Dr. Scott Hahn is professor of biblical theology at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio, and the director of the Saint Paul Center for Biblical Theology. A former Presbyterian minister, Dr. Hahn was once a militant opponent of the Catholic Church, a Bible believing evangelical who thought the Catholic Church should be publicly denounced. Since being received into the church in 1986, his powerful conversion testimony has become the most widely distributed Catholic audiotape of all time.
Because of his detailed knowledge of both Scripture and theology, Dr. Hahn has come to be considered one of the most inspirational and influential Catholic theologians and biblical scholars in the United States today.
Confession for many Catholics is a rather mixed up matter. And we know why. Because the more you need it, the less you want it. But that’s only because we don’t understand the merciful love of God and the healing power of his mercy. And it isn’t just us. It isn’t just here and now. It’s been this way since the dawn of history. So as proof, let’s open our Bibles and look at the dawn of history in Genesis 3. I think we all know the story. God has spoken to our first parents. Made it very clear. You can eat from every tree except one. And if you do, God said “On the very day you eat of it, you shall surely die.” God was very specific. The serpent said, “You won’t die.” And they went ahead and ate. And what happened? Did they die? No. They ran and they hid. Oh, I see. So God didn’t really mean what he said. He didn’t really mean it. He said “On the day you eat of it, you will surely die.” The serpent said you won’t. And they ate, and they didn’t. One scholar wrote an article entitled “Did the Serpent Get it right?”.
The story’s a kind of riddle. But we know that the serpent is the liar, not the Lord God. And yet the Lord God didn’t need to be so specific. He could have said, “On the day you eat of it, you’ll be sentenced to death.”, or “You will begin to die.”, or “I’m going to have the right to kill you.” But that’s not what he said “On the day you eat of it, you will surely die.” So how is it that he said it and didn’t mean it, or at least didn’t do it or did He? You see, when man was made, he was made on day six, just like the animals. But when he first drew his breath, the first breath he drew was no ordinary breath, like dogs, cats and horses. God breathed in the Man’s nostrils the breath of life. And so he became a living Nephesh (נֶ֫פֶשׁ), in Hebrew, a soul, a rational soul, exulted above the cats and the dogs and all of the other animals, because God’s breath is the spirit. We don’t just have natural human life. We were endowed with supernatural, divine life, which means there are two ways to live, even though we experience it in a unity. There are two ways to die. What poison does to your body. What a bullet does to your brain. Mortal sin does to Gods life within our soul. It snuffs out divine life. It takes us out of eternal blessing. So what did God mean when he said, “On the day you eat of it, you will surely die.”? Was he simply talking about natural life or physical body and its life?
Or was he talking about the supernatural life that he had breathed into our soul? The very divine and eternal existence, which makes us more than humans. It makes us partakers of the divine nature. The day they ate of it, they committed mortal sin. God’s life died within them. That isn’t less of a death. That’s infinitely more of a death, because the gift of divine life is even more valuable than the gift of human life. The two are closely intertwined. But when we deliberately commit mortal sin, the one is snuffed out. Even if our bodies are in good health. So there’s a mystery here that man didn’t grasp. And you can tell because you know, when God showed up. What did Adam do? Well, he ran the hide. He covered his you know, he covered himself with fig leaves. That reminds me of a story, a third grader, in CCD, hearing about Adam and Eve for the first time, couldn’t wait to get home and read it for himself. So he opened up this big old family bible that was there on the table. The living room blew off the dust and began turning these big pages when suddenly his eyes fell upon something he’d never seen. This old pressed leaf. He gasped. Then he shouted, “Mother, come quickly.” And she came in from the kitchen. “What is it?” He picked up and said, “I think I found Adam’s underwear.”
Well, we often misunderstand what we find in the Bible, don’t we?
I think we misunderstand what happened in Genesis 3. I think we read about God showing up in the garden and Adam hiding, and we assume, just like Adam did, that it’s sort of like a police interrogation, but it’s not. They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the Garden of the cool of the day, and the Man and his Wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord.
And then God proceeds to ask a series of four questions. He says, “Where are you?” And you’re almost tempted to feel sorry for God, you know. But before you give in to the temptation of to take pity on the deity, realize that God wasn’t asking Adam for his geographical whereabouts, his coordinates, and in space and time. Almighty God knows where we are better than we do. When he asked Adam, “Where are you?” He wasn’t just talking about Where are you located? It is. Where are you in relation to me? And Adam replies, It’s a rather wordy response. “I heard the sound of Thee in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked and so I hid myself.” He says four things in response to one question. He does everything but answer it. If Adam only said, “I’m over here behind the bush, I’m hiding, I’m naked, I shame I blew it big time. Can you possibly show me mercy?”, he could have changed the course of history. Instead he says, “I heard you coming.” Sort of like you barge in. You don’t knock. “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid. And so I hid myself again.” A very wordy response. But he never got around to answering the question. And, you know, God could have done a Wizard of Oz. I am the great and terrible, you know, and just blasted him there on the spot and begun with the sequel, Adam 2, you know? But, you know, He’s so gracious and patient with us and forbearing toward him.
And so he replies, “Who told you that you were naked?” And before you even has a chance to answer, He says, “Have you eaten of the tree of which I command you not to eat?”, as though God needs anybody to tell him what Adam did. What is God doing? He’s not trying to coerce a confession. He’s trying to coax out of Adam an act of contrition. Adam, just repeat after me. “Yes, Lord. I ate of the tree of which you commanded me not to eat”. Only instead of an act of contrition. Instead of instead of accusing himself, what does he do? “The woman whom Thou gavest to be with me. She gave me fruit of the tree and I ate.” What’s he doing? He’s passing the buck. He’s excusing himself by accusing his spouse. You see, that’s what they used to do in the ancient world. We don’t do that anymore.
