Fr. Meletios Webber on Confession

As one who is an OBC (Orthodox-by-Choice or “Convert”), I struggle with confession. Never goes easily. I have read plenty on it thinking, “This ought to help”, but begin to think this is only increasing the apparent complexity and making it harder rather than easier. And of course the puzzle in this is that a large part of my turn-around in view and coming to Orthodoxy lay in feeling a need for this particular mystery as a formal sacrament and a part of Church life. And yet it remains so much more of a mystery to me than it should.

I found the priest’s lecture on confession in “The Way of the Pilgrim” helpful, but I still have a long way to go… and surely more to read that would be on the mark. My guess is that it is less the practice of confession, and more the troubling matters of sin, the role of my will, and my own spiritual blindness – to name just three aspects that complicate the matter for me.

And in a way, the whole of it reminds me of a Life Saving class (swimming). I don’t remember what the point was… but I do remember that they made us walk into the water… to a point where the water was up to your nose… and then you were instructed to take that last step out into the deep… where the water covers your head. Rapidly.. you switch from a calm experience of one thing happening and happening slowly… to a sudden shift where a whole lot of things happened all at once and you have kick and swim for air. This seems in part the shift I feel from preparation for confession… to the actual practice where I flounder, the waters cover my head as if there was something else I was supposed to do… but didn’t, and then I’m kicking for air. Fortunately, the stole comes up about that time, and with a quick blessing, we’re done.

Inescapably.. the notion that there are good and bad confessions comes to mind… with most of mine fitting in the latter category in one way or another. I mean either we’re hiding something… and that’s bad, or we’re candid… and what we confess… well, it isn’t all that good either. And yes, I expect that this notion is fundamentally flawed and there are good and bad experiences. Yes, on some level, it’s also probably true that all confessions are “good” in that they continue the process of unraveling the onion. Surely part of the mystery for me lies in my suspicion that what I experience as “good” may actually be less constructive, and less conducive to producing a good confession the next time…. as if somehow it has not quickened me as should the waters when I am completely submerged. Of course, I could speculate that perhaps all of our confessions are not really separate from each other as they occur, but related as part of a singular experience before Christ. But this only admits that here as ever, I remain a Thickheaded individual stumbling in the dark.

So let me leave my ramblings to agree that we really do have Mysteries in the Church rather than Sacraments. At least that’s the way they seem. In particular, Confession remains a mystery to me. And if I find myself a poor witness before Christ – and I do, then surely it attests that my resolve to offer better remains weak, and my repentance incomplete. And perhaps Fr. Melitios Webber is close to the mark in calling sin something of an addiction, necessitating a program similar to AA’s 12-steps, the Ladder of Divine Ascent, and a life lived within the fullness of the Church to address.

But for my part, I find it more like dealing with athlete’s foot: it burns, and until Samuel L. Jackson screams out, “You’re damn foot’s on fire!” there’s a tendency to ignore it. Then of course, Jackson hands you the fire extinguisher and you spray it until you get frostbite and the fool thing falls off. “Yeah… it was the right idea… and maybe I got a little carried away with the ‘cure’, but I think I can hop around on one foot all right.” The steady-as-she-goes medication applied consistently a little at a time… is just soooo hard to keep up with. So this Forgetful Jones finds that despite “Fast Actin’ Tinactin”, my Athletes Foot seems a pretty constant companion. My sins… well… hmmm.

All of this is simply a poor introduction to Fr. Meletios Webber’s excellent comments (”Steps of Transformation”) on different experiences of confession and why guys like me still don’t get it:

“During my life as an Orthodox Christian, I have come across a wide variety of views concerning the Sacrament of Confession. In some traditions, confession is considered to be the essential preparation for Holy Communion, and frequent, sometimes even weekly, confession is the norm. Admittedly, this tends to be in churches that have been most influenced by Russian tradition. I attended the Divine Liturgy in Finland many years ago, before I was ordained, and I approached the Chalice at the time for Holy Communion. Since the priest did not recognize me, I was led to the side by a young altar server. Another priest then came and heard my confession – while the rest of the congregation waited. The problem was that the priest and I had no common language: he spoke Finnish and Swedish, I did not. Eventually, I was asked to kneel, and I felt the priest’s stole on my head, and a prayer was read. Only then was I free to approach the Chalice and receive Holy Communion.”

“I had a completely different reaction from another priest at about the same time. I went to a church on the South Coast of England where almost all the parishioners were from Cyprus. Since I did not know the priest, I made a point of getting to the service early, and asked to see him. He emerged from the altar, but made it quite plain that he was rather busy, and had better things to do. Nevertheless, I asked him if I might receive Communion at the Liturgy. He looked puzzled. “Can’t you just come up with all the rest?” he said.

“Generally, where there is a practice of going to confession frequently, the sacrament is seen as a pastoral opportunity for the priest and the penitent to look into different aspects of the penitent’s life. The person making the confession talks in fairly general terms about his faults, freely volunteering the information, listing small matters together with large ones. It is possible that the priest might question the person about certain things, particularly to clarify what is being said. People frequently use euphemisms in confession, or a sort of church like language, sometimes to the point where it is difficult to be clear about what the person is actually saying. At the end the priest generally talks in a kindly fashion, encouraging where it is needed, stressing that all men are sinners and that it is necessary to allow God’s love to shine through in spite of our weaknesses. After that the priest prays the prayers of absolution. The wording of the prayer in the Russian tradition is heavily influenced by Roman Catholic thinking, and contains a declaration of forgiveness in the direct form, “I forgive you.”

“In other churches, generally those of the Greek tradition, confession is often considered in an entirely different light. To begin with, confession is not necessarily considered to be a preparation for the reception of Holy Communion. Holy Communion and confession are quite separate sacraments. The essential preparation for receiving of Holy Communion in this tradition tends to be fasting. Moreover, confession is thought of as being something reserved for serious sins, and is a matter of great consequence. One goes to confession quite expecting to be given a stern series of warnings, and even to be questioned in detail about one’s sins. There are prayers of absolution, and they are read, although often with less obvious ceremony than in the Russian tradition, and the wording of the prayers lacks the directness of the prayer of absolution in the Russian tradition. “

“Incidentally, when there are different traditions within the Orthodox Church, as there certainly are in the case of confession, people coming to the Church from other faiths should take care to conform with the general norms practiced within the diocese they have chosen. There is no point of accusing the Russians of not being Greeks, or vice versa. The Church is large enough to bear a number of different traditions in many areas of its life, and it is for the individual to accept, not to judge.”