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Hi, my name's Fr. Mike Schmitz, and this Ascension Presents.
So one of the things I'll talk— people will say to me—
is that they'll complain that they go to confession for the same thing over and over again,
and if you're anything like that, you are in good, good company, because
it's not a bad thing. Let me clarify.
There's two reasons why going to confession for the same thing over and over again
are simultaneously not a bad thing,
and, at the same time, which means— simultaneously, it means at the same time—
is something to take a look at.
Now, first, people say, "Wow, the priest must be really annoyed with me,
because he hears me saying the same thing every time I go to confession."
Well,
A) He's probably not annoyed with you.
B) Whenever someone says, "I just have the same sins over and over again,"
I think that's really, really good news. Why?
You should take encouragement with that. Why?
Because imagine you were an athlete, and say you're a baseball player.
Every time you got up there you dropped your elbow.
I'm just gonna go off the assumption that dropping your elbow is bad in baseball.
I don't know if it is, but just— I remember them telling me, "Hey, keep your elbow up." So I don't know if that—
Anyways, every time you got up there, and you dropped your elbow, but that was it.
And then when you were fielding there was one time,
you know, use both hands to catch the ball, kind of a thing.
That's way, way better, I imagine, and more— far more— encouraging than,
imagine if every time you got up to bat, it was another thing you did wrong. Something different.
Like one, one day, it was the elbow dropping.
The next day, it was he didn't have the hip rotation. The next day, took her eye off the ball. Whatever the thing is.
And so you were sup— super erratic so you had no sense of, like, what can I improve?
Same thing is true when it comes to going to confession.
If it's typically the same sins,
that is way better than if it was all whole new set of sins every single time you went there,
because it'd be like, "Wait. What— what am I doing? What do I work on next?"
But you know, it's kind of the same major sins that kind of d— I have to deal with.
That way you can be like a really smart and intelligent pursuer of Christ and defender of your heart,
because you can say, "Oh, I realize that I— I'm weak in this area, so I'm gonna pay attention to it.
I realized that, mmm, this is a temptation for me, so I'm gonna pay attention to it,"
and, actually, over time what I get to do is I get to learn from my past mistakes
so as to avoid any future mistakes. So one is take heart if they're the same sins,
but at the same time I want to break out of them, and I want you to break out of them too.
So what do you do?
Well, I think one of the things, one of the culprits, is many of us go to confession because we want the relief
from feeling guilty for the sin.
It's not bad, but if it stops there
we have short circuited God's grace. Here's what I mean. Again, we want— I go to confession. Why?
Because I want to receive Holy Communion again, and if I have mortal sin on my soul
I can't receive Holy Communion, right, or else that's another, another mortal sin?
So I— I want to go to confession, so I can receive Communion.
I want to go to confession, so I can have that clean slate and approach the Lord with confidence, right?
Okay, I understand.
But if it stops there and doesn't go all the way to the place where we call repentance,
or renunciation,
then I just wanted forgiveness. I didn't want repentance.
I think a lot of us might see Christianity as behavior modification,
that it's helping us become better and better people by getting rid of some of the nastier habits that we don't really like,
but ultimately Christianity is not about simply behavior modification.
It's about this thing called repentance or "metanoia."
"Metanoia" comes from the greek words "to change" and "noia" means, like, thinking.
To change my mind, to change my thinking, to actually become new,
but a lot of times, I think, if we keep going back to the same sins,
we're content with staying who we are, and we're not really driven to become new.
So how do you get to that place of, like, I want to see confession as a place not only where I'm forgiven,
but where I actually become new,
and this is where repentance, and this is where renunciation comes into play.
First, when I confess my sins,
I want to name the sin.
I also want to say, "I'm guilty of," or I want to say, "I confess the sin of."
I don't want to say, "Uh, yeah, I've been really wrestling with such-and-such,"
because that doesn't mean you actually sin. "I'm wrestling with gossip."
Okay, does that mean you were gossiping, or you're struggling to not gossip?
Because you haven't confessed anything yet. All you've told me is that you wrestle with this.
Okay, no. "I'm guilty of the sin of gossip." Okay great. That's clear. You've confessed it now.
"I need to confess the sin of being short with my kids."
"I need to confess the sin of being selfish."
Like, those are really good ways to word those. It's not like you have to, like, word it perfectly,
but we want to have to make the difference between "I'm just kind of generally describing stuff that's in my life,"
versus "I'm confessing the sins that are in my life."
#1: to name that sin to confess it,
but #2 is to renounce it,
and to be able to say things— you can even say this in confession—
you say it previous to conf— prior to confession, during confession, or even after.
So say someone's root sin is lust.
They could say, "And in Jesus' name, I renounce the sin of lust."
Say someone's root sin is pride,
and so they confess a sin that came out of pride like,
"Uh, yeah, I was— I got in a big blowup with my wife and my kids, because I just,
hah, I couldn't let it go, even though I was wrong,
so [in] Jesus' name I renounce the spirit of pride,"
and they could name it like that, and, in Jesus' name, to renounce it is so powerful.
To do that either prior to, in the midst of, or after confession can be really beautiful,
so here's how it could go:
Someone says, "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.
It's been how long since my last confession,
and I find myself looking at pornography and committing sin of masturbation on, you know, six occasions,
and in Jesus' name I renounce that spirit of lust and that spirit of curiosity.
I also found myself talking about my wife to my co-workers, and I know I shouldn't have been doing that,
but I was really not complimentary and not favorable to her, so in the name of Jesus
I renounce the spirit of gossip, and in the name of Jesus
I renounce the spirit of being unfaithful to my wife with my words."
It goes on and on and on, right? You could say— you can just word it right into that.
"I confess it, and in Jesus' name I renounce it."
That could be a really powerful way that we can call upon the holy and powerful name of Jesus
in the midst of our confession,
to break through simply wanting forgiveness,
and into true repentance, metanoia, and change of heart and mind.
Please don't get discouraged if you come back to the confession with your same sins,
but just come back with— with humility, come back with confidence in the Lord's love for you,
and come back prepared to renounce your sins, not simply—
Ask for forgiveness, but more than that ask for repentance and freedom.
From all us here at Ascension Presents, my name is Father Mike. God bless.
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