Confession is Good for the Soul

Confession is Good for the Soul

Timmy always had trouble coloring between the lines, and he questioned why the 6 on his paint-by-number kit didn’t infringe a bit more on the 7. He was disturbed by the differences between blue, light blue, sky blue, and pale blue. Corn Flakes vs. Post Toasties. Coke vs. Pepsi. Porridge vs. oatmeal. It was all so confusing. Timmy wanted clear demarcations for all elements in his life. The subject matter of his angst had always been of little consequence until his 2^nd grade class at St. Mary’s began preparation for the children’s first confession.

“Now do you understand the difference between a mortal sin and a venial sin, Timmy?”

“Not really, Sister.”

“Well, a mortal sin is a major violation of God’s law, and a venial sin is a minor violation.”

“Major” vs. “minor” wasn’t much of a help for a kid looking for clear-cut answers and direction. Where does “minor” end and “major” begin?

“What would a mortal sin be, Sister?”

Sister Francine detected a bit of emotion behind the question. It seemed Timmy was close to tears.

“I don’t think we need to worry about a mortal sin for 2^nd graders, Timmy. A venial sin would be something like not obeying your parents, or getting angry or yelling at someone.”

Guilt. The Church excelled at infusing guilt in the minds of the young in order to achieve compliance with the laws brought down the mountain by Moses. If guilt fails in its mission, its comrade-in-arms, fear, steps in to bat cleanup. Timmy wasn’t just young and impressionable, he was confused, vulnerable, and scared. Timmy was stressed over his standings on Heaven’s big scoreboard in the sky.

“Ok, let’s say I’m mad at my brother…”

“Venial sin, Timmy.”

“I wasn’t finished, Sister. What if I was so mad at my brother that I threw a toy soldier at him?”

“Well, that’s a little more serious, Timmy. Violence is never acceptable, but that would still be a venial sin… a little more serious venial sin.”

Poor Timmy. Mortal sin, venial sin, and now a little more serious venial sin. It wasn’t getting any clearer. This all mattered to him because having attained the age of reason, he well understood the wages of sin, that is, the consequences of mortal sin- hell, eternal damnation, living in an eternity of scorching fire, all far more serious than making it onto Santa’s naughty list. He sought further clarification.

“Well, what if the toy soldier caught him right in the eye and knocked his eyeball out, you know, so he was looking down when he was looking up? And blood was everywhere. Are we getting into mortal sin territory yet, Sister?”

“I think that’s enough, Timmy. Perhaps you could ask Father Tom about it when he comes in for religion class.”

Timmy had heard the phrase, “Ignorance of the law is no excuse”. This, of course, seemed unfair, but it was also a very frightening concept as Timmy worried he might buy himself a ticket to hell without even realizing it.

“Sister, is there a paper or a book that would list all the sins, maybe mortal sins on one side and venial sins on the other, you know, just so I knew where I stood on this stuff? I think that would be helpful.”

“Timmy, there is a book of sorts. Your conscience will be your guide.”

His conscience?! For a kid who was looking for help distinguishing between Post Toasties and Corn Flakes, this was not helpful. Timmy never thought he was a bad kid, but he knew, in the words of his Grandma, that he was “prone to mischief.” He struggled to separate the “naughty” acts (venial sin) from the “evil” deeds (mortal sin). It only seemed fair that he should know such things in advance.

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The children rose in unison.

“Good morning, Father.”

“Good morning, children.”

The students had already received instructions on the mechanics of making their first confession. Today Father Tom would be talking about the mental aspects of Confession- searching the soul, accepting responsibility, seeking forgiveness, and atonement.

“So, you all need to think about your behavior. Have you been a good boy or girl? You know the difference between right and wrong. God loves you and He will forgive you for your sins.”

“Right” vs. “wrong” only added mud to the murky waters of Timmy’s mind as he sought certainty in matters of the utmost importance, but the “forgive you for your sins” struck a chord.

“Does anyone have any questions?”

Timmy’s hand was already up.

“Yes, Timmy.”

“So, Father, God will forgive my sins when I make my Confession?”

“Yes, Timmy, God is merciful and all-forgiving. He understands we will all be weak at moments, and He will forgive us for our shortcomings.”

All-forgiving?! Visions of his Etch-a-Sketch slate being wiped clean popped into Timmy’s mind.

“Does God forgive all sins, Father, even mortal sins?”

“Yes, Timmy, even mortal sins, but I don’t think we have to worry about 2^nd graders committing mortal sins, now do we, Timmy?”

Timmy sorted through his behavior in an exercise similar to winnowing the wheat from the chaff. He wasn’t too concerned about the obvious venial sins, but he feared there might be a mortal sin lurking somewhere in his past. Considering the regularity with which they occurred, Timmy concluded his transgressions had to be of the minor variety, but a troubling thought lingered.

