How to Make a GOOD Confession (Most Catholics Get This Wrong) | Fr Cristino

Are you making a valid confession… or just going through the motions?
In this follow-up to our viral video "How to Make a Good Confession", Ken sits down again with Fr. Cristino to dive deeper into one of the most misunderstood sacraments. Many Catholics have never been taught how to make a clear, complete, and contrite confession — and in this conversation, we break down the common mistakes that can affect the grace and healing we receive.

Transcript

Welcome back Father Cristino thanks Ken so today we're going to talk about how to make a good confession uh last year it was about a year ago we did one exactly with that title how to make a good confession 100,000 people have seen it so far um and I went through the comments and there was a number of questions on that video so first of all those who are watching I'll link at the end of this video for them if they want to watch in fact I would highly recommend that but there were some questions that resulted from that video so we're going to go through those but as a quick recap uh do you remember four years ago your four key points the four C's probably I think is what I would have been referring to yeah the the four Cs of confession that our our confession should be clear concrete concise and complete and that those four ultimately require a kind of a fifth C actually which is contrition we we have to want to be moved by uh sorrow for our sin you know if we're going to make a good confession in the first place but then our confession should be clear which means no euphemisms uh don't beat around the bush just say the sin concise means that we try our best to just go through and indicate what the sin is we don't need to give a lot of big backstory concrete meaning that if there is something specific that has happened that I should address it and not just leave it vague or or talk about the sin in general so if you've been proud and one of the ways you know that it was manifested is in the way that you spoke to your spouse to uh two days ago then say that you know I spoke to my spouse in this way that's concrete and then complete means that you say everything that you can remember and that you are not knowingly specifically knowingly holding back mortal sin okay if you know you have held back mortal sin because you were just too afraid or embarrassed to confess it you are not actually making a valid confession you will not receive the grace of absolution even if the priest says the words so a complete confession is important okay okay which then that's leads to contrition right well contrition actually motivates all of it i have to be sorry for my my sins and then I will make a clear concise concrete and complete confession okay so we've gone through that very quickly again detailed deep dive into each one of those at the end of this video uh let's start off with the contrition part though um does somebody is contrition more than just an emotional feeling i feel bad mhm yes i I I think we need to distinguish first of all actually the difference between sadness and sorrow we do not talk about having sadness for our sins we talk about having sorrow for our sins sadness is the emotion it's the feeling and we all know what it means to feel sad but sorrow is not a feeling sorrow is a disposition and so sorrow for my sin means that even in my will I am moved towards a particular kind of feeling but all more importantly one that is going to lead to action so sorrow and sadness are related to each other we can be sad about the reality of our sin we can be sad that we know we have offended God we can be sad that we're still struggling with something that we've confessed many times before but sorrow for sin makes it not be about me it makes it be about God and that's why when we when we are saying that we're sorry for our sins it can't just be mo moved by self-pity so if I have offended God that's why I should feel sorrow for my sin which means that I am now motivated and inspired out of love for God to try and not do this anymore because I don't want to offend him it's all about him not about us can I touch a little bit more on that experience is it possible to have contrition for sin but not have a feeling associated with sadness or even like a feeling of sorrow like the feeling I just feel like our feelings are so deceptive and so they're up and they're down and they're not consistent and

so is contrition Does it have a emotional component to it or is it more seated in the will of saying I am turning from this i have no emotional experience of looking back at my sin but I'm making this firm amendment to want to never do this again is that enough for contrition yes basically yes uh the emotion we we are emotional we were given emotions by God they're not bad and it's not that they can't be trusted it's just that we cannot be led by our emotions our emotions are fickle they're unpredictable and so many things can influence them and they might be things that are beyond our control anyhow so if I allow my emotions to guide me I'll have no idea where I may end up but we have to that's why we have to be guided by our intellect and our will is seated in our intellect and so I have to think I have to use my reason and I actually have to control my emotions by the use of my reason i have to have logic and and sound reasoning to help me overcome just having a feeling and so contrition must eventually move from just being a feeling of sadness that I've sinned to something deeper and that's why I distinguish