There is a great story in the Old Testament about King David. David was considered one of the greatest kings of ancient Israel. He conquered all around him and gave the appropriate honor to God, but that is not just why he was considered great. One day, when he was at the height of his power, David was taking a walk on the roof of his palace when he noticed a beautiful woman taking a bath in a nearby garden. He enquired who she was and his servants told him, ‘She is Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite.’ David already had many wives, but he decided that even though she was the wife of another, he wanted her. So he ordered her to be brought to him and he slept with her.
Some time later she sent him a note to say that she was expecting. Now David realised that he would be found out. So he had her husband Uriah sent for. Uriah was away fighting for David at the time. When Uriah turned up David asked him how the battle was going and how the men were faring, etc. Then he told him to go home and rest that night and that he would send him back to the battle the next day. But Uriah did not go to his wife, but slept at the door of the palace with the servants. Maybe he smelt a rat.
The next day, realising that Uriah had not spent the night with his wife, David invited him to have dinner with him in the evening and made sure that he had plenty to drink. Again he told him to go and spend the night in his house and that he could return to battle the next day. However, even though he had plenty to drink, he did not spend the night with his wife.
The following day, having realised that he did not go home, David is beginning to panic. So he wrote a letter to Uriah’s commanding officer and asked Uriah to take it back with him to the battle. In the letter King David told his commanding officer to place Uriah at the worst of the fighting and then to pull back, so that Uriah would be killed. So Uriah took the letter—his own death warrant—and returned to the battle and was killed. King David then took Bathsheba as his own wife.
So now you have lust, jealousy, adultery, deceit and murder, what you will find in a lot of modern movies, all committed by the so called ‘great’ King David. However, God in his goodness was not going to allow David to get away with this, so he sends the prophet Nathan to David who tells him a story. Nathan tells David that there was once a very rich man in a town who had many sheep, cattle and all the wealth he could want. There was also a poor man who had just one little lamb. He and his family loved the lamb as one of their own family. One day a visitor came to the rich man, but rather than taking one of his own animals, he took the poor man’s lamb and killed it for a meal. When King David heard this he sprang to his feet and said, ‘Whoever has done this deserves to die for such a crime.’ And then the prophet Nathan says to David, ‘You are the man.’
Now here is the thing. What makes David such a great king is what happened next. When Nathan points the finger at David and says, ‘you are the man,’ instead of having Nathan killed for accusing him as other kings might have done, David says, ‘I have sinned against the Lord,’ and he repents. He confesses and he repents. That is why David was considered a great king. He was big enough to repent and acknowledge that he had done wrong. In his mercy, God confronted David with his sin. When you love your children, you don’t let them away with it, if they have done something wrong. Out of love for them, you challenge them and discipline them, so that they will learn right from wrong and that there are consequences for our actions.
Jesus did the same thing with St. Peter after denying Jesus three times during his passion. After the resurrection and out of love for him, He said to him, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love me?’ And Jesus asked him this three times, addressing the three denials. He did this out of love for Peter, to make Peter address his sin. He did this to help Peter. Jesus does the same thing with us. He challenges us when we sin and asks us to have the humility to confess our sins.
One of the most beautiful gifts the Lord has given us is confession, where through one of his priests, the Lord takes away our sins and sets us free. He gives us this gift because He loves us. He asks us to confess our sins, because He loves us and He wants to heal us. Every time we sin, we do damage to ourselves and Jesus wants us to be healed of that. So, through the sacrament of confession, whenever we confess our sins, the Holy Spirit of God absolves us of our sins, so that we can walk away in peace.
Satan knows how powerful confession is and he does everything to convince us that we don’t need it. He tells us that we don’t need to go to a priest. We can tell God we are sorry ourselves. Look at how sinful the priests are. Why would you confess to them? And yet this is what God asks us to do.
After the resurrection, when Jesus appeared to the Apostles in the upper room, He said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive they are forgiven. Whose sins you retain they are retained’ (Jn 20:23). If Jesus didn’t intend to give us the forgiveness of sins through the priesthood, why would He say that?
Many people will say that they can just tell God they are sorry for their sins themselves. You can, but it is not the same. It doesn’t take any humility to tell God you are sorry for your own sins. It does take humility to come before another human being. And yes priests are sinners too, but God has made this gift available through the priesthood. If it is just the same to tell God you are sorry on your own, then why is it that people often weep in confession after they have confessed something serious like adultery, or abortion? Because they have been healed. You can be sure they have already told God a hundred times they are sorry, but it doesn’t have the same effect. The power of the sacrament heals us and sets us free. That is why the Lord gave it to us. Also, if the Lord asks us to do it this way, who are we to tell him we don’t need to? That is Satan trying to stop us, because he knows that every time we repent of sin, he has less power over us.
We have a psychological need to tell someone when we have done something wrong. God in his wisdom knows that and has made it possible for us to do that in total secrecy through confession.
Going back to king David. What God did to David after his repentance is interesting. You might imagine that God would have struck David down, or removed him as King, but no. David is punished, yes, and the child that Bathsheba conceives dies. But in time Bathsheba has another child by David and that child turns out to be Solomon, the king who brings a reign of peace and also builds the temple. So God is saying a lot to us through this story. First, the importance of acknowledging our own wrongdoing. Second, that even when we have done wrong, God can and does still work through us, bringing good even out of the worst of mistakes we make. The important thing is that we do acknowledge and confess our sins.
Do you want to change the terrible things going on in the world? Start by going to confession. The less we go to confession, the less we have a sense of sin. The more we go to confession, the more we become aware of what sin is and we are filled with God's grace. God's grace is what is needed in the world more than anything else. The greatest healing gift in the Church is the forgiveness of sins.
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