A parishioner recently remarked: “The thing I don’t like about our liturgy is that it compelled my mother, who was a saint, to get down on her knees and call herself a ‘miserable sinner.’”

I have often heard someone say: “I live a pretty decent life, hence I don’t see why I have to come to church and pretend that I am more of a sinner than I think I am.”

If you were to ask either of the persons expressing these views the question “Are all men sinners?” they would assent vigorously, but one is unrealistic about his mother and the other about himself.

I have sympathy for the man who feels that “A General Confession” puts him in the position of a hypocrite by making him repeat words which he does not honestly and completely believe, such as “There is no health in us” or “The remembrance of them is grievous unto us; the burden of them is intolerable.’’

Archbishop Temple once remarked that for many people the problem is not that they feel their sins to be intolerable but rather enjoyable. If we are honest, we will find that the remembrance of many of our sins is not “grievous.” Perhaps it ought to be, but that is another matter.

This problem has been recognized by the Standing Liturgical Commission of our Church, which is constantly working on the revision of the Prayer Book. In their suggested revisions they are omitting the phrases I have mentioned plus some other phrases, such as “miserable offenders” and “provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us.”

For anyone to repeat “A General Confession” with honesty and sincerity it is essential both that he understand its meaning and use in the context of the service and the psychology of human nature.

In the first place the prayer of General Confession is not designed to express a long continued mood of guilt and penitence, but a particular feeling and conviction at a particular time. Furthermore, it is not designed to express a mood which we should carry with us during the week, but one which we feel at a certain time when, in the presence of God, we examine and reflect upon our lives and our modes of behavior. Perhaps an analogy would be helpful. When a child does wrong and then comes and confesses to his parents, they administer what they believe to be a just punishment and at the same time let him know that he is sincerely forgiven, with the result that the child feels released from the burden of past sin and gains a new lease on life. Confession and the knowledge of forgiveness has prevented the consciousness of wrong doing from hanging over the child like a cloud and blighting his life so that he goes about feeling miserable. Knowing he is forgiven, he is able to go about normally and happily.

All parents have seen one of their children appear to be awkward and diffident or in some other way not himself. The parents recognize something is wrong, but they don’t know what it is. They want to find out, because they know that the child is miserable. Perhaps they suspect what the difficulty is and ask the child if he did so and so. The child confesses that he did.

Again the punishment is given with forgiveness and the child goes away happy, feeling a sense of relief. He was afraid to confess his particular sin, not that he was afraid of the punishment, as he really felt that he should be punished and recognized that the punishment was just, but he was afraid that his parents would not be forgiving. Through their forgiving love he is given a release from the past and the opportunity to start a new life.

Similarly in our relation to God, when we have done wrong and feel shame and remorse, if this feeling continues over a long period of time, it would create in us an inferiority complex or guilt psychosis or it might even create in us the belief that we had committed the unpardonable sin; and if that hit us hard enough we might find ourselves in a mental hospital.

Thus the purpose of “A General Confession” is not to express a mood that should characterize our lives permanently or for long periods of time, but, on the contrary, to enable us to confess sincerely, to accept punishment, to receive forgiveness and above all the release that brings us to the point where, like St. Paul, “forgetting those things that are behind” we can “press on toward the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3: 13).

Therefore, the Absolution follows directly after the General Confession. In the Absolution the minister reminds the congregation that God is always ready to forgive, if we are penitent, have made such reparation as we can, and are prepared to receive that forgiveness.

We will understand “A General Confession” better if we consider the meaning of, “there is no health in us.” Many people do not like this statement. I think this is because they believe it relates to their physical condition and hence feel they are put in the position of stating an untruth. Consequently non-liturgical churches, which are not accustomed to symbolic liturgical language, will frequently use “A General Confession” omitting “there is no health in us.” This statement does not mean that we are diseased or unhealthy physically or mentally, but rather refers to our spiritual health, or our lack of it. In other words, we are not giving expression to a continuing feeling of total depravity or helplessness, but to a recognition by us that sooner or later in our struggle with evil, temptation, and sin we reach our wit’s end. We come to the end of our rope. We come to the point where we realize that we cannot overcome some besetting and attractive sin by ourselves, but need help from beyond ourselves. We come to the point where we recognize, as did the author of the Collect for the Second Sunday in Lent, that we have “no power of ourselves to help ourselves.”

The most graphic and vivid interpretation in the Bible of this experience, which I am sure we all have known in our own lives probably not once but many times, is given to us by St. Paul in the Seventh Chapter of the Epistle to the Romans: “The good that I would I do not, but the evil which I would not that I do.” I know what is right, but somehow I can’t do it. I know what is evil, but something within myself prevents me from refusing to become involved in it. Thus when St. Paul came to the point where he was at his wit’s end-that is, he found he couldn’t pull himself out of the mire of sin—he cried out, “O wretched man that I am. Who will rescue me from the body of this death?” We would probably say, “O God, I have struggled and I can’t seem to overcome. Help me! Help me!” This is what we mean when we say, “there is no health in us.” We recognize our need for the help of God. A few moments later, aware of God’s help, St. Paul cried, “I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Is there anyone of us who has not found himself at some time struggling with a besetting and singularly attractive sin, and yet strive as we would, we could not overcome it? We could not, because we were striving in the belief that we could order our lives without the aid of God. We were saying by our actions that “there is so much health in us, we don’t need the grace of God.” This was the sin of Adam, namely that he felt he could conduct his life in his own way without the help of or obedience to God.