between sadness and sorrow so that that that movement deeper is what motivates me to try and overcome this to try and do something about this and not just be satisfied with being sad that I have sinned as if somehow my sadness is enough sadness will not necessarily produce contrition but sorrow for our sin is the sign that contrition is already active can you distinguish between imperfect contrition and perfect contrition it's a it's a pretty I don't know how you can measure it we It's a It's a valid distinction it's part of the tradition imperfect contrition I think would mean something along the lines of I know this is wrong and I wish I didn't do it but I'm not actually sure when if how I'm going to overcome it perfect contrition would be to say I am I am decisively going to leave this behind uh and so one way that uh what's a a good an example might be that someone has become addicted to the use of some kind of a substance and as I like to use the example of cannabis they don't want to keep using it they feel bad okay if you really are contrite you go home and you flush that stuff down the toilet get rid of it now yes I know you can just walk down the street and go buy more but are you prepared to just get rid of it and if you're Not can you actually say you're you're contrite if you still plan on keeping it around what what exactly do you plan on doing with it if you're if you're saying you don't want to do it anymore some things aren't so easy to just get rid of right someone who you argue with you can't just get rid of them right uh or you ought not to or you ought not to exactly that might be its own sin but you can't you rely on that with everything if I could get rid of something perfect contrition would say then I have to remove it from my life that's why our Lord says "If your eye causes you to sin pluck it out." Right and uh to be clear then though let's say one does go back and commit that same sin does that mean they never had perfect contrition when they first confessed it no I don't think so i I I'm not not a a very highly trained moral theologian but I don't think you can say that your contrition was automatically imperfect then if you relapse into sin later mhm it has to be about the present moment yes and so we don't know what's coming down the road we don't know how we're going to be tempted or how our circumstances might change in the future and so where I was perfectly contrite at a certain moment in my life I'm not in control of necessarily I'm not necessarily in control of what sorts of things will happen in the future that might put me back into that sinful pattern okay thanks for your thoughts on that so let's move to some of the questions that resulted from that last video we did again linked at the end of this video one person's asked "Father I've committed many mortal sins in my past and while I confess some I couldn't confess all because I don't remember them all when some sins come to mind during prayer I express my sorrow to the Lord directly is this considered valid repentance or do I need to formally confess them?" Again please advise it's excellent question uh there's several distinctions i you know me I'm always making distinctions which is great uh the distinction I would first want to make is is between formal or informal repentance uh yes of course saying directly to the Lord in our prayer that we're sorry for our sins should always happen uh and we do not need to only ever tell our Lord we're sorry for our sins when we go to confession so there's nothing wrong with doing that the next thing is to say there's a difference between knowingly withholding sin i alluded to this at the beginning of our conversation knowingly withholding because I don't want to say it and remembering later something that slipped your mind or it sometimes happens this has even happened to me that I had something in mind that I meant to confess and then in the moment I didn't confess it and I I say I know there's something else i can't remember what it is we believe that the grace of the sacrament is bigger than our forgetfulness and so if I intended to confess something and it escaped me in the moment we are confident that we can still be forgiven of that sin but going to confession part of why we go to confession is also uh a matter of justice it's it's so that I am held accountable somehow in some way outside of just myself and that's why it is not in our in our Catholic understanding and our sacramental understanding it is not enough to just think to myself about my sins and say that I'm sorry directly to God i need somehow to have been held accountable and so by bringing ourselves before another human being albeit a human being who represents Jesus Christ in that moment I am not letting myself off the hook and saying "Okay well God knows I'm sorry." And so that's that I have to bring myself before another person acknowledge what I have done have penance imposed upon me uh that those things are are part of what help remind us that all sin is an injustice and that there is no such thing as a private sin we always think as long as I'm not hurting anybody then what's wrong with it you can't sin and not hurt someone even if you've hurt only yourself which we all already know that sin does the fact that I am wounded is now going to wound how I interact with someone else no matter what invariably you are not at how can I say on top of your game you are not giving all of yourself or the best of yourself either in your immediately next interaction or maybe with a specific person in general because of your private