. .
. I let the fears that I will be yelled at in confession and/or refused
absolution keep me from it. (I have intense panic attacks over the whole
confession experience.)
 aint John of the Cross gives a
very good answer to this question in one of his letters to a nun suffering
from scruples:
Letter 20
[To a discalced Carmelite nun suffering
from scruples
Shortly before Pentecost, 1590]
Jesus, Mary.
In these days try to keep interiorly
occupied with a desire for the coming of the Holy Spirit and on the feast
and afterward with his continual presence. Let your care and esteem for this
be so great that nothing else will matter to you or receive your attention,
whether it may concern some affliction or some other disturbing memories.
And if there be faults in the house during these days, pass over them for
love of the Holy Spirit and of what you owe to the peace and quietude of
the soul in which he is pleased to dwell.
If you could put an end to your
scruples, I think it would be better for your quietude of soul not to confess
during these days. But when you do confess, you should do so in this
manner:
In regard to thoughts and imaginings
(whether they concern judgments, or other inordinate objects or representations,
or any other motions) that occur without being desired or accepted or
deliberately adverted to: Do not confess them or pay attention to them or
worry about
them.[1]
It is better to forget them no matter how much they afflict the soul. At
most you can mention in general any omission or remissness as regards the
purity and perfection you ought to have in the interior faculties: memory,
intellect, and will.
In regard to words: Confess any
want of caution in speaking with truthfulness and rectitude, out of necessity,
and with purity of intention.
In regard to deeds: Confess any
lack of the proper and only motive—God alone without any other
concern.[2]
By such a confession you can
be content and need not tell any other particular thing, however much it
may battle against you. Receive Communion on Pentecost in addition to those
days on which you usually receive.
When something distasteful or
unpleasant comes your way, remember Christ crucified and be
silent.
Live in faith and hope, even
though you are in darkness, because it is in these darknesses that God protects
the soul.
Cast your care on God, for he
watches over you and will not forget you. Do not think that he leaves you
alone; that would be an affront to him.
Read, pray, rejoice in God, both
your good and your salvation. May he grant you this good and this salvation
and conserve it all until the day of eternity. Amen. Amen.
Fray John of the Cross
Copyright ICS Publications. Permission
is hereby granted for any non-commercial use, if this copyright notice is
included.
Notes
1. Granted, at the time of Saint John of the Cross, the only technique
available to attain relief from the oppression of such experiences was to ignore them. But
today we
have access to Catholic Psychology which allows
us to understand distractions and fantasies and to
renounce them.
There is, however, a profound psychological complication
here. Many of your darkest and most hateful thoughts and
imaginings—the thoughts that you keep shielded in secrecy and would
never reveal to anyone, not even a psychologist or confessor—are triggered
when emotional wounds from your childhood are rekindled by emotionally difficult
events in the present. Your experiencing these thoughts and imaginings can
provoke feelings of guilt, and then, to punish
yourself for this guilt, you can engage in self-destructive
temptations or behaviors (such as masturbation
or smoking tobacco or drinking alcohol
or gambling or sexual activity or
overeating or whatever). Now, you might acknowledge
the behaviors themselves, but unless you get to the psychological root of
the behaviors, you will just keep repeating them because
of unconscious sin. And what is the psychological root
of the self-destructive temptations and behaviors? It is the hate
that you as a child felt in childhood for your parents, the hate that has remained an
unspoken secret in your heart that you would not dare to reveal to anyone. That hate needs
to be confessed and healed.
2. This sentence was written in Late Medieval Spanish and then
translated into English, so it’s complicated. I’ll paraphrase:
In regard to deeds: Confess any lack of the motive to do things purely
for the sake of God alone without any other reward. Now remember, of
course, that this was written to a cloistered nun who was supposed to spend
all day doing everything “purely for the sake of God alone” in constant prayer.
Thus, if she slipped up once in a while, it needed to be confessed. Most Catholic
lay persons in the world today spend about 99% of their time NOT thinking
about God alone, so Confession could take hours if they tried to do it properly. And,
well, oh! the scruples! So if you want to apply this to yourself, just focus on your major
deeds and confess what we could call “self-serving” motives in one lump
sum. You could say something like, “Forgive me, for there have been
many times that I did things to serve my own self-interests, rather than
out of pure love [specify].” And then, for real penance, follow the
counsels that I explain on this website, so that most
of your time is spent in thinking about God alone. And if it isn’t,
then consider psychotherapy to get to the root
of the problem.
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