Confession is the renewal of your relationship with yourself and with God

Many people who come to confession bring lists of sins. I remember a young man who came and brought with him a long sheet of paper on which were listed, in alphabetical order, all the sins that saints and sinners had discovered in themselves and had written them down. And I remember how, talking to this young man, after he had finished reading that list, I said to him:

— I cannot give you absolution, because you have not confessed your own sins. You do not even understand half of the words you have read. What is “Love of Redemption”? What does this or that mean?

— But I was told that I must confess all my sins…

I answered him:

— Yes, your own, but not necessarily those of others.

— And then what should I do?

— Do something very simple: ask yourself what you are before your own conscience and before God, and talk about it.

This will not be a full confession in the sense that it does not exhaust your whole person. But it is like an archaeological excavation: you dig the ground and find the first layer, and that is already a discovery. When that layer is explored, then you can dig further, and gradually you can discover a whole city, but at first, we must go from one layer to another.

You can receive absolution for sins that have already been discovered and recognized as such, but you cannot receive absolution "in a package" for sins of which we have no conscience. And there is an old prayer in which it is said that all the sins that you have confessed and those that you have not yet become aware of, but which are before you, are forgiven in you.

This is a very important thing, because confession is the renewal of the relationship with yourself and with God. With yourself, in the sense that before and during confession, we try to be completely sincere and honest; that is why we talk about ourselves not with the priest, but with God.

Metropolitan Anthony of Souroj