sin so it's not private all sin is public even if it is not publicly known or is not directed against another person so when I go to confession I am remedying that I am making public even things that have been kept in private so if later in my life I realize I don't think I've ever confessed this or now I understand the gravity of this thing that before I didn't realize that's why it's valuable to still bring it to confession not because now I realize I've not been forgiven if you didn't mean to withhold it yes you've been forgiven but that injustice hasn't been healed and so there is more healing to come for us if we were to bring it to confession later and isn't that a beautiful thing exactly it's a deeper healing a more healing and there's sacramental graces in that moment that otherwise wouldn't be present if one just says privately Lord I'm sorry precisely uh to your point of wound wounded people wound people and if we I want to give a concrete example like there's no sin that's private um and and and this might resonate with some but let's say you you brought it up I think in a previous episode let's say there's a husband who's on his phone and he's looking at indecent images videos in private he's lusting my wife doesn't know I'm not going to tell her who's going to know Who is it going to hurt it's just it's just me so that one that could be his attitude but let's say now he goes which is not true by the way but then he goes and as a husband and wife you and their physical intimacy how is he going to make a great gift of himself to his wife in physical intimacy while he has what he just saw on his phone running through his mind exactly that can be a huge wound in marriage mhm and uh I think many men out there could relate with that and women and to not buy into this diabolical it doesn't hurt anyone it's just me no one else knows no it it will hurt and it'll hurt your marriage in this particular case i'll stay on this line of of thought with you on this particular I'll call it the genre of sin there used to be a time when the way that you would justify that to yourself you would say "Well it's hurting the other person the person that I'm looking at I'm objectifying them uh they were put in a compromising situation in order to produce the thing that I'm now taking pleasure in or receiving some gratification from now we're living in an even more messed up context where people are saying "Oh well it's AI generated it's not even a real person or I'm looking at uh illustrations or anime or something it's it's not actually a person so I'm not even objectifying a person because this person doesn't really exist they only look like a person because it's an AI generated thing or it's a cartoon or you know whatever have you the fact is I'm still afflicting the wound on myself so the the privacy of the sin is not also just measured by whether or not another person has been harmed some other way in order for me to be able to enjoy this thing it it it's about how will the wound that I have afflicted against myself become a wound that I afflict upon someone else after and so that's why our sin is never private nothing that we do and that's why even the way that we think the thoughts that we have are obviously private if I don't say them out loud who else will ever know the thought that I've had other than God but then our thoughts form our behaviors I I personally have a terrible habit of running through conversations in my mind that haven't happened and I imagine what I would what I would say to this person and I think of a specific person and I imagine being in a room where I would be with them and and all the things I would say to them and they're usually angry things well the next time I'm actually with that person I I can tell that I'm on edge i can tell that I feel different in how I'm interacting with them because I know that I've been rehearsing some mean or angry thing that I want to say to them and now I don't but I have compromised my ability to be present in charity to this person because the last time I thought of you I was imagining yelling at you that is a completely private thing that I now know I have compromised my ability to receive you as a gift and to be a gift to you because of what I was doing with in my thoughts so there is no privacy about sin and that's why there cannot be a private remedy for sin either just going to God and telling him I'm sorry in the silence of my heart is good because we should tell God everything but there needs to be something external to heal the public nature of all sin and when you're in your private thoughts and you're saying those that private conversation to that person and everything that's coming out in a perfect eloquent leeway imagine myself there with cameras recording all of that unfortunately it would make great content oh yes it would people would love to get inside of my mind i'm afraid they know all of what I really think people say that to me all the time what do you really think Father and there's a reason why we don't say everything we really think because we know we shouldn't even be thinking it let alone just avoiding whatever trouble I would get in if I said it out loud and that's part of the degragation of what's happening in our society that's another video but just to make the point not everything that we think needs to be said right uh another question that came to mind or from with the the video was um what do you do when you have trouble identifying your sin yeah I know no I I there's a lot of Yeah I'll give you Sorry I'll give you a great example