But who is he really blaming? His wife. He says the woman that gave is to be with me. Some help her. She’s turned out to be. You know, he’s not just accusing his bride, he’s accusing his maker, “Neither of you understand my needs” and the Lord God again, clearly said we’re going to rub you out,” you know, But instead he turns to her, “What is this that you’ve done?” And the woman gives the shortest answer, but it’s a straight one. She said “The serpent beguiled me and I ate.” That’s the truth. The simple truth. “The Serpent beguiled me and I ate.” And that proved to be just enough for God to work with. Because the next thing out of God’s mouth is the promise of world redemption through the woman, not the man through her seed and not his crushing the head of the serpent. We don’t understand the ways of God. We feel so easily threatened and we get defensive. And so we excuse ourselves and we resent instead of repenting and we project our guilt onto others, instead of accepting it for ourselves. You know, I can relate to this because it brings back to my mind an experience I had as a young teenager. I hadn’t experienced the grace of conversion yet. I was far from it. In fact, my friend and I were on a shopping spree, or more to be more precise, a shoplifting spree. It lasted almost a month and we kept stealing more record albums and more. He was about 5’10”. I was not quite 5’3”. I was the smallest kid in my class.
That’s why to this day, I don’t understand what they did. There were four store detectives. We both had about 20 albums apiece in our bags. We were walking quickly out the door when three of them tackled little old me and sprayed mace in my eyes while the woman detective one after him and he got away. Go figure. They dragged me upstairs to this room for interrogation. They were trying to squeeze my best friend’s name out of me. I wasn’t about to give in. The woman got up there, she looked at me and she said, “You know, he looks too young to be stealing.” Oh, you know, I was so upset, I didn’t even feel insulted. And then she went on, she said, “You know, were you were you forced to steal for somebody else?” And I realized she’s serious. And I looked up. I nodded. I gave her the meekest expression I could. And she said, “Go on.” And I said, “Well, last weekend…” And I began with a true story. My friend and I were up in the woods with our bikes, and it was raining the bad storm the last Saturday, and these kids sniffing glue and smoking pot came out. They tried to steal our bikes, but there were too bogged down with mud, so they threw them over the hill. And then I added. And then they told us that we had to steal record albums and leave them by the tree stump or else they hunt us down and beat us up. And she said, “Why didn’t you tell somebody”
“We were scared?”
And she said, “You should have told somebody.”
A moment later, the door opens and in walks this Bethel Park police officer. He’s to take me down to the station. The male detectives had called for him as he’s taking me out. The woman said, “Stop, officer, There’s something you need to know.” And she went ahead and volunteered my alibi. What was I to do? But you know, corroborate. And so he said, What happened again? And I told him the same tale. And he looked at me a little skeptical, and he said,
“Do you know the names of the guys?”
“Well, two of them, their brothers, Gary and Jack so-and-so.”
He said, “That sounds like something they would do. That’s a shame. We got to go down the station anyway. Your mom’s going to be meeting us.” Oh, no. So we drove down. We got out. I sat in his office for about 5 minutes, and in walks my enraged mom. She looks at me, glaring. She sits down before she can say a word. The officer volunteers my alibi. Mrs. Hahn, there’s something I think you need to hear. This is not an ordinary situation. He was forced to steal. And so I felt ever so dutiful in telling her what had happened to me. She looked at me and her eyes just got so soft, and she said,
“Scott, why didn’t you tell me>”
“Mom, I was scared.” And the policeman said,
“Young people these days are easily intimidated and frightened by these older kids.”
Well, a moment later, she is on my side. Oh, I’m on a roll. And then he says, the infamous question.
“Who is he with?”
“Mom, please don’t tell-”
“Dave So-and-so.”
“Oh, you know his number?”
“Please, Mom, don’t rat him out”. I’ll never forget those digits. 8350746. Because they were my undoing. And he went ahead and called Dave, got his mom, explained that she had to come down with him to the police station. 10 minutes later, they walk in and I realize the jig is up. He doesn’t know the alibi. As soon as he sits down, I blurted out. So that’s how it happened. You know, we we were up there with our bikes in the rain. They were trying to steal our bikes and they were bogged down. They were sniffing glue and they told us to steal items and leave by the tree stump. Also track it down and beat us up, you know. And I said it so that he could take it all in. And I was watching him as he listened. And then suddenly I saw his shoulders rocking. I thought he was crying, he was suppressing laughter. He thought it was the dumbest alibi it ever heard. But then when he realized that the policeman had swallowed it hook, line and sinker, he looked up and joined right in. “Yeah.” And his mom said, “Why don’t you tell us?” And he said, “We were scared.” They let us go on our own recognizance. In less than 10 minutes. On the way out the door, he looked at me. He went, he said, ‘We got off scott free.” I thought he was mad. He was just so relieved. But I wasn’t allowed to talk to him for a week. I got home and I was just really, you know, feeling good until I heard that sound I had dreaded. I’d forgotten my dad. The garage door was going up. Inside he walks. I hear the murmuring on the first floor. He’s coming up to the second. He knocks on the door. I open and he looks right at me and right through me. And he said,
“I hear they were making you steal records, Scotty.”
“ Yeah, that’s right.”
“They were making you steal records, huh?”
“Yeah.” As his eyes drifted to that expanding stack of albums in the corner of my room
“and leading them by a tree stump.”
“ Yeah, up-up up in the woods. Be-behind the mall.”,
He said “You want to show to me.”
“Yeah, I could do that”
“Now?”
“You mean now?”
“Yeah. Now. Scott.”
“Before dinner?
“Now.” Okay. So I got on my jacket and he got his on. We walked about three blocks, found the woods. We got about a half mile of woods to walk through. I’m leading the way. Going down the path. My eyes are darting furtively in every direction, looking for tree stumps, thinking I’ll have stumps to choose from. You know, I’m halfway through the woods. There hasn’t been a stump. I mean, somebody must have come earlier that day and uprooted them. I don’t know to this day what happened. And I’m running out of woods. I’ve got about ten feet of woods left. The mall is looming large before us on the horizon. And all I see is this big mound of dirt where they’d stopped us. And I said,
“That’s that’s the clump right over there.”
He said, “I thought you said stump.”
I said, “Well, I mean, stump…clump – you know?”
