Cahiers Peguy: Confession is a Cry

Fred K. of Cahiers Peguy confesses the truth about the sacrament of Confession. He references the wisdom of Msgr. Giussani on the subject:

In Confession, sorrow is not a feeling, but a judgment; it is acknowledging that your act was not love, was not freedom, was not openness to the “something more,” was not part of a context, but pretension that claims to be a law unto itself. Sorrow is a judgment and resolutions are not a program of which you are master (it’s not that you have suddenly mastered yourself!). It would be useless, it would be emptying the Mystery of Christ, it would be saving yourself. Resolutions are exactly the cry from the last remnant of sincerity left in you: “I am not able, God. You change me. I don’t know how, I don’t know how to go about it, I don’t know how to change myself. You change me, You save me!” Resolutions are this last remnant of sincerity left in you which, as it doesn’t find in itself the solution deemed necessary, cries out to the Mystery of God, to the power of God, because it is evident that God is more powerful, the power of God is greater than our ineptitude, greater than our wickedness.

How tragic that our Reasonable elite's pursuit of Absolute Individualism has made ignorance of Confession so fashionable. Far too few people truly appreciate how liberating it is to ask for, and receive, God's mercy through the sacrament.

Many of us may find it easy to ignore our enslavement to evil. We don't want to admit we're addicts of iniquity. We can't stand the diea that we're out of control. Confession affords us the opportunity to shed these illusions. We can admit the truth about ourselves when we confess. We affirm with God the humbling, humiliating truth: we're not self-sufficient. We can't live in the fullness of Truth and Love without his grace. We can't live the lives of integrity and charity we're called to live without him. We admit that we need him. We turn to him as the one and only power that can shatter the enslaving darkness that consumes us like a cancer. And we find that he pours out his grace, mercy and love on us like the first spring showers that invigorate the thawing soil. He welcomes us into communion with him again. He makes us holy and whole.

Who could stand to miss that?