right before you came this morning my daughter's like I I have she it's time for her to go to confession but she's like I can't think of uh anything to confess in my next confession so I I'll just make more sins so I have something to confess i'm like no you won't you don't do that i don't advise taking that approach she was so innocent exactly and probably what she thinks would be a sin is not even a sin lots of times you have the confession of children and it takes everything in me not to just laugh because they they confuse sin with something they know they're not supposed to do ah and so if they're not supposed to do something it doesn't automatically mean that it is sinful in nature it might just be that it's it's not a good idea or that it's impolite or uh or it's gross you know like they don't they don't understand i shouldn't pick my nose well and I and when I have a child confess ah I picked my nose they really mean I'm sorry i I did it i know I'm not supposed to but why are you not supposed to not because there's anything actually wrong with it sometimes you have to do it but your parents are trying to teach you to not look gross in front of other people because it's it's unbecoming it's it's it isn't appropriate behavior and so when we are struggling to come up with something we can't just think of anything that comes to mind that we shouldn't have done because it doesn't automatically mean that it was a sin where I think people are are struggling is particularly I find this in the elderly uh especially if now they they kind of live a pretty solitary life uh they don't get out much they they they don't really have any particularly bad habits they've had the habit of going to confession all their life and sometimes they'll say "I don't I don't know what to say Father i'm sure I've sinned but I don't I don't know how i don't know what I've done." And then that's when we can begin going deeper into areas of refinement where we could ask "Could I have loved our Lord more are there ways I know that I could have loved him more maybe it's hardly even a matter for sin but any way we know we could have loved him more and we just chose not to or we gave oursel a pass well that's when I start asking about you do you ever skip your daily prayers or do you ever let distractions come in and take you off course when you're trying to pray or do you ever entertain thoughts about other people that have hurt your feelings or that annoy you in the nursing home and you know though that's when now we're getting down into the the really fine details if I can't think of anything to confess it doesn't necessarily mean that I'm a bad person because I can't think of any of my sins maybe you just don't really have all that much to say and that's ultimately what we all should be aiming at is to not really have all that much to say in confession so if by a certain time in our life we realize I actually think that that's kind of how I'm living now okay well that doesn't mean I'm off the hook it means okay now how can I really drill down and see ways in which I know I could love our Lord more and better uh where I'm not because I prefer comfort or I just don't make time and then we can see ourselves beginning to make progress in that way okay the that's one side the the other side could be someone who's just starting off going to confession and they're just not formed yes and then they can't think of anything to say yes in that case would you say just a good examination of conscience would help that yes exactly there's people who will say "Oh I've I don't know i've never murdered anyone i've never robbed a bank what would I confess?" And I think to myself you think that's the only thing I ever hear when I'm sitting in a confessional for hours a week all these bank robbers i like no obviously we have other things that we need to bring to our Lord in confession and it's as you say people aren't if they're not wellformed they don't even know what they should be asking themselves and sometimes things that seem blatantly obvious to some people were just not obvious to other people mhm i I people will say things sometimes that I I'm like really you didn't realize that like Sunday mass i didn't know it was a sin to miss Sunday mass i I I still said I still said some prayers i still whatever like I'm thinking how you don't realize that you're sinning if you skip going to Sunday mass okay well but if you didn't know and now you know okay now you need to reform your life accordingly and the examination of conscience that I I find the most helpful ones are those that ask you specific and pointed questions usually based around the Ten Commandments they might ask you things where you go "What that's a sin?" or oh I didn't know I can't do that and I think for some people that's the turning point in their life is the realization oh my goodness there's a lot more that I could be doing or that I actually need to stop doing because I'm a follower of Jesus than immediately meets the eye especially if you've come from a pretty rough background where you think "Oh if I've left behind the really terrible ways of living well now what do I have to confess?" Well it's a whole new genre it's a whole new area of of self-examination that previously you wouldn't have even thought about now go back to the comment what i didn't know that um not skipping mass was a sin well that would be classified in that situation as a venial sin because they didn't know that that was a sin mhm but now that one knows that skipping mass is a sin that actually is a mortal sin right