Then he said, “Clump. Stump. I think it’s time to go home.” And he turned around, and this time he led the way back down the path and through the woods. Well, I followed bracing myself for the explosion of that volcanic German temper I had encountered more than once. We were halfway through the woods and he hadn’t said a peep. We were almost all the way out of the woods, and he still hadn’t shouted or screamed and the silence was killing me. I was hoping he would start yelling. Instead he was walking slower and slower. His shoulders were drooping. I didn’t understand why he wouldn’t say a thing. I didn’t realize what I had done in lying to his face and breaking his heart. He didn’t say a word. We got home. We walked to the front door. He looked at me and turned away. And he did even go and eat dinner that night. And neither did I. I went upstairs, my room waiting from the bargain and punish me. But he couldn’t talk to me. He couldn’t look at me. And instead of feeling any pride, suddenly my conscience woke up like Rip Van Winkle. And I’m thinking, what a shameful, selfish jerk lying to everybody and just thinking it’s fine to get away with it. And it was like that little opening was just enough for God to work with. Because in less than a week’s time, I end up deciding to go for the first time in many, many years to a youth meeting and then a retreat. That weekend, I end up on a retreat Friday night hearing all about Jesus dying on the cross for sinners like me. And I knew maybe for the first time what I was a selfish sinner.
As a friend of mine says, “I’m not much, but I’m all I think about.” So yeah, me too. So this speaker talked to about 200 of us high school kids and said, “If you’re ever tempted to treat your sin lightly, look at the cross and look at the price that Jesus paid for your sin. If you’re ever tempted to treat God’s love lightly, look at the cross because it’s God’s love that sent him there.”
I was trying to assimilate this and then he said words I’ll never forget.
He said,” Christ paid a debt he didn’t know because we owed a debt we couldn’t pay.”
And I knew he was right and I was ashamed and I knew I needed a savior. That weekend I made a decision. I gave my life to our Lord and my friends, figured it out very quickly and wanted nothing to do with me in a matter of days.
But that was more than enough for the Lord to work with, because in the next few months I found a new set of friends, real friends, and we had a real interest in common in growing together, in virtue, not just vice. And so I just went on with my life, leaving my old friends behind. It was an interesting experience for me because by the time I was done with high school, I was convinced that God was calling me to the ministry and I was especially concerned about, I’m sorry to say this, but you Catholics, you just seem not to get it, because all my old friends, it seemed, were Catholics, like the Catholics were the only ones who could out drink and out, you know, swear and, you know, do those things better than I could. I remember because my senior year, my last week, I’m passing by my old friend’s house. Dave, I hadn’t seen him for three years. He was on probation. He was sent away. And then I see the light on is shadow moving that bedroom where I’d spent hundreds of hours a few years earlier.
I’m getting ready to leave in a week after graduation to play guitar in a band. We toured the States and Europe for a month. I’m thinking I’ll never see him again. So on an impulse, I knocked on his door, his mom answered. She smiled. She must have heard I found religion or something. “Oh, come in. Dave will be happy to see you.” I’m like, I’m not so sure. Well, as soon as I stepped in, he is walking down the stairs, putting on a jacket. He stops halfway down the stairs. He looks at me.
“Scott?”
“Dave?”
“ Come on in.”
So I walked in, walked up and went into his bedroom. We sat down. It took about 2 minutes before the ice melted, and suddenly it was like old times. We were talking about the good old days and the bad old things we did and all of that. And then suddenly I looked at my watch and 2 hours had elapsed. I had completely forgotten about the rehearsal I was walking toward walking to at the school. I’m like, I blew it off. I completely missed it. And he suddenly turned to me and he said,
“Why did you come here tonight?”
“Like I saw the light on. I hadn’t seen you for like two or three years. I just wanted to say goodbye. Have a nice life. You don’t have to get upset.”
He said, “But why tonight?”
“I don’t know. I just. I just walked past. I saw the light on and I’m like, Did I make you miss something important?”
I mean, I’m only thinking about my rehearsal. I realized he was putting his coat on to go outside. When I came in, I’m like,
“Where were you headed?” And he wouldn’t speak. He started trembling, and he reached across his bed and he picked up his jacket. He reached into the pocket and pulled out about ten feet of rope, he said” I going out to the apple orchard behind the house to hang myself.”
And then suddenly his eyes were up with tears. I’d never seen him cry before, and all he could say was, “Can you pray for me?” And so I prayed for him, and I just stuck around for a while longer. And we talked and we prayed. And he told me how I’d been up there in the afternoon to hang himself. Two little girls walked by. He thought, I’ve ruined my life. I don’t want to ruin theirs. I’ll do it when it’s dark. And then he said, And you can pray for Dave because I’ve been back in touch with him for the first time in 28 years, the last ten months or so, and through a lot of circumstances he’s kind of revisiting his life. But that night I left his house looking up into the stars and thinking, God, you knew all along. I remember even walking out of his front door and seeing the crucifix on the wall by the entry thinking “They’re Catholics. Lord, you must help them.”
“ You can use me to help them!”. You know. Little did I know what God had in mind.
But I say that again because for me, it was a simple matter of believe in Jesus and everything is taken care of. All you need is faith. Faith alone. And you’re saved. And one saved always say you don’t need good works, you don’t need obedience. So I went off to college with that same theology. And it was interesting because in studying the scripture, I began to realize that I didn’t have all the answers. By the time I went to seminary, newly married, I was really getting more serious and confronting the big gaps in my own thought, my own theology. I remember one day in particular feeling very unsettled because my Old Testament professor was going on and on in Leviticus 5 and it wasn’t boring. It was bothering me because of Leviticus 5:5-6. He was reading “W hen a man is guilty in any of these sins and he identified the categories, he must confess the sins. He’s committed to a priest and he shall being a guilt offering to the Lord for the sin which he’s committed a lamb, a goat, perhaps a bull as a sin offering,” depending on how serious or light the sin was.
