In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.
Many are those among you who have come to confession
either yesterday or the days before, on occasions before, before you
received communion, and I want you to reflect later on a very important
point. The early Church knew nothing of the private confession which we
use nowadays. People came to confess their sins to the whole community,
to all their brothers and sisters in Christ because it was felt - as it
should be felt by us but is very little perceived - that when one member
of the body sins the whole body is wounded, that whatever sin I commit
it soils and pollutes the whole body, and moreover that whenever I
commit a sin against a brother, against a sister, indeed against myself
I am partaking in the Crucifixion of Christ. Because He came into the
world to save sinners and whoever is a sinner is to a greater or lesser
extent responsible for the Incarnation He accepted in order to die for
us. And in the early Church people had an intense sense of community and
therefore when sin was committed it was confessed to all the community.
And I know of two communities in the early days of the
Revolution when two spiritual guides whenever anyone wanted to make a
confession called together all their spiritual children and the
confession was made aloud before all in his presence, standing there as
the friend of the bridegroom and endowed with the power to forgive or to
bind which was given by Christ to His disciples. And when the sinner had
confessed his misdeeds these spiritual guides turned to the community
and said: you have heard now, are you prepared to carry the weight of
his sin, are you prepared to take him on as a beloved brother or sister,
are you aware that you are sharing with him his misery? If you are
prepared to take him on wholeheartedly, completely, unreservedly in the
name of Christ I can give him forgiveness, if you refuse to do this, I
cannot do it, but also you will be answerable before God for having
rejected one for whom Christ had given His life.
This was the early attitude of the Church: come to the
whole community and open one’s heart. And this was possible as long as
the community was small, as long as it was persecuted, as long as it was
an act of heroism to be a member of the body of Christ. But when the
Church was recognized by the State, when there was no danger in
belonging to it, moreover when it was easy and advantageous to belong to
it, then a confession of that kind was impossible because it was nor
received by people who considered that the sin of their brother was
their own sin and that they had to carry one another’s wounds and
weaknesses; and therefore individual confession was introduced.
You have a certain experience of what this common
confession can be at retreats when the priest having prayed with you,
talked to you, standing before God with you, makes aloud his own
confession before God. You participate in his own confession and you can
identify with him as he accepts to share with you his frailty, his
sinfulness and his need of forgiveness. This is a small approximation
but we must learn to share together the burden of one another sins.
I remember by hearsay the story of a Russian officer who
came at a youth conference in the 1920ths and said to the priest in
confession that he was in a position to mention all the sins he has
committed but his heart was of ice and of stone and he had no feeling
about it. He could give a list but not shade a tear. And this priest,
father Alexander Elchaninov, commanded him not to make his confession to
him but the next morning when the Liturgy would be celebrated to come
/off/ before the Liturgy and to all the youth conference assembled there
to make the confession he intended to make to the priest. And this man,
feeling the desperate need of his resurrection from the dead, because he
was dead at heart, came out, explained what he was about to do. He
expected that everyone would move away from him in horror instead of
which he felt that all the conference moved towards him in compassion,
in sympathy, in oneness; he began to speak his confession and his heart
broke and he burst into tears and he was redeemed.
And therefore when we come to confession let us not be
content to come to the priest and to speak in his presence to the Lord
Jesus Christ who stands there with the wounds of the Crucifixion to
which we have added our own. But let us turn to everyone whom we may
have offended individually between our last confession or perhaps a
long, long time before, open our heart, tell the truth, obtain
forgiveness for our victim, heal that limb of the body of Christ which
we have wounded at time almost mortally and then only come to the priest
and confess our sins to the Lord Jesus Christ who stands crucified and
obtain from the priest in His name forgiveness of the sins for which we
have truly repented. Amen.