because they have now full knowledge now you know right and and so to complement what you're saying we also need to make a clearer distinction between mortal sin and grave matter so something isn't a mortal sin just because now you know it's a sin it also has to be grave in nature and so f not fulfilling our Sunday obligation is a direct violation of the third commandment so there's no way around it not being grave but our culpability can be diminished according to our knowledge and so it is we would I I wouldn't say that it's just a venial sin to miss Sunday mass if you don't know we would still say that it is a grave sin but it may not be mortal in nature for you because you did not realize that that was the case however it does beg the question about your awareness of of the at least the ten commandments in general right the the third commandment is remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy that's the obligation is to remember the Sabbath day so to forget or to say "I didn't I just didn't even dawn on me that it was Sunday and that's why I missed mass." Well the commandment is to remember so you can forget that's the point and that's where we just have to be really honest with ourselves and say "What am I doing here am I am I playing games or do I actually just not know?" And there are things that I realize people if they don't have it told to them they just won't realize that there's something wrong with it especially if they're comparing it with ways they used to behave before and if they think I used to be really bad and now I'm an angel okay maybe by comparison but what are you now measuring yourself against we can't measure oursel against evil we have to measure ourselves against good and if by these good standards like an examination of conscience is going to propose now enlightens me to all sorts of things it doesn't necessarily mean that now everything I do is a mortal sin we have to see that it's grave in nature meaning a clear and direct violation of one of the ten commandments or precept of the church and if that isn't present then it's it's I may still now be culpable for a sin but it's not automatically a mortal sin and so distinguishing between gravity and more and the mortal nature of sin is important for us because it has a lot to do with ignorance uh or or being wellformed okay thank you for being more precise in the language than I was thank you appreciate it um what are your thoughts on a person coming to confession with a list love the list you do bring a list when someone comes to confession I say "Sorry father i have a list." I'm like don't say sorry thank you thank you for being well organized the sin is not the list no exactly you I'm going to give you a better penance because of that the the list is a way that shows I have prepared myself in advance i don't want to forget anything it should help you with being clear and concise because it's an act of charity to the other people in line for confession that you don't just sit in there going "Ah now what else was that i knew there was something else just give me a minute Father uh it's just on the tip of my tongue okay if you had written down those few things that you wanted to confess before you came you wouldn't forget it just read the list so I think sometimes people have a sense that that they're making it very I don't know what's a better word than peruncter like that they're just sort of doing a thing that they know they have to do and if they use the list it makes it seem somehow less sincere i think Yeah it's kind of mechanical i I disagree i think it shows more care and thought that has been put into preparing for your confession uh and you then don't have to worry about leaving something off that you knew you needed to say and it'll also will help you in being more clear and more concise yeah some of the most important things in our life which we say are rehearsed yeah exactly i think about getting married that was not just mechanical it was it was rehearsed i can take you Janelle to be my wife promise to be true to you in good times and bad in sickness and health i will love you and honor you all the days of my life i remember memorizing that before going in cuz I was like I want to make sure I know every single word when I'm saying that i And then the priest prompts you right you repeat repeat after me but I and so I did but I was like I want to enter into each one of these words i don't have this happen very often and I I celebrated I well when I was doing university and campus ministry I did a lot of weddings but I'm always very moved when a couple will tell me at their rehearsal because I usually say to them "Okay I'm going to whisper to you little phrases and you just repeat them out loud after me when they're exchanging their vows because they need to use the sacramental formula of the vow." And when they say "No no father we have it we have it memorized." That's there's something very beautiful about I don't have to say anything i'm just the silent witness as I'm supposed to be in that sacrament because they are conferring that upon each other and the preparation that they've taken in advance is a sign that they have really thought about what they're going to say because they they want it to be as meaningful as possible they really want to convey that to each other as they exchange their vows and and and I think a person who has come to confession rehearsed and well prepared is is showing something similar they are trying that that's the matter of the of the sacrament of penance is your sins and so those words