The Healing Power of Confession
I recently walked through some difficult things alongside someone I’m close to and love. It seems to be very easy and natural for us as humans to live life in a sort of way where we are inattentive to the things that are going on internally. We may even convince ourselves that everything is fine while we continue falling asleep to our interior invitations for noticing and nurturing. When shit hits the fan, as it eventually does, it feels like we are falling or all hope is lost when we finally wake up to the reality (and the consequences) of this long-term avoidance. If you know, you know.
Waking Up to Grace in the Unraveling
That was the weight of the day before. But the following day, I was able to witness the whole story in confession to priests. Through the humanity and the tears, the unraveling and pouring out of the truth in the midst of brokenness, I witnessed the beauty of forgiveness, encouragement, and love. I began seeing a weight lift off and freedom beginning to be embraced. It was one of the most beautiful expressions of the restoration of all things—the Kingdom of God poured out not to shame, but to pick up, proclaim the good news, and release to go and sin no more. It was the prodigal son returning to his Father.
It was awareness. It was grace.
Moving Beyond Privatized Faith
I didn’t grow up in a tradition that put a high value on confession. Over the years, it seems modern expressions of church have moved to a more privatized faith where we grapple with these things internally or simply try harder to keep to the spiritual equation: read your Bible and pray, believing that eventually these things will lead to freedom or greater faith. In some ways, we may be no different than the Pharisees who clung so tightly to the law that they missed the Savior of the world when He was right in their midst. When I think back to Jesus and His interactions, so many of them were rooted in deep connection with others. After experiencing His depth of love, people were left changed, delivered, and compelled to lay their hearts bare before Him.
Wisdom from the Christian Mystical Tradition
There is a reason why confession has been such an anchor in the historical church. It holds real power for transformation and for receiving the actual, tangible forgiveness that Christ offers. The Christian mystical tradition has long understood this dynamic:
"In confession, we do not simply recount our failures to a judge; we expose our poverty to love. To confess is to allow God to love us in the very places where we feel most unlovable. It is the moment when the mask of self-sufficiency drops, and we are finally met not with condemnation, but with the Father’s embrace."
— Thomas Merton, Love and Living
Other voices throughout history have echoed this same ancient reality:
St. John of the Cross reminded us that "He who falls alone, falls alone with no one to pick him up..." Warning that an isolated soul easily gets plucked before its fruit can truly ripen.
St. Teresa of Ávila wrote about the danger of remaining hidden, observing that when a soul "exposes its darkness to the light, the enemy loses all power, and the gentle mercy of Christ... rushes in to rebuild what was broken."
Dropping the Mask of Self-Reliance
I understand the shift away from confession in modernity, especially in the West where we have concepts like the Protestant work ethic, individualism, and a relentless drive toward success to contend with. We turn our spiritual lives into another project to manage and optimize, treating vulnerability like a failure rather than the doorway to freedom. But this is the deep-down work that we simply cannot avoid if we want to be free and truly ourselves.
So maybe the work isn't to try harder, perform better, or manage our own healing behind closed doors. Maybe the work is simply to stop running, to let the mask drop, and to allow ourselves to be fully known. Healing doesn't happen in the dark room of our self-reliance; it happens when we bring our brokenness into the light and discover that grace has been waiting there all along.
Where in your life are you still trying to carry things in isolation? What might happen if you let someone in?
