The importance of sacred silence when making a Confession

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s about six weeks since my last Confession. And, listen, I find it hard to prepare for Confession.

I hate having to sit down and recall that I am not as good and prudent and kind as I prefer to believe I am. I find it unpleasant to mull over the times when I could have done better and didn’t. I find it difficult to put excruciatingly embarrassing memories of moral failure into words. It is much easier just to ignore all that until the last possible moment in Holy Week, you know? And, boy, was I freaked out when I showed up on Holy Saturday and you weren’t there!

I know I should have known better than to show up on Holy Saturday, which is smack in the middle of the busiest weekend of your year, without phoning ahead. Really, I am just so grateful that you are in the Confession room for an hour most Saturdays, year in and year out. I like to think that even if nobody ever came, you would still be there, waiting for us. I’m sure you would. And although I don’t like preparing for Confession, I like going to Confession through you.

I think it’s because you radiate peace. You make Confession so simple. You don’t attempt psychotherapy or even exegesis. You just listen, say kindly words, tell me to thank God for giving me the grace to make a good Confession and then pronounce the wonderfully familiar old formulas plus an extra blessing. For a second I get a glimpse of what it might be to be outside time.

Unfortunately I couldn’t get to you today. The church doors were unlocked, and I could see other penitents waiting for you, but just as I set foot inside the church I was assailed by recorded music. I was stunned because the music was so loud and such a contrast to your church’s beautiful 19th-century bones and the peace I’ve grown used to finding within them.

Normally before I see you, I pray a little in the silence and do an examination of conscience with my missal. Well, Father, in that din I couldn’t hear myself pray to God, let alone hear what God might be saying to me. I even stuck my fingers in my ears, but it was no good. And there were five people ahead of me.

Now, since I only know you from behind a grille — well, actually, someone has removed the grille, so I just knelt behind you last time — I don’t know if you love that kind of music and think it is great. I know the composer has won awards and that choirs love his stuff. But I know a little about music, and I don’t think his pop-infused stuff is suitable for private prayer, let alone congregational singing. It’s just too sentimental and screechy. It would make Bach blench. I hope you don’t mind me saying that, Father. 

But even if the music had been good, it would not have helped me prepare myself for the sacrament better than sacred silence does. And at the volume today’s music was blaring, it still would have driven me from the church. If it was to help mask the voices in the Confession room, I can assure whomever it was unnecessary.

I was so disheartened. It was  like walking into friend’s home, expecting to find a welcome, and being attacked by the friend with Bibles, cartoon Bibles with sharp corners. Sacred music, like the Bible, should not be reduced to cartoons and should not be used as missiles. 

If I had had to brave a Bible-chucking mob, I think I might still have managed to get to you. Having steeled myself to look at my soul long enough to make a good Confession, I was determined to do so. But the problem with music is that it enters the very body and the very brain of everyone within earshot. It is hard not to be affected by it, and when it is bad music or (if you feel this is purely a matter of taste) unpleasant, unwelcome music, it is torture — not just physical and mental, in this case, but spiritual.

Fortunately, I am not conscious of any serious sin, just an unhappy collection of evidence that I haven’t done as well as I might have done since I last saw you. But, since you and I were separated by a wall of sound, I hope I will be able to see another priest before he says Mass tomorrow. I’ll do my best to find a quiet place beforehand. It’s a noisy world, Father, isn’t it? 

With filial love,
a Penitent