Peeling the Onion

It's an age old problem with mankind.  However or whenever you get them isn't important just rest assured you're not alone in committing them.

Now the problem is what to do with all of one's sins before God.

Why don't you just clasp your hands in prayer and ask God directly for forgiveness and resolve to reform once and for all? 

I've talked to several that believe this is possible and I've heard about others where this is really the ONLY and therefore the best option.  Don't take my word for it, I'm just a layman, a Catholic.  I was taught to man-up and confess my sins before an ordained Catholic priest, a man in persona Christi. 

One has to prepare a bit to make such a confession.  Primarily you've got to become introspective about how you have been living your life, mentally listing out the sins that you are going to confess.  Then you've got to get into your car and drive to a church, and usually you've got to wait inside the church while others ahead of you go about taking their turn.  You might even worry, but you shouldn't, he's heard it all.

But I had fallen away from the church and over 25 years had elapsed since my last confession.  

During this time away, I hadn't become introspective, I hadn't resolved to do better, I wasn't contrite at heart, and I doubt if I ever asked God for forgiveness.  I'm saying that leaving it up to me alone didn't accomplish a thing and ultimately  had left me with no real certainty regarding my own personal salvation. 

That's why now I really can't conceive of doing it any other way.

Confessing before a man in persona Christi is as supernaturally plausible as is God's creation story in Genesis or Jesus Christ's resurrection in the New Testament.  The sacrament (a physical manifestation of God's grace) is biblically sound and can be traced back to a command that Jesus Christ himself gave to his apostles.

When one walks out of the confessional after a long draught such as mine, having just received absolution from all of one's prior sins, one knows without a shadow of a doubt, great mercy and love exist and that God is supremely good.  A penance is performed, usually a short repetition of prayers during which time, out of sheer gratitude, one can't imagine ever repeating such sins again.  One feels physically lighter in the chest and shoulders, a heavy burden having just been lifted.

   

           Gary Geraci, 2016

Once all the "big ones" have been confessed (Catholics call them mortal sins) one continues, through regular confession, to peel away other layers of sins, imperfections, defects and frailties.   The regularity of this kind of looking inward begins to reveal things about oneself that have been hidden under layer upon layer of accumulated vice and sin.  It's like peeling away layers of an onion.  The result is that one starts to gradually expose other vices, sometimes being able to remember when they were first acquired.  Such vice is rooted out and replaced with virtue that one now tries to practice in reparation for sins.

Fallen in nature we are and so we will sin again and again but through regular confession and the intervention of God's grace, the seriousness and frequency of sin will diminish.  In the process, one improves one's character, one's holiness, and moves oneself closer to Christ's vision for each of us: to become perfect, to become saints.