matter those words are the literal matter of the confession and so uh we need to be well prepared in in the way that we deliver them now I'm wondering if I said those words right because you can't hide it on YouTube someone's going to check you had it you had it don't worry you know it was a while ago it was like oh approaching 15 years a couple of the questions that came up and and this is kind of a sad And one viewer said "Confession for me has been an awful experience i had a priest tell me not to come in with a laundry list." I had another one ask me if I do anything right i dread confession like I really felt sad for this person so maybe there's some people who are staying away from confession because of a bad experience with a priest what's your What would you say to them well first I I just say I'm I'm so sorry that you haven't been properly loved and cared for by one of my brothers i it's we're human i I know that there are times that I I am not as good a confessor as I as I ought to be for my penitence because I'm I'm tired or I'm preoccupied or and sometimes in all fairness penitence don't always make it easy on us either because there are there are times in which the way people go to confession it isn't very wellrehearsed or or it's it's sort of like okay this you might as well just come in and press play on a recording because I can I can do your confession for you so what are you doing to try and change you know there are ways in which I know I have to maintain control over my my frustration or the just the exasperation that can come from sitting and listening to many confessions there is no justification or excuse for a person leaving confession having felt harshly judged or criticized i actually just shared this story the other day i I discovered that I have a parishioner who is the nephew of uh the now deceased former archbishop of Vancouver Archbishop Adam uh and uh I was very impressed to meet his nephew in my parish and I shared with him I said you know your uncle really had a profound impact on me when I was a seminarian uh because I went to confession to him on a retreat that he was preaching and I don't I don't think I said anything too terribly bad uh but when I finished my confession he said you say you're a seminarian and I said uh yes you're grace he said well then you better straighten up if you want to get ordained

and I was so taken aback now then afterwards he gave me very thoughtful advice and counsel but he kind of gave me a little slap upside the head and I needed that and I I'm grateful uh to him for for sort of jolting me out of my stuper because it is easy for us to just sort of go on back in there and say the same old things and and expect to get the same okay well God loves you very much that's nice but it isn't necessarily always what's needed mhm so if you've ever felt hurt because you've been challenged in confession I would ask you to consider maybe did you need that challenge maybe maybe in that moment is that the medicine you actually needed was you know to kind of be be pushed a little bit uh I think sometimes people go to the doctor and it maybe is upsetting or even embarrassing to hear them say you know what you need you need to lose some weight and and that can make you feel very deflated or judged or because we are self-conscious about those kinds of things but maybe that's the one thing that the doctor needed you to hear that time and so we have to be careful not to dismiss a confession as having been a bad experience because I I felt challenged but there's a difference between being challenged uh or kind of more bluntly corrected and being made to feel like we're a bad person no one should ever be made to feel that way when they've come to encounter the mercy of the Lord so if you have been made to feel that way again I'm very sorry but I hope that you can try and rise above that uh bring that to our Lord offer it to him offer it in reparation for that priest in his ministry maybe there are other ways that that he is failing to show the love of God to the people that he serves and so he needs prayer uh and then don't deprive yourself of the grace that awaits you in that sacrament uh because you're you're hurt by how you've been dealt with in the past great points and to that one just because our feelings have been hurt doesn't necessarily mean it was somebody else's fault mhm like that there there could be like we're a fragile flower and we're not being we're not used to being told what we need to do right um I don't think that's what this person was talking about i suspect not but um that could be the case for some of us who like not used to being challenged mhm sometimes I would also add sometimes I think we hear things that aren't necessarily said or or we interpret things or we read between the lines and we assume something is meant and it might be because of how harsh and critical we are on ourselves and so if we we already have a kind of harsh way of looking at oursel we might hear someone say something that we assume that's how they intend to be towards us as well and so we also need to be attentive to that am I too hard on myself and so in confession I hear the priest say something and I assume he means this or I hear him to be saying that and is it because that's what I say to myself and so we also need to be conscious of the the tendency I think to be overly hard on ourselves about the way that we go to confession there's some questions about the nature of confession practically face tof face confession versus behind the screen um is one better than the other