And if you think it’s light, you bring a lamb. The priest would say, that’s a serious and get a ball. And he was saying, you know, what do we do with this in the New Testament? I’m thinking, you know, thank God that we’re out of the Old Testament and into the new. We don’t have to go to prison, confess anymore. And he could read my mind. He said, before you assume that this was only true in the old and not in the new. He said,
“Look with me at Numbers 5:5-7. He went on, “When a man when a man or woman commits any sin by breaking faith with the Lord and that person is guilty, he must confess his sin like Leviticus required, but he also must make full restitution for his wrong.” And he said, “
This isn’t just old. This is new, Turn to the Gospel of Luke…” And he told the story of Zacchaeus, the tax collector, and how he hosted Jesus for lunch. And in the end, he not only gave away things to the poor, but he made restitution for those he defrauded. And he said, “We are responsible to the natural moral law to undo what we’ve done in restitution.” And he went on to another subject, but I didn’t follow. All I could think of was what I had done when I was a young teen and how free I felt when I accepted Jesus as my Savior and Lord. And suddenly I realize that wasn’t enough for Jesus or Zacchaeus, something else remained. How could I have missed that?
That night at dinner, Kimberly, my wife, was reading me like a book. She said,
“What’s bothering you?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“Oh, come on.”
“So I told her” and she said, “So what? What what relevance is restitution for us?” And I said, “There’s something I never told you about my past life. Like, lot like.” And I told her the whole story of the shoplifting spree and the lying and how I got away with it, and yet how our Lord used it to kind of open my heart to conversion. And yet now I’m facing the truth in God’s word, about restitution. And right now I said, we’re dirt poor. We’ve got nothing. We’re struggling grad students, you know, we hardly anything in the bank. And she challenged me. She said,
“So what are you saying, that you’re not going to live out what you’re learning in God’s word?”
I’m like, “No, I’m not saying that.”
“Good.”
I’m like, “I’m not sure you realize how much I took or how much restitution we’re talking about.”
“Whatever it is, you can’t out-give the Lord. Whatever he gives you, you have to respond. You can’t sin against the light. That’s why I love you. That’s why I married you.” I’m like, Gulp. Okay. And when I shared with her what a mouth we were talking about, she said, We’re going to have to make all of the Christmas gifts this season. We couldn’t afford anything at that point. After Christmas, I finally got up enough courage to drive to the mall. I sat down in Sears with an accountant. He was staring at me across the desk in unbelief.
“You did what?”
“When?’
“How much?”
“Oh, thank you for coming in. But, young man, you’re going to screw up our books now more than you did then!”
I’m like, “That’s okay. I just had to get -”
“Oh, get out of here.”
“Yeah, you know, no problem.” But I only taken maybe four or five records from Sears. I had to now confront the store from which I had taken most of them. I sat down with their accountant, and a few minutes later, he’s staring at me across the desk in shock.
“You did what?”
“When?”
“How much?”
He laughed and said. “So many of you born again types are coming in and fessing up. We set up a restitution fund. How much do you owe?”
So I wrote a check for $1,000 handed to him, drove home, told Kimberly we were cleaned out. We had nothing in the bank. And she said, The Lord has never outdone in generosity. If you don’t sinned against the light, he’ll give us more. And God bless her. I married a princess of a woman of God. It was that next semester that she discovered through Scripture the truth of the Catholic Church is teaching on openness to life. For us, it wasn’t a question of whether to contraceptive, not it was just what form. And then we found out that all of the founders of Protestantism were in total agreement with the Catholic Church and the Pope until 1930, and the same denominations in our Protestant background that opened up to contraception were now favoring federal funded abortions. And then we knew that was wrong. We just never traced it back. That next semester, Kimberly changed her mind and then convinced me, and that changed our lives forever and six kids to prove it. Thank God for all of them. And the six caesareans and the three miscarriage that she is offered. It’s amazing to me what a wife God has given me. She never looked back and she never reminded me of it. We just moved on. I didn’t really think much more about it until my first year as an ordained pastor because after preaching you have to do pastoral counseling. And what I confronted in my parish was startling. Some of the leaders in my parish were coming in for counseling and telling me about the fraud and the theft and the infidelity. And I would say, you know, we have to find some way to make it right. And over and over again, they threw it back in my face.
“No, I don’t. I have believed and faith alone is all I need. One saved, always saved.”
And they were using my theology as a club to kind of beat me over the head so that they wouldn’t have to take responsibility. And after about a year of this, it finally gets to you. There’s something wrong, maybe with my counseling, but certainly with a theology that is used to justify a refusal to take responsibility and make restitution. I was watching family businesses disintegrate. I was watching marriages crumble because these guys would rather be clever than clean and come clean with their partners. After over a year of this, I resigned. I went in search of the church. I discovered the Eucharist and then the Blessed Virgin Mary. I discovered the Saints, as well. And while I was in Milwaukee beginning to meet regularly with Monsignor Bruskewitz, which the local priest who’s now the bishop in Lincoln, Nebraska, he could tell from our conversations that there was one out of seven sacraments. I just didn’t really want to talk about. You’ll never guess which one.
Confession. I didn’t study it very much and I didn’t want to talk about it very much. And so after the second or third meeting, I could tell that he was deliberately inserting it into the conversation. You know, it’s like putting a hook in front of a fish without any bait that wasn’t about to bite. By the third or fourth meeting, he asked me point blank,
“Do you have any struggles with confession?”
I’m like, “Why?”
He said, “Well, because you brought up the prospect of entering the church. And, you know, that’s one of those steps. A prerequisite.”
“Really?
“Oh, yeah.
“Well, I do have some questions.”
He said, “Go ahead and fire away.”
So I said, “The first question is: why do I have to go to a priest when as a Protestant I can go to Christ? “
“It isn’t one or the other.” He said, “I go to Christ every night. I make an examination of conscience and then I make an act of contrition.”
That was all new for me. I’m like “An examination of what?”.
And he handed me a card. This is what I asked myself. And I looked at the questions. Talk about your ruthless self inventory. Wow. I don’t think I’d ever ask myself those questions. You know? And then he said,
“Then I go to Christ in prayer and I tell him I’m sorry and I make an act of contrition.”
