His master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant!
I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to.
Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant,
as I had pity on you?’
Swiss Catholic convert, physician, mystic, and author of some sixty books of spirituality and theology, Adrienne von Speyr (1902 – 1967) wrote a four-volume commentary on the Gospel of Saint John. I have found her insight on the mystery of sin and grace especially helpful in understanding how devout Catholics approach frequent confession:
Those who know what love means know that in confessing their sins on the basis of the law, they are unable to speak of their real sins. The law is simply incapable of registering or expressing their sins. Even if a man has really committed the various wrongs that he confesses, the sum of these formulated wrongs is never identical with his sin before God. An accusation formulated according to the law is a symbolic accusation.
But when a sinner who knows what love is examines his conscience in order to show it to God in Confession, he sees within his soul, a formless swamp of sin, with all sorts of half-submerged objects projecting from it. He catches hold of a few, of as many as he can hold, so as to give the swamp some sort of form. But he knows perfectly well that he is not exhausting the swamp; behind the contour he has given his sins lies the formless and immense pool of his sinfulness. All that remains unsaid, that he will never be able to say. All that he has forgotten, that he never fully knew, that he will never be able to see.
In the moment of absolution. He feels the boundlessness of the unsaid: the greatness of the grace that pours in upon him enables him to gauge the greatness of the guilt forgiven him. How deep the vessel must be that needs so much to fill it! (Vol I, Chapters 1-5; pages 28-129)
If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you.But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.
As we confess our sins, it is certainly good to review whatever venial sins we have actually committed since our last confession -- if we can think of any. But we should also consider that formless, filthy, fetid mire in which we're all deeply, hopelessly immersed. It doesn't go away because we ignore it or wish it weren't there.
We have sinned; we and our fathers have sinned. As the Bible says several times. A more contemporary expression might say, "We have sinned; we and our fathers, mothers, children, along with our fellow Catholics, Christians, and citizens have sinned -- plus our descendants yet to be born who will sin -- against the generosity, graces, blessings, opportunities, privileges, and rights which came with our birth."
How deep the vessel must be that needs so much to fill it!