what does the church recommend and offer to us as the most appropriate way mhm well by law the penitant has the right to anonymity uh and so also does the priest the priest has the right to not have to be face to face uh when hearing a confession it's not just up to the penitant uh and so I think especially in a context like we find ourselves in now where priests are are in a very vulnerable position with regard to the possibility of having allegations made against them for things and now rightly they are taken with extreme seriousness and so you could have your entire life in ministry turned upside down like that because someone has made an allegation against you and in the confessional we are most vulnerable because we cannot comment upon anything that's happened in the context of our confessions and so I think sometimes for the for the priest's own protection there's just a sense of security about I'm on my side you're on your side you might be able to say later that I've said something that's inappropriate and I won't be able to defend myself but no one can say that you were sitting across from me in a room and you put your hand on me if there's a wall in between us right mhm so I I think people should also keep in mind that if your priest likes having confession behind a screen that doesn't necessarily mean that he's a a cold guy or he's a an anti-Vatican 2 priest or something that he wants to go back to the confessional box and it's it's just simply the case in many cases that we feel we feel like we're managing our vulnerabilities a bit better by just not being able to have anything alleged against us so so that's a perspective that I think people aren't automatically going to have come to mind for themselves going to confession face to face I think has a has a time and a place where it makes sense especially if it's a very if it's going to be a long confession if this is a general confession if you know that there's going to be elements of some some kind of of extended counseling happening in it this is not therapy you do not go to confession to get free therapy so it shouldn't always turn into counseling but if a person has been away from the practice of their faith for a long time and they're going to have a lot that they need to cover and they are coming very broken and very wounded to be able to be sitting across from a person who who they can see is looking at them with love and who is whose body language is showing that that they're attentive to them that they're safe that they're not judged i understand why that is valuable and I wouldn't ever deprive anyone of that who who thought they needed that and so I usually give people the option when I know that that's the kind of confession we're going into would you like to kneel behind the screen or would you like to sit face to face and usually they ask to sit face to face okay okay another question from a viewer uh that said "Can you bring up sins from the past that you did your whole life but now know are wrong?" Yeah I think that touches on what we were speaking about earlier where if you didn't know of course you wouldn't have confessed it and if now you're aware or you're you're more conscious of something and it might not even be that you didn't know it was a sin but maybe now you take this much more seriously than you did back then and so you are moved by greater sorrow for your sin anytime we are moved by greater sorrow for our sin we should bring it forward in confession what we should not do is repeatedly confess something that we know we've already confessed because we still feel bad about it that might be a sign that we are not accepting the Lord's mercy and so we have to be also ready to let go of the sins that we have confessed and not think that there's some kind of value in continuously going back to them and bringing them up over and over again yeah so that was another question I was going to ask it was came up is like what if I continue I confess something and I still feel guilty would it be fair to say your feelings are not a great indicator of the truth of the matter well it's certainly not the case that your feelings dictate whether or not the Lord has forgiven you if you've gone to confession you said everything you needed to say you were contrite in that purpose of amendment you're forgiven period that's the objectivity of the sacrament but the lingering effect of sin especially particularly grave sin the shame that it still produces in us that might take time to heal but it's not necessarily going to be healed by just continuously bringing it back up in confession in fact it can make it worse because it means you keep ripping the scab off of off of the wound that's trying to heal you have to leave it be and and you you have to surrender it to the Lord's mercy and usually the the reason I feel bad is because I'm the one who's continuing to condemn myself not because somehow the Lord is continuing to say you know but don't forget that that evil thing that you did he would never say that to us because he has forgotten it in a manner of speaking touching on that wound there the wound of shame objectively a person has gone to confession okay there's nothing else to say here it's done but the wound of shame can keep people in such a cage like is there something practical that one can do other than say okay I know I've been forgiven like like to be held captive by that mhm what would you say could a practical thing one of the things that I think is really catching on at least in in our part of the world uh is a is a format of a retreat