Our only ground of difference is, not whether we ought to confess, but how we ought to confess. It is a difference of method rather than of principle.

There are two ways of confessing sins (whether to God, or to man), the informal, and the formal. Most of us use one way; some the other; many both.

Informal Confession.—Thank God, I can use this way at any, and at every, moment of my life. If I have sinned, I need wait for no formal act of Confession; but, as I am, and where I am, I can make my Confession. Then, and there, I can claim the Divine response to the soul's three-fold Kyrie: "Lord, have mercy upon me; Christ, have mercy upon me; Lord, have mercy upon me". But do I never want—does God never want—anything more than this? The soul is not always satisfied with such an easy method of going to Confession. It needs at times something more impressive, something perhaps less superficial, less easy going. It demands more time for deepening thought, and greater knowledge of what it has done, before sin's deadly hurt cuts deep enough to produce real repentance, and to prevent repetition. At such times, it cries for something more formal, more solemn, than instantaneous confession. It needs, what the Prayer Book calls, "a special Confession of sins".

Formal Confession.—Hence our Prayer Book provides two formal Acts of Confession, and suggests a third. Two of these are for public use, the third for private.

In Matins and Evensong, and in the Eucharistic Office, a form of "general confession" is provided. Both forms are in the first person plural throughout. Clearly, their primary intention is, not to make us merely think of, or confess, our own personal sins, but the sins of the Church,—and our own sins, as members of the Church. It is "we" have sinned, rather than "I" have sinned. Such formal language might, otherwise, at times be distressingly unreal,—when, e.g., not honestly feeling that the "burden" of our own personal sin "is intolerable," or when making a public Confession in church directly after a personal Confession in private.

In the Visitation of the Sick, the third mode of formal Confession is suggested, though the actual words are naturally left to the individual penitent. The Prayer Book no longer speaks in the plural, or of "a general Confession," but it closes, as it were, with the soul, and gets into private, personal touch with it: "Here shall the sick man be moved to make a special Confession of his sins, if he feel his conscience troubled with any weighty matter; after which Confession, the Priest shall absolve him (if he humbly and heartily desire it) after this sort". This Confession is to be both free and formal: formal, for it is to be made before the Priest in his "ministerial" capacity; free, for the penitent is to be "moved" (not "compelled") to confess. Notice, he is to be moved; but then (though not till then) he is free to accept, or reject, the preferred means of grace.

God never handcuffs Sacraments and souls. Sacraments are open to all; they are forced on none. They are love-tokens of the Sacred Heart; free-will offerings of His Royal Bounty.