“Father, could a kid commit enough venial sins that they all add up to one mortal sin?”

“I don’t believe it works that way, Timmy.”

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With just two days to go before the big day, Timmy was hard at work on his list. He wanted to make sure that he didn’t miss any of his sins so that every misdeed in his past would be forgiven. The puzzling degrees of severity of wrongdoing still troubled him, so he sought the counsel of his older and wiser 8^th grade brother, Matt.

“What do you have so far, little brother?”

Timmy looked down at his lengthy list. With all the misspelled and missing words, he was the only person on the planet who could have read the registry of malfeasance.

“I copied off of Marlene Wilson’s paper on a spelling test…”

“Good, that’s good, Timmy.”

“… and I swiped some M&M’s from Johnnie at lunch.”

“Good job, Timmy. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“And I stuck my tongue out at … my uh, big brother…”

“What? When did you do that.”

“I do it all the time.”

“Ok, let’s move on. What else you got?”

“I brushed my teeth for only one minute when I was supposed to do it for two minutes.”

“Oh, my God, Timmy, are you stupid or what? You’re taking this way too seriously.”

“I have to cover everything, Matt. I don’t want to be forgiven for some stuff and then burn in hell just because I forgot something.”

“For Christ's sake, Timmy, they’re not going to send a 2^nd grader to hell. At the worst, you’d probably get stuck in Purgatory or Limbo or whatever for a while.”

“Purgatory? Limbo? What’s that, Matt?”

“I dunno, not quite heaven and not quite hell, something like that. Look, Timmy, just give him a few of the old standbys, like disobeying your parents or you used some bad language. Maybe tell him you dropped a couple of ‘F’ bombs to make Father Tom feel more needed.”

“Just make stuff up?”

“Sure, everyone does. Oh, and then sometimes I’ll throw in impure thoughts. A lot of guys do.”

“What’s impure thoughts, Matt?”

“Second grade? Maybe skip that one, Timmy. But this whole thing is just sort of a formality. And you don’t want to put too much out there or Father Tom will hit you with a whole bunch of prayers to say for your penance. Well, I guess that’s not such a big deal because Father Tom will never know if you said them or not.”

It was unfortunate that Timmy sought guidance from his cynical older brother. It only added to his confusion.

“Make stuff up in the Confessional? Cheat on the penance? That’s like lying, Matt.  Isn’t that committing new sins while you're confessing the old?”

“Timmy, Timmy, Timmy. Don’t you think the priest can see through that little screen thing in the confessional?  And he knows your voice. He’ll know who you are. Do you want him to think you’re a bad kid? There’s a standardized set of sins past down from class to class. Keep it simple. Trust me on this, Timmy”

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Timmy’s mind was a blender of confusion and conflict. He was still unclear as to the difference between venial and mortal sins, and now he was getting competing signals on the merit of the whole exercise in the first place. Sister Francine, Father Tom, and his parents were solidly in the camp of the sanctity of the sacrament, while his older brother, who he admired and looked up to, found the exercise a pointless formality inflicted on the young and defenseless. Unfamiliar with intellectual evaluations of competing arguments, Timmy went with sheer numbers- four against one suggested it was a big deal. Venial sins, mortal sins, heaven, hell, the soul, confession, it all mattered. Timmy went back to working on his list.

It was a shotgun approach to cleansing the soul. Every possible violation of God’s Commandments made his list, from the copying on a test and M&M’s incidents to wearing his shoes in the living room and not liking his Mom’s tuna casserole. It was the most exhaustive enumeration of potential sins in the history of confession, first or otherwise. If Father Tom had been privy to the endeavor, he’d be packing a lunch on the big day.

Timmy’s Mom noticed the light from under his bedroom door.

“Lights off, Timmy, and get to bed.”

“Uh, I was just studying for my spelling test tomorrow, Mom.”

Oh my goodness, Timmy just committed another fib to add to his list. He finally turned the lights off, but he couldn’t sleep as he continued to search for a possible elusive mortal sin in his past. Throwing an orange in the direction of a chipmunk when he was four came in at Number 11, and he fretted over the possibility that endangering one of God’s creatures could have put him over the line. And of course, Number 24 was concerning. That was the day Timmy shoved little Jimmy Marks off the merry-go-round, and he tore his pants and scraped his knee. He wondered if he would have to label his sins as venial or mortal as he disclosed them, but in the end, he concluded he’d leave that to Father Tom to sort out.  

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With enough effort, even 7-year-old boys can clean up nicely-  black leather shoes, navy blue pants, a white collar shirt, and a red tie that took his Dad five tries to get right. A little dab of Brylcreem brought some order to his shaggy brown hair.

“Timmy, don’t you dare get that shirt dirty.”

“I won’t, Mom.”

Matt didn’t look happy.