“What’s that?”
And he handed me one of them. I never really read one, much less memorized or used it. And he said,
“Keep them. They might come in handy.” I could see where this was headed. And so he went on,
“I don’t go to a priest instead of Christ. I go to Christ first and then I go to a priest because that’s what Christ is instituted as a sacrament. And when I go there, it’s Christ that I meet, just like in a Eucharist that you’ve been attending. I don’t say this is his body. And I look up there, I don’t say, this is your body and look up to Jesus. I look out at you and say, This is my body. Because when I became a priest, he says, I lost my lips and my lungs and my life to our Lord so that he would use me and speak through me.
And in the confessional, when I say I absolve you or my confessor says, I absolve you. That’s Jesus speaking through its priest.” I never thought of it that way. It always kind of pitted one against the other and chose the one I go to Christ, not to a priest. He said.
“It was that when the old covenant, the new covenant, doesn’t abolish but fulfill the old. So you have new priests who are more powerful than the old priests who are less.” Okay. Okay. I was making progress and I said,
“But wait a second. You know, I can see going to a priest like you or, you know, this other priest who was there at the parish because they’re both devout. But I have encountered priests who are anything but devout. You know, I encountered priests who were profane, who were just kind of, you know, worldly and vulgar.”
And he said, “I’m sorry that you have, but I know that it’s true.”
“And so why would you go to a priest like that?”
And he said, “well, you don’t have to, but you could like, how’s that? And he said, You probably have a physician, a family doctor.”
I said, “Yes, Doctor so-and-so.”
Well, I didn’t know the doctor so and so was a member of my seniors parish. He looked at me and he smiled. He said,
“You ever notice anything about that particular physician?”
“Like what?”
“Like you could stand to lose 40 or 50 lbs and then give up, you know, the chain smoking?” I’m like, “Yeah, okay, obviously,”
he said, “But that doesn’t stop you or your family from going to him.”
Like, “Well, why should it?”
“Because he’s got lousy health.”
“But the fact is, as a physician in lousy health, he can write prescriptions that you can fill and they’re going to work anyway. ex opere operato.”
“I’m like, Ex Opere What?”.
He said automatically, “Because that’s the way medicine works at our body, regardless of the physician’s health. That’s the way spiritual medicine works through confession, because Christ is the high priest who works through his earthly priest, regardless of their spiritual health.”
Whoa. These were good answers. And then I put up the old Protestant line of defense that I used to use years before. I’m like,
“But where do you find the Bible?” I said, “You know, Jesus, maybe, but. But not the church. I don’t find proof in the scriptures.”
He said, “Okay, let’s talk about this again next time. But before you leave…”
And he jotted down some verses on a note card, he handed them to me. He said,
“Take a look at these and we’ll come back and discuss them later next week”.
So I went home and I looked up these texts and I could figure out very quickly what he was up to. The first text was taken from Mark to a familiar story that I think you all know beginning in verse five, where these four friends bring a paralytic to Jesus but can’t get through the door. So what do they do? They open up the ceiling and they lower them down. Jesus sees the man. And what does He say, “My son, your sins are forgiven” and that paralytic is lying there thinking, “That’s not what I came for.” And those four friends right there, “Oh, that’s not what he needs”, you know, And the people all around him are thinking to themselves, “That’s not what you can do for him anyway. Only God can forgive a sentence.” And he could read their minds. And so he turned to them, these opponents, in the room and said, “which is easier to say your sins are forgiven or rise, take up your pallet and go home.” And before they respond, He answers “so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on Earth to forgive sins” he turned to the man and said, “Rise, take up your pallet and go home.” And he did. And as I’m thinking about it, I went and I checked Saint Augustine. I was always learning so much from him. And what he helped me to see was that Jesus perform a miracle that day he performed two. And as far as our Lord was concerned, the healing of the man’s paralysis was the lesser miracle. The greater and more important one was the healing of that man’s soul through the forgiveness of his sins, why else would our Lord have bothered to say, “My son, your sins are forgiven.”
The opponents are thinking nobody but God has afforded to do that. And Jesus would have said, You know what? I agree. It’s just that in the New Covenant you’ve got more than a mere man standing in your midst. The God Man was now there, the Son of Man and the Son of God. And so He performed the external miracle to validate the fact that he had the power and the authority to perform the first one, the internal miracle healing that man’s soul, restoring divine life through the forgiveness of sins. And a Saint Augustine said “the outward sign confirmed the internal reality.” And as far as our Lord was concerned, healing our bodies is a lesser miracle than healing and restoring divine life to our souls. That man’s body would have been functional for another 30, 40, maybe 50 or 60 years. But the divine life in our soul last 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 trillion years. And what is that compared to less than a century? So for Jesus, divine life that is eternal has even greater value than the natural life that is temporal and earthly. We’re pro-life, but there is life. And then there is life. There is death, and then there is death through mortal sin and through forgiveness, we are resurrected in our souls even more than just in our bodies.
I like that.
I mean, it showed me that Jesus introduced something radical and new in the New Covenant, but I’m thinking of myself as a Protestant. I could easily come back and just say, That’s Jesus. It wasn’t the 12 apostles. He sent them out preaching and teaching and healing. But there were only physical miracles. Never once did the Apostles perform forgiveness of sins during His public ministry. And so I was ready. I had my my gun loaded to come back with him. And then I looked in the note card and there was a second text and John 20. So I looked it up beginning in verse 21, and it’s a resurrection appearance where Jesus suddenly appears in the upper room with the doors locked and the disciples are somewhat surprised. And he turns them and he says, “Peace be with you, as the Father sent Me. So now I send you.”
Well, how did the Father send his Son, the Son with all authority and Heaven and on Earth, “As the Father sent Me. So now I am going to send you.” What do the disciples now receive for the first time? Divine authority, Divine power, such like they never possessed during his public ministry, only after the resurrection. And when he said this, he breathed on them and said, “Oh, receive the Holy Spirit. He whose sins you forgive are forgiven. But if you retain the sins of any, they will be retained.”