It is only when we come to our wit’s end and, like St. Paul, recognizing our own weakness and our own wretchedness, cry, “Who will rescue me? ...”  that we become receptive to the grace of God and are able to conquer. If you say, “Conquer what?” the answer is simply conquer our own ego, that self-centeredness that makes us do the evil which we would not and prevents us from doing the good that we would. It is this ego which tells us we can arrange our lives in our own way and do not need God, the belief which is the root of all sin.

If we were continuously in a mood of affirming “there is no health in us,” we would soon find ourselves living in a state of abject despair; nevertheless, it is good for us to repeat the affirmation in “A General Confession” from time to time to remind ourselves that in our lives we know only too well that we are not sufficient of ourselves to help ourselves, and that we need the help of God.

If we have never felt deep remorse or penitence for anything we have said or done, it is due either to the fact that we do not know what sin is or we are unrealistic in examining our lives.

The average person, both in and outside the Church thinks of sin in terms of some flagrant violation of one of the Ten Commandments; and this despite the fact that Jesus summed up the Ten Commandments in one word, love. “Love the Lord thy God” and “love thy neighbor as thyself.”

Jesus taught that the great sin was to be hateful and unloving. In Jesus’ book the sinner was the man who so lacked love that he passed by a suffering neighbor. In Jesus’ book the sinner was the man who stored up food while others were starving. In Jesus’ book the sinner was the man who allowed pride to so dominate his life that he thanked God that he was not as other men. In Jesus’ book the sinner was the man who pushed people around rather than strive to be as a servant of God and man. Jesus looked behind the overt act to the motive: “What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a man” (Matthew 15: 18).

Paul expressed it well when he said, “We all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). In other words, sin is not to commit this or that particular crime or evil, but rather is to fall short of expressing in our lives as much as we can of the love of God. “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5 :48). All of us recognize that we can never be perfect. Sin is a relative term. It is falling short of saying and doing the best that we know. When we think in these terms we know that we fall short, we know that we have sinned grievously. None of us lives up to the best he has in the shop.

This is why the saying of “A General Confession” never bothers the most saintly people, the very people whose lives are the least sinful, for they are aware of this relativity. They are aware that they never actually give their best. I remember a conversation about religion I once had with a close personal friend, who was one of the most saintly persons that I have ever known. She was a devout Roman Catholic. She went to confession regularly and in the course of this discussion I said, “What can a person like you have to confess?” She thought a moment and then she said, “Last week I confessed a lack of fervency in prayer.” How many people would even be aware that that was a sin? Most of us would have to confess that we forget God completely much of the time, or that we had never even tried to commune with God. Most people certainly would be unaware that a lack of fervency in prayer was sinful!

Another reason that we may never experience penitence is that like Adam we blame others too easily. Adam blamed Eve, and Eve blamed the serpent. We too readily say, “Everybody does it, so why shouldn’t I,” even though our conscience tells us that it is not right. We tell ourselves that no one should expect us to live up to such a high ideal. Whether we think in terms of loving our neighbor or in terms of our marriage vows “To love, honor, and cherish, ...” we must always think in terms of falling short of the best that we can do or can give—of falling short of the glory of God.

Finally we must also remember that “A General Confession” is a corporate prayer. As we say the confession we confess not only our individual sins but the sins of the society of which we are part and for whose life we share some responsibility. In so far as we fail to combat and to eradicate evil prejudices in ourselves and the society about us, we sin. Insofar as we fail to strive to do our part in creating a community in which there are no slums, poverty, or other conditions which are breeding grounds for delinquency and crime, we are sinners. In a word inasmuch as none of us does all that he can, our Confession is at least a recognition that we are aware of and sorry for our share of responsibility for the sins of the social order as well as for our individual sins, or for the sins of the Church as a corporate fellowship as well as for our individual sins.

The story is told that the pre-Raphaelite painter, Burne-Jones, in the last week of his life, having suffered a crippling stroke, was sitting in a chair in his living room, next door to his studio, when a young artist came and asked him if he could see his paintings. Burne-Jones, after expressing his regret that he wasn’t able to show him through the studio himself, invited the young artist to go into his studio and look over the paintings. The young artist did so, and when he returned to thank Burne-Jones for allowing him the privilege of going through his studio, he paid him a very high compliment by simply saying: “Sir, I’m going home to begin again.”

The Absolution should send us home with a new lease on life—to begin again.