Immersed in Christ: Wednesday, July 28, 2021

A Divine-Human Encounter

Confession is an act of faith and trust in God that is experienced as real because it is embodied in a human interaction with another human being.

There is no real act of self-revelation when we confessor sins to God—God already knows them. The risk, the vulnerability, and therefore the experience of love and trust come through sacramental confession because we are exposing ourselves to someone who does not know our sins. That is what makes it human. But we are doing so as an expression and experience of love and trust in God. That is what makes it divine.

When we confess our sins to another human being, accepting that person as Jesus embodied and acting on earth, we confess to the incarnate God in an interaction that is both human and divine. It is our human interaction with God, the two of us speaking and acting in a physical body, through human words and gestures, that makes our confession “sacramental.”