And suddenly it occurred to me what he was giving to them after the resurrection, what they never got before during the public ministry, the power that only Jesus had wielded up until then for getting sense. How could they differentiate between which sins to forgive and which ones to retain unless the sinner specifically told them which sins had been committed? This is why confession was a universal practice in the early church without any debate. Because Jesus didn’t reserve it to himself. He gave it to his apostles after the resurrection. And my only thought was, Well, okay, as a Protestant, I would come and say, Yeah, okay, Jesus had it, and the apostles shared it. But when the death of the last Apostle occurred, it was over. Where do you find it being given anybody else besides the apostles? And then I looked and on the note card, James 5:14-16. Oh no. So I turned to James five and I read verses that were pretty familiar because I had memorized verse 16 in high school, “Confess your sins to one another”. Verse 16 reads, We used to use that as a proof text to show you don’t need to go to a priest, you just confess your sins to one another if you want to confess. One of my professors, though, once said “that if you if you take a text out of context and use it as a proof text,” he said, “that’s a pretext.” And that day I learned what I had been doing was a pretext. Because you can’t understand James 5:16 without looking at versus 15 and 14 and the context. And that’s what Monsignor asked me to do in verse 15. I read, “Is any among you sick? Let them call for the elders of the church. And the Greek word for elders is “presbyterus” where we get the word presbyter shorten in English.
What word do we recognize? Priest. Priest. It’s just a shortened form of presbyter in the Greek. Is any among you sick? “Let him call for the Presbyters,” the priests of the Church, “and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.” Huh? How did I miss that? There’s another sacrament, you know, warning of the sick. But who administers it? The priest, the Presbyters, the elders and the prayer of faith will save the sick man. So if he’s committed any sins, he will be forgiven. Where have we seen this before? The physical healing of the body, accompanied by the spiritual healing of the soul through the forgiveness of sins. But now it is in Jesus or the 12.How it’s just all of the presbyters the priest in the early church. How did I miss this for so many years? When I came back to meet with Monsignor, I was feeling somewhat docile, put in my place. You know, at that point he wanted to get practical. He shared with me about the of confession and how he’s been going regularly. I said,
“What do you mean, regularly?”
“Like once a year?”
He said, “Oh, that’s the minimum requirement. Regular is like at least monthly. And the pope at least weekly.”
“John Paul II?”
he said “yes,”
“Well, what would he have to confess every week”?
And he said, “Well, his confessor can say because of the seal”
and I’m like “What? What do you mean seal?”
And he said, “Oh, haven’t you heard of the seal of the confessional?”
No, he explained it to me. I like that very much. Whoa. You can’t divulge any information or you’ll be stripped of your priestly faculties. Suddenly, you know, where there was a red light, there was a blinking yellow. You okay? I’m might just proceed with caution here. And as we talked further, it became clear to me that this was not an impossible task. He asked me, “Well, why does it feel so hard?”
I said, “Because, you know, all post-baptismal sin. I was baptized as an infant and I had, you know, quite a crime spree going there for a while. I wouldn’t even know how to begin.” And he said, ‘Here, take this examination conscience. Here’s a prayer to the Holy Spirit. You know, you don’t confess your sins to God to let him know what you’ve done. He knows better than you do.”
“I’m like that’s true. So why do I need to confess?”
“So that you will know all that he has to heal and how he’ll go about it. The same reason you have to tell everything you’ve got to a physician so we can help you understand the medicines you need.” Okay. And then he went on to explain,
“Asking the Holy Spirit to help me remember what I had done.” And he said, “Don’t give in to anxiety, because if you confess and then you remember something, just make a resolution to mention the next time you go.” And that’s all he said, “Yes, you’re sincere, you’re humble, you’re like a child, you’re like a beggar. That’s how the pope does it.”
Wow. It almost seems simple. And then I made that prayer to the Holy Spirit, and I followed his advice. I carried around a note card where I began to jot down the sins that the Holy Spirit helped me to remember.
And ooh, I tell you, I wrote those things in the most undecipherable hieroglyphics and then examination of conscience the next day. And it became easier for me to remember number and kind, as he put it. And as I drew closer to the time of the Easter vigil, the last time I met with him, he said, By the way, you know, we don’t have to do this. You and me, You know, we’ve got this retired priest, Monsignor so-and-so, if you’d like, you know, he could your confession, I’d like. Yeah, yeah, that’s that’s great. Good suggestion. You know, he said, “Yeah, but believe me, neither of us are going to hear you say anything we haven’t heard many times before. Like, what do you mean? Well, there was only one original sin, and Adam committed that.” and I laughed. It was a very funny joke. You know, I was feeling more and more nervous at this point, but I took that card into that confessional that Saturday, and I walked in and I was there for a little less than a half hour. He asked me some questions, and then he leaned over and whispered,
“Welcome home, Scott.”
And then he went ahead and gave me a penance and, the words absolution. And when I heard a Catholic priest pronounce the words absolution, I walked out feeling 10,000 lbs lighter, freer than I’d ever felt. Freedom in all of my life as a believer, knowing that Jesus had paid a debt he didn’t know because I owed a debt I couldn’t pay. But now I could hear it. Now our Lord was reaching down to me where I was and working through the members of his mystical body. It was wonderful. And I remember what made it so special is right before I left, Monsignor, he said,
“When you walk out of that confessional,” he said, “Better yet, when you hear the words absolution, realize this, that those words are more powerful than the words. Jesus spoke outside the tomb of his friend when he said, Lazarus, come forth because Jesus only restored physical, human, natural life, whereas what Jesus will do through that priest is to restore divine, eternal, supernatural life which lasts forever. That’s a greater work of God than merely restoring a man’s body from death.”
And that’s what I heard when the priest pronounced the words of absolution. That’s why I felt so incredibly free and so light and so healed. And by the time a week had passed, I remembered what Monsignor had said about the Holy Father going weekly. And so I made a call and an appointment and I went in, and a week after I joined the church, I went back to confession. And then the next week, after two months of this, it had become somewhat of a habit. And then we came to final exams and papers were due and all the rest. One started to return to me and she said,
“When’s the last time you’ve been to confession?” I’m like, What’s it to you? You don’t even think it’s a sacrament. She’s like,
“Sorry, I don’t know what it is. All I know is that when you come back, you’re so much gentler and, kinder and more patient with me and the kids.”