“Do I have to go? Mass with all the Confessions will take forever.”

“Yes, of course, you have to go, Matt. This is a big day for your little brother.”

Timmy wasn’t nervous; he was prepared. He stuffed the three pages of sins into his front pocket. His lengthy list would be his sling and stone to defeat any possibility of eternal damnation as each and every sin would be forgiven once they were disclosed to Father Tom in the privacy of the confessional. Whatever bad marks he had acquired during his lifetime would be wiped clean.

Timmy’s turn to fess up to any and all bad behavior was coming up. With just two kids in front of him, he reached into his pocket and rubbed his list between his fingers. He felt like the sins were all written down in invisible ink for soon they would all disappear along with the burdens of worry and guilt he had struggled with the past few weeks.

He entered the confessional with an air of confidence. He was already feeling a sense of calm in anticipation of the relief he knew was coming his way once his sins were forgiven. Timmy knelt down and made the sign of the cross as Father Tom slid the little privacy door open. The lines were memorized and rehearsed.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. This is my first confession.”

“And what are the sins you wish to confess?”

Timmy was almost giddy as he pulled the list out of his pocket, unfurled the sheets of paper, and prepared to unload a litany of offenses. He immediately recognized the flaw in his planning. It was too dark in the confessional to read a word of it.

He panicked. His mind went blank. He held the papers close to the sliver of light coming through the crack in the door, but it didn’t help. He nudged the door open a smidge, but Sister Francine, the confessional gatekeeper, immediately closed it. Father Tom was waiting

“You need to tell me the sins that you want to confess.”

Timmy couldn’t think. Everything he had heard, thought about, or written down was now a mass of unintelligible words and phrases floating around in his head. Finally, he latched on to one and blurted it out.

“I had impure thoughts!”

The admission startled Father Tom for in his forty-two years of hearing confessions, the subject of impure thoughts had never come up during a 2^nd grader’s first confession. He searched for the appropriate response.

“Did you say you had impure thoughts?”

“Yes, Father.”

“And when do you have these impure thoughts?”

Being unable to rely on anything from his lengthy list of sins, Timmy thought he should probably embellish this one.

“Pretty much all the time, Father.”

Naturally, Father Tom found this disturbing. His job was not just to forgive, but also to help the wayward in his flock. 

“And where do you have these impure thoughts?”

“Pretty much everywhere, Father- in school, at church, on the school bus, at home. I had a couple right before I came in here.”

Father Tom wasn’t just old; he was wise. This didn’t sound right to him.

“Do you even know what impure thoughts are?”

Oh-oh. Timmy struggled to come up with the correct answer. He knew lying was wrong, and that lying to a priest probably carried extra penalties, but admitting to lying presented its own set of problems.

“Of course, Father. It’s a thought that… well, you know… is impure… like not pure.”

“I didn’t think so. You’re too young to be having impure thoughts.”

Timmy squirmed. Father Tom knew he made it up. The elderly priest spoke softly, and with compassion.

“Why would you make that up, young man? You are here to confess your sins, things you’ve actually done that you regret.”  

“I’m sorry, Father, it’s just that I couldn’t read my list in here, and I felt like I had to say something. That’s all I could think of.”

“Your list?”

“Yes, Father, I didn’t want to miss anything so I wrote it all done. It was two pages. You would have liked it.”

“You had two pages of what you thought were sins?”

“Or might be sins. I was afraid I’d miss something that could have been a mortal sin, so I put down everything I could think of. I don’t want to go to hell, Father.”

From frequent interactions with all the students at St. Mary’s, Father Tom had a pretty good idea of who he was talking to. The concern over mortal sins made it a certainty.

“You’re not going to hell, Timmy, and you don’t have to tell the priest everything little thing you did. And remember, at the end you tell me you’re sorry for these sins and all your sins, and then I forgive your sins. We don’t have to mention every single one of them.”

“You mean I didn’t have to spend all that time on my list?”

“That’s right. But hang on to it. You might need it someday.”

“Well then, Father, I guess I’m sorry for all my sins. I really am.”

“That’s good enough for me, Timmy. Your sins are given. Go in peace.”

“What about my penance?”

“I think putting together a two-page list of sins is enough.”

“Can I ask you something, Father?”

“Sure, what is it?”

“What are impure thoughts?"

“Ask your brother. Every time he comes in here he says he had some.”

Timmy felt like the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders as he exited the confessional. No more agonizing over the distinctions between venial and mortal sins. No more worries about spending an eternity in hell. No more list-making.

Karma. Stressful moments took a sudden shift at the dinner table that evening, from Timmy to his older brother.

“You looked so nice at Mass and confession, Timmy. You had a very good day.”

“Thanks, Mom. I just have one question though.”

“What’s that, Timmy?”

“What are impure thoughts? Father Tom says Matt has them all the time.”