Think You Have Nothing To Confess? Think Again

Since far more of us suffer from laxity, rather than from scrupulosity, a good idea is to use a good examination of conscience like the one here, from Our Lady of Mount Carmel Academy in Ontario, Canada.

From Aleteia

By Fr Michael Rennier

For some, scrupulosity is a huge problem, but I’d guess that, for the majority of us, laxity is more tempting. I know people who haven’t gone to confession in well over a year and still cannot think of a single sin they need to confess.

Pope John Paul II, back in 1984, was already concerned about a cultural shift that was causing a loss of our sense of sin. Modern man, he posited, suffers from a “deformation of conscience” caused by widespread secularism.

The deformation has only accelerated in the decades since he wrote those words. We’re so afraid these days of making moral judgments that the very idea of wrong-doing as transgressing against an objective standard has disappeared. We’re assured over and over again that if we just follow our consciences, we can do no wrong.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t exactly need this sort of “encouragement” to justify my actions. I pretty much always think I’m right. I’m never the “bad guy.” If you think about it, none of us in our own minds is ever “the bad guy.” We always have a justification. We’re always the hero. I can easily convince myself I’m following my conscience no matter how anyone else perceives my actions. This means that I am more than capable of dismissing guilt over having sinned. I’m what you might call a person with a lax conscience.

John Paul II identifies this deadening of the conscience as a huge problem. “When the conscience is weakened,” he writes, “the sense of God is also obscured.” He then points out that his predecessor Pope Pius XI once said, “the sin of the century is the loss of the sense of sin.”

Drifting into apathy

For some, scrupulosity is a huge problem, but I’d guess that, for the majority of us, laxity is more tempting. I know people who haven’t gone to confession in well over a year and still cannot think of a single sin they need to confess. They cannot think of anything they’ve done wrong. Now, I have a lax conscience but, even I, as hard-hearted and arrogant as I am, recognize that I fall short of the ideal on a daily basis. I have plenty of things to confess. We all do.

Of course, everything in our pop-culture preaches the opposite, insisting that sin isn’t real and the only moral boundary is the vague intention to not harm other people, even insisting it’s okay if you do harm someone else just as long as that wasn’t your intention.

Everyone is a saint these days, which to my mind, means no one is a saint.

It sounds nice to practice non-judgmental, follow-your-heart type ethics but really it’s nothing more than surrender to mediocrity. Lack of self-knowledge and responsibility isn’t good for anyone, particularly us sinners who need a moral standard to which we can aspire. With no goals, we drift into apathy. Without acknowledgment of wrong-doing, we lack hope.

Getting nowhere

We cannot maintain a thriving spiritual life while avoiding the confessional. Some think that, because they pray a Rosary every day, volunteer at the fish fry, and have a Mary statue in the yard, they’re all set. St. Maximus the Confessor begs to to differ, teaching, “as long as we're in sin, that is, transgressing against Christ's divine commandments, we can be as pious as we like, read all the prayers of the saints ... it will get us nowhere.” We can pretend all we like, but in the end, if we cannot admit our flaws and allow Our Lord to judge and forgive us, we will never have a real relationship with him and we’ll never authentically know our selves.

This is why laxity indicates a serious spiritual sickness. It’s a symptom of living in denial. The original Latin word for lax is related to being slack or overly-wide, a definition which brings to mind Our Lord’s teaching that the way is wide that leads to destruction. If we want to know ourselves, we must focus and push through the narrow gate, take responsibility, set aside pride and fear, practice accountability. It’s a challenging path to travel but is the way of hope and happiness. This is how we heal old wounds and open ourselves up for growth.

That said, it can be difficult to fully understand our actions and motivations. Where can we improve? What are the ways we sin in small ways every single day? In short, how can we think of a complete list of sins to confess?

Here are a few practical tips.

Use an examen

Examinations of conscience are abundant. They can be found online, in hand-missals, and prayer books. Based on the 10 Commandments, a good examen offers memory aids and specific practical ways in which we might be sinning in our daily lives. I find that using an examen prompts my memory and unveils sins of which I had previously been unaware.

Ask God to teach you more about yourself

A prayer to the Holy Spirit to ask him for insight is a simple but necessary step to preparing for confession. God knows us better than we know ourselves, and his light illumines our darkened consciences.

Read the catechism and the saints

We cannot root out sin if we don’t know what it is. We have a duty to form our consciences with good information.

Dig down into hidden motives

Over time, the goal is to leave behind the big obvious sins. What to confess after these disappear, though? Reflect on less obvious sins, hidden motives, unbecoming thoughts, and disordered attachments. The goal isn’t scrupulosity but, rather, sensitivity. The more we love God, the more we will desire to give our entire selves to him and even small sins bother us.

Practice honesty

We cannot be honest in the confessional if we aren’t willing to be honest with ourselves. It hurts to recall our sins. They’re embarrassing. They rip open old wounds. But we cannot grow and develop until we’re willing to face them.

Imagine you’re on your deathbed

The sins we think aren’t such a big deal might take on a different importance if we think about them from a different perspective. We might be willing to live with a sin, but are we willing to die with it? Knowing we’re about to face our Creator, is it an impurity we feel comfortable bringing into his presence?

I offer this advice not because I sit in judgment of anyone else or think I’m perfect. The advice is for me as much as anyone else, and I want to re-emphasize that the whole point of going to confession is not because God is judgmental and angry. The point is that God loves us and wants to forgive us. He desires that we face our flaws honestly so that we can be set free from them. This is our path not only to happiness in the next life, but also authentic self-fulfillment in this life.