I said “Three and a half weeks.”
“I’ll leave you alone.” And she did. But I made the call and went that afternoon. You know, it occurred to me that afternoon when I came home, you know, if I’d gone three and a half weeks without a shower, would they have noticed, you know, if I’d go through and a half weeks without brushing my teeth, would they have noticed? Of course, you know. So why do I value my physical life so much more than my spiritual? You know, it occurred to me that what doctors and dentists and dietitians and therapists and pharmacists do for our bodies, that’s what the priest through confession does for our souls. Can you imagine what would happen to our lives if suddenly the government announced comprehensive health care free coverage for every member of your family from the cradle to the grave? It comes with a guarantee. And all the doctors are part of this program, including the best. I know what I would do. I would go in for a regular checkup and then some, and I’d be sure to bring my kids, you know, and Kimberly to I think all of us would we work our physicians, you know, to the bone.
Why? Because life has value. Health is important to us. But why do we value physical natural life so much more than the spiritual, supernatural life, which alone will last for all eternity? What’s wrong with this picture? And so I started going weekly even when I had assignments and pressures. In fact, that’s when I was trying to be sure to go because of how short my temper is and how easily I snap when I feel a lot of stress. And so now I’ve been a Catholic for 20 years and I have been following Monsignor and John Paul’s advice and going at least weekly, at least just about for the last 20 years. In fact, my confessor is such a good friend. He’s like one of those old time physicians. He makes house calls on Fridays because he knows that if I have, like a plumber or an electrician, we had contractors fixing our basement for three or four months. Almost all them were Catholics. So I would let him use my office and we would have all these checkups, These guys who had not been to confession for months or years were going every week, you know, and all my kids as well. You got to love it. I mean, again, contrary Henson health care for every member of the family with a divine guarantee and it’s free of charge who wouldn’t if you really believed it and so it’s been you know and I’ll tell you that example of monsignor that example of Pope John Paul and I’ve heard that Pope Benedict follows in the same pattern. This is a real I mean, we only have to go once a year, but I would really recommend you consider going more often. It’s free and it’s divinely powerful. And I tell you, my marriage has been transformed and so is my family. I’ve learned that it’s not just about being right. It’s about having great relations. It’s not just, you know, excusing yourself and accusing others.
It’s accusing yourself and making excuses for your loved ones to give them a line of credit that you typically demand for yourself. You know, I remember learning about God forgiving debt every 49 years and that what they called an ancient Israel, the year of Jubilee. So about 15 ago, after being a Catholic and going for every week, I announce that breakfast one morning today is the day of jubilee. The kids will. What’s that? Well, it’s like a you’re a jubilee. But today, if you come to me and admit anything you’ve done wrong, you will go unpunished. I will forgive you. But it’s a day of pardon. You will not punished. You have to worry about getting caught and, you know, choking on Rice Krispies, right? Oh, well, after lunch, my eldest son comes in.
“Hey this day of Jubilee. Are you kidding?”
I’m like, No. And he closed my door and he said, okay. And out it came. I’m like, Whoa, whoa, whoa. Does he know it? Of course. No wonder you’re at an odds with your brother. And he said, Now what are you going to do? I’m going to forgive you. And we can pray together.
And after I prayed, I said,
“Is there anything you think you ought to do to make things right?”
And he said, “Yeah, I’ll return the baseball cards for one.”
“Like, Yeah, that’s a good start.”
And he did after dinner, a knock on my door in walked his younger brother.
“Did you mean it?”
Like, Yeah. Okay. And he closed the door and out it came and suddenly I realize why they were any others throats for the last month. And he apologized and they became friends. And I decided just about every month or every two or three weeks to announce the day of Jubilee. After five or ten years of this, we were getting through major blockage every impasse a day. Now my kids know they can come to me and say, Dad, can I have a day of jubilee? And I’ve never turned them down. Why? Because all I’m doing is sharing in the mercy that I receive every week. Every time I go to confession. It’s a day of jubilee. I’m not a convict. Caught and interrogated, punished and sentenced. I’m a penitent coming to the doctor. No one. I’m sick, I’m weak, I’m wayward, I’m wounded. Please heal me. And I don’t want to be clever. I want to be clean. And so instead of just proving that I’m right, getting back into a right relation is much more than being right. And my kids and my wife, we’ve all begun to catch on to this. And I tell you, it makes a big difference. We’re still sinners. We’re still, you know, wounded and weak and wayward. But, you know, a weekly visit is a good thing for a marriage or for a family, let me tell you. And I think my wife would be the first to back me up on that.
You know, I must admit, though, after about 15 years of being a Catholic, about five years ago, it hit me one night, you know, I, I came to my confessor and I said,
“Father so-and-so, you know, I’m a little frustrated.”
“Why is that?”
I said, “Because, you know, we met last week and the week before all that and here again, and I might as well just photocopy my list from last week.”
And he said, “Well, if you want,”
I’m like, “I don’t want you know, I’m just wondering what difference does the sacrament make?”
And he said, “What are you saying?”
“I’m wondering what difference it makes in my life if I’m repeating the same things, coming back and confronting my weaknesses, the same week in and week out.”
And he looked at me and he smiled. I’m like, What’s so funny? He said,
“Well, what do you want new sins?”
I’m like, “No, I don’t want new ones.”
Then he said, “Well, that’s good, because you’d be committing new ones if you weren’t coming back every week and confessing the old ones.”
And I knew he was right. He was dead right. And he said,
“Besides, this is not a quick fix. This is a long term therapy because sin is more than what we do. It’s who we are because of pride.”
And I just sat there listening as he explained. He said
“The source of all of our sins is pride and the fact that you find it humbling to come in week after week and confess the same sins. That is what takes sin out at source, because humility is the virtue that takes out the vice of pride. So don’t stop returning.”