that we have called the triumph retreat and I know many people are experiencing healing and freedom from areas of shame in their life through the methodology of prayer that people are led through over the course of the days of that retreat format and I think that that's probably the biggest thing that emerges in a triumph retreat is the areas of woundedness because of shame in my life and so that's a very very specific thing and I think it's actually specific to just geographically where we are but any if there's other formats of of retreats or methodologies of prayer that you are familiar with that are about inner healing often I think we need external help to address this cause of shame and the irony is we don't want anyone else to know about it because we're ashamed of it but the the keeping it into myself is what makes it even worse and so part of the healing is going to be the needing to expose it uh the the analogy of the doctor and the patient is is always helpful when we're talking about anything in this area if if there's something wrong with you especially something wrong with your body that is embarrassing and causes you shame of course you don't want to show it but if you go to the doctor especially go to the doctor with that in mind and then in the moment you panic because you don't want him to see and so you tell him something else you know you are not going to be healed for that problem and that's that is on me now i am perpetuating that and so the area of shame will need to be exposed it has to be brought out into the light and that should be done in a very careful setting with a very limited number of of other people or maybe even only just your confessor but the shame has to be addressed by being brought to the surface so I know that you dropped uh a name called triumph right so people are going to be wondering what is this triumph retreat uh you've personally I know you told me that you've gone through it and it's correct to say that it was a beneficial experience for you it was life-changing for me actually i I it helped me address it actually brought to the surface very early on in the retreat things that I thought I was over and done with and didn't even think about anymore but I think what I realized in the retreat setting was that I had acknowledged those things that caused me pain lies that I was believing but acknowledging them was only the beginning of the healing wow and I actually needed more than just acknowledging them but it's sort of like I acknowledged it and I put it on the shelf and then I thought that I was good now but the retreat actually helped me see that I thought I needed healing in certain areas of my life and very early on I was actually devastated to see oh my gosh I can tell where this is going i'm done dealing with this i don't want to deal with these wounds anymore i thought those were those were gone and taken away but they weren't and and they needed more attention and so having the help of being led through in a very prayerful and and tender and sensitive way that I just I'm not used to being dealt with like that really helped me to to bring some healing into those areas of my life where I was I know I was still living under some lies and now I catch myself i can say there's the lie the lie is creeping back up again and actually just just last week when I was in spiritual direction I noticed I was I was living under one of those lies again and I didn't even realize it my spiritual director said "This is this is the pattern that you've you that you've been trying to leave behind where did this come from?" It's it the the devil when he gets his his meat hooks in us somehow he is not going to let go without a fight and so to the extent that he has a just a millimeter of that dagger in you he's going to keep trying to work on it so if someone's interested I'm going to put a link in the description of this video for Triumph i'm worried that they're going to get a bunch of international requests because there's a limited spot on this and it's also a 9day retreat where you're just you're cut off from the world so it's a it's a big commitment they fill up quickly they now have waiting lists they're they're running them in Calgary and Edmonton and and and in Saskatchewan and I don't know I think it's a testament to to the the profound freedom and and peace that people are experiencing in them i know Janelle thinks I need a triumph no comment no comment well I I registered i did register and uh I was ready to go paid my deposit which I still haven't got back by the way but they can keep it and um it was the day we were moving into our house that weekend and it was just the date had moved and so I'm like well I can't I can't do that i can't leave Janelle we're moving so that's why I didn't go but maybe in the future anyways I think this is good i I hope that uh our listeners have been blessed by this conversation i'm going to turn to you and say you know please share with us below uh what stood out to you and why i always love learning from you if you have additional questions maybe we do a part three and we'll end this with a prayer

oh Holy Mary my mistress into thy blessed trust and special keeping into the bosom of thy tender mercy this day every day of my life and at the hour of my death I commend my soul and body to thee I entrust all my hopes and consolations all my trials and miseries my life and the end of my life that through thy most holy intercession and thy merits all my actions may be ordered and disposed according to thy will and that of thy divine son amen [Music]