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Post by Dr. Robert Gotcher on Jul 1, 2021 16:49:47 GMT
What do you suppose this means?
“You should not make too many efforts to get rid of the obstacles which make frequent confession disagreeable to you.”
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Post by johnvanhecke on Jun 30, 2023 15:57:41 GMT
In the context this seems to make more sense. Fr. De Caussade is trying to make confession normal. He seems to be making very practical limits even if they may seem to be slightly, not wholly, arbitrary. And by so doing he invites us to see confession as both approachable and holy - but not obsessing by focusing too much on the perfection of either. This is a sacrament, after all, for men who constantly live bifurcated: low and high, flesh and spirit, sin and grace. Confession is both approachable (who with clear vision would otherwise approach a god in order to articulate his sins!! - it would seem an invitation to be annihilated); and it is Holy (that by the grace from his passion we could be restored from sinfulness to holiness clearly brings us closer to God and thus is holy). We must not be too awed by one to forget the other - this is how heretics are born.
So in pure practicality, for our own good, and in keeping with a good understanding of the psychology of men Fr. de Caussade gives these two guardrail recommendations.
He gives us a slightly arbitrary limit of "7 or 8 minutes" of time for an examen. This may not always be sufficient (sometimes one prepares by going on a retreat!) but it is sufficient in usual circumstances, when one is a frequent penitent, to recall our offenses. This healthy limit will protect us from scrupulosity and even from a perverse tendency to dwell in thoughts of sinfulness.
And on the other end is this limit on our "efforts", as stated, that will likewise protect us from spending an inordinate effort and amount of attention focused on a single sacrament rather than a having a life with a balanced effort and attention on the broader set of Christian activities. In fact to obsess over this single sacrament might be the effect of, ironically, scrupulosity (once again) or the effect of a deeper inability to fully admit the greatness and thoroughness of God's mercy. To the latter of which he admonishes us to "leave the past to the infinite mercy of God, the future to His good Providence, give the present wholly to His love by being faithful to His grace." We shouldn't spend so much time working to remove the obstacles that we fail to partake in the Mass. We shouldn't spend so much time that we fail in charity to our neighbors and to the poor through spending time and effort on this rather than on good works.
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jan
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Post by jan on Jul 11, 2023 0:18:05 GMT
Perhaps the obstacles to confession are a grace given that we might be reminded of its importance, and in their absence a certain convenience that would incline us to procrastinate or presume on God's mercy. The obstacles may be prods to keener examens; overcoming the obstacles is surely a kind of discipline that strengthens, and in their absence would be an absence of exercise and the consequential atrophy;
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Post by spaeth09 on Jul 11, 2023 14:10:35 GMT
If we never found frequent confession disagreeable it would indicate some sort of decay of shame for our sins. This obviously buys into the culture of "I'm OK, you're OK. We're broken and fine the way we are." We should be frustrated at our frequent sins. It should be a constant struggle where we ask the God of mercy to forgive us of our disobedience. Somehow removing our struggle to crawl back into the arms of our Creator would be to throw the baby out with the bath water. In choosing to feel better about our need for frequent confession we accept our sinfulness and deny the full acknowledgement of our wrong doing. The condition of feeling truly sorry for our sins goes away and our sinful state remains. Bishop Barron says: "There was a very popular book that came out when I was a teenager. It was called, “I’m Okay and You’re Okay.” It represented the culture of exculpation and feel-good-about-yourself. Not many years ago, Christina Aguilera crooned, “I am beautiful in every single way and your words can’t get me down.” Look at so many of the debates today: the attitude that is winning is one of self-invention and self-assertion. Who are you to tell me how to behave? In all of this, we are fundamentally looking away from our guilt, our fault, our darkness. We are effectively drugging ourselves, dulling the pain of real self-consciousness. In the process, we turn ourselves into God, pretending to be absolute, flawless, and impervious to criticism. So “remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye..” www.facebook.com/BishopRobertBarron/photos/a.343034215735712/1454480591257730/?type=3Looking at our faults should be difficult. We can set up some aids for ourselves to make the process consistent, but to try to make the process easy would defeat the purpose and undermine our ability to accept the grace God gives us in the sacrament of Confession and Reconciliation. |
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marc
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Post by marc on Jul 18, 2023 20:46:01 GMT
The Church requires we confess mortal sins and receive Communion at least once a year. Even if no mortal sins I think it is good to go to confession at least once a year. Many saints recommend once a month. Going to confession should not be something Catholics are afraid of doing but yes, our sins should make us uncomfortable at the very least.
Habitual sins often times need repeated confession for some people to get over. I think there he is trying to make confession receptive enough for people to actual go more frequently but not to the point of them normalizing or getting comfortable with sin.
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