I won’t, you know, and I finished and I went back the next week with the same list. And I’ve been there many times. What a difference it makes to have someone who you really allow to get to know you instead of playing games.
You know, I tell you, though, about four years ago I had an experience that we’ll never forget. We went to Rome, Kimberly and the six kids, and at the time David was only like two and a half. It wasn’t even to what am I thinking? And we had this private audience with the Pope. And when John Paul saw little David, he asked for and he was so weak, we had to help him hold him. And then he kissed them on the cheek and their eyes just locked. And we got it. We got a photograph, you know, And and then when we left, we just kind of floated out of Saint Peter’s and we didn’t need a plane to get home across it. We got a floated home. A month later. I’m walking through the kitchen after dinner.
Little David’s in the highchair. I bend over and I give him a peck on the cheek and I take a step. And who kissed you? I’m expecting Daddy. And he goes,
“The Pope.”
“Right? You are right.” And Kimberly, I look at each other like, first childhood memory. John Paul kissed my cheek. Wow. You know thanks be to God, you know. And later on, I met my priest friend that I’m like,
“What a pope have we you know, my kids first memory is being kissed on the cheek by none other than John Paul the great, you know.”
And we laughed and he said, you know, “I’ve got a story to tell you about John Paul II.”
I’m like, “Well, it wasn’t. Can you top this?”
He said, “No, I’m not playing the game. But just a few months ago, a friend of mine in the Archdiocese of New York was over in Rome for a week. He had this conference and on the last day of the conference after lunch, he went up to a parish to make his afternoon prayer. He walked up the stairs. He passed about a half a dozen beggars, which is common in Rome, you know, in the parishes. But as he walked through the doors, he he thought he recognized one of the beggars. And he sat down. He tried to pray. He was so distracted, he went back out and he said in Italian,
”Do I know you?” And the guy looked up and turned away and said,
“Yes. We went to seminary here in Rome together. We were ordained.”
“What happened?”
And the beggar said, “Don’t ask. I crashed and burned. Leave me alone.”
“Oh, no. I’ll pray for you.” And then he realized was already running late for the last meeting of the conference in Saint Peter’s. And so he hightailed it over to Saint Peter’s. And on that afternoon at the end of the conference, they actually had a chance to meet with John Paul to share the the results of their conference. And so in such private meetings, each person goes a has a chance to go up and kiss his ring and get to the rosary from the pope’s secretary. And, you know, you say something like, thank you or I love you or I pray for you or whatever, Holy Father. And then the next in line comes forward. Well, this priest was so taken by what he had just encountered when he went to kiss the pope’s ring, he said, I love you, pray for my friend. And he blurted out what had just happened. And after he left the audience, he went back to the parish to see if he was there and only two or three were left. But one of them was this guy. And he said,
“I just met with the Pope and he’s praying for you.”
And the beggar said “a lot of good that’ll do.”
He said. “That’s not all. He and his bishop secretary issued an invitation for the two of us to join them for dinner in the papal apartment tonight.”
And the beggar said, “Not a chance. Look at me. I don’t have clothes. I’m a showered like you”
and the Priest said “You don’t understand. You’re my ticket. If I don’t get you, bring you, I don’t get in, you know. You know I’ve got a hotel room. You can shower. I got clothes that’ll fit.”
So reluctantly, this. This beggar went along with the priest who dragged him in, you know, and showered and shaved and got dressed. They were outside the bronze doors. The Swiss Guard let them in at 7 p.m., up to the marble stairs. The bishop, Secretary Cheever, was waiting for them outside the apartment, brought them in. The Pope was already seated. He shook their hands. They sat down. They began the conversation. You know, the first course, the second, then the main course was served. And after the main course, the pope kept looking at the priest and motioning with his hand. What the priest didn’t understand, but the bishop’s secretary did. He stood up and said, “Let’s walk outside.” And so they walked into the hallway and the priest turned to the secretary and said,
“What’s going on in there?”
“No one never knows, you know.”
And so they stood out there for three, four or five. It was more than 10 minutes later that some signal was heard and the bishop opened the door. They walked back and they sat down. It was quiet. And then they brought dessert in and they finished dessert. They exchanged their farewells and they went out into the night. And when he finally got down to the Saint Peter’s Square outside, the priest turned to the beggar and said,
“What went on in there?”
And the beggar said, “I don’t think you’d believe me.”
“Well, try me.”
And he said, As soon as you left, the Pope clasped my hands and said,
“Father, would you hear my confession?”
“He said it to you.”
“That’s right.”
“What did you say?”
“Well, what could I said? I said, I’m a beggar.”
“What did he say?”
“He looked at my eyes and said, “So am I” – But your holy, Your Holiness, I’m not a priest anymore.”
And he used the Italian line “Once a priest, always a priest”. But I’m not right in right standing with the church. And he assured me that as the bishop of Rome, he could reinstate me then and there with my concerns.” he said, “How could I withhold consent? So I consented. And you heard the Pope’s confession? Yeah. And he had to help me with the words of absolution have been so long.”
“Wow. And then the priest said we were out there for more than 10 minutes. Did it really take the pope that long to confess?”
And he said, “no, no, because when I was done, I fell to my knees and I begged him to hear my confession. And that’s what took most of that time. And before you came back, he asked me where you had found me, and I told him the name of the parish and he gave me my first assignment. He said, I want you to go out to that neighborhood and I want you to reach out to all of our fellow beggars, because that’s what we all are. We’re beggars that God has adopted and made his sons and daughters.”
Wow. That’s the kind of grace we’ve been given, not only in Pope John Paul and Benedict, but in the sacrament of mercy, the healing power of confession, in the sacrament of healing that all of us need, all of our marriages could be strengthened. All of our families could be healed, if only we would be humble enough to realize it isn’t about a police lineup or an interrogation. God isn’t trying to extract anything from us. He’s trying to pour into us his mercy, his love and his power. Talk about your bargain. Let’s go to him now and again. Ask him for Grace to make up for lost time that we can make more out of the sacrament in the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit.