Today’s essay is paired with another, appearing tomorrow, which will look closely at the theology of the traditional Absolution.Â
Lent is a penitential season, which the Church calls us to keep holy by, among other things, “self-examination and repentance.” It is therefore a fitting time for careful reflection on a familiar Anglican prayer of repentance, the General Confession.
First, we should acknowledge the plurality of “confessions of sin” used by Anglicans in eucharistic liturgies. The one I have in mind is the classic source for them all, the General Confession that first appeared in Thomas Cranmer’s Order for Communion (1548). There is a line from this source to many other confessions and, of course, the Cranmerian confession itself continues to be prayed regularly in many churches. Episcopalians, for example, may know it through the Holy Eucharist Rite I in the Book of Common Prayer (1979).
Here, then, is that “Ur” text from Cranmer:
Almighty God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Maker of all things, Judge of all men; We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, Which we, from time to time, most grievously have committed, By thought, word, and deed, Against thy Divine Majesty, Provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us. We do earnestly repent, And are heartily sorry for these our misdoings; The remembrance of them is grievous unto us; The burden of them is intolerable. Have mercy upon us, Have mercy upon us, most merciful Father; For thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, Forgive us all that is past; And grant that we may ever hereafter Serve and please thee In newness of life, To the honour and glory of thy Name; Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Many Anglicans, of course, will be much more familiar with variants now used across the Anglican Communion, such as the confession of sin in Rite II in the Episcopal Church. But I hope that even those who do not regularly pray these sturdy old words—in continual use for nearly half a millennium—will sense an affinity and thus find these reflections spiritually fruitful.
After all, Cranmer’s 16th-century General Confession shares a basic shape with more contemporary confessions stemming from the liturgical movement, such as Rite II. Cranmer’s confession consists of three sentences, giving three movements to the prayer. There is first (a) an acknowledgement of sin, leading to (b) an expression of contrition, and finally (c) a plea for mercy. Let’s consider each in turn.
- Acknowledgement of Sin
Almighty God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Maker of all things, Judge of all men; We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, Which we, from time to time, most grievously have committed, By thought, word, and deed, Against thy Divine Majesty, Provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us.
Notice, first, the way in which God is addressed. The confession speaks of God as “Almighty,” as the “Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” as “Maker of all things,” and finally as “Judge of all men.” The cumulative effect of these four titles is to charge the prayer with a strong sense of gravity. It is as if we are reminding ourselves of exactly Who it is we are speaking to, that we are making our confession to the living God, before whom “no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account” (Heb. 4:13).
The order of these titles is also significant: we first address God as the “Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” and only then as “Judge of all men.” This is a crucial ordering because the Lord Jesus is the definitive revelation of God. Only as the “Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” can God rightly be understood as “Judge of all men.” The Cross reveals the nature of the judgment of God; that God does not give us what we deserve but embraces us in the Son.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:16-17). Only as we know God as the “Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” do we know God as our “most merciful Father”; indeed, it is only through Jesus that we dare to address God as “our Father” at all. Only as the “Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” do we know that “God is love” (1 John 4:16).
Only after establishing to Whom we are confessing does the prayer continue: “We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness.” It is a frank confession. There is no prevaricating, no attempt at excuse, only a straightforward acknowledgment of sin. And, notice, we confess both that we have done wrong (“our manifold sins”) and that we ourselves have gone wrong, that we are in a state of “wickedness,” a state of sinfulness, that our posture toward God and neighbor is all wrong.
And we have other things to say about our sins: We say that they are “manifold,” that is, many and various. We say that they are our fault (“which we most grievously have committed”); we take responsibility for our actions, we do not point the finger at someone else or at some extenuating circumstance. When I say this prayer, I am owning that my sin is, as a traditional prayer puts it, “my fault, my own fault, my own most grievous fault” (mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa). We also recognize that sin is not limited to actions, but includes wrongs done “by thought, word, and deed.” (The Rite II confession recognizes that we can sin by omission, “by what we have left undone.”) That is, the prayer indicates that sin is a matter of the heart—a theme central to the teaching of Jesus (see Matt. 5:21–22; 5:27–28; Mark 7:21–23). Finally, we acknowledge that our sin is an offense against God: “Against thy Divine Majesty.” Or as the Rite II confession puts it, “We have sinned against you.” It’s a deeply important point: all our sins—including those against our neighbor—are ultimately sins against God, “Provoking most justly [God’s] wrath and indignation against us.”
Now, the language of God’s “wrath” and “indignation” may be a stumbling block to some—and perhaps this is why it is not included in Rite II. But it is decidedly scriptural language and so is not to be rejected out of hand. Moreover, the liturgy places much more emphasis on God’s mercy. By my count, this is the only mention of “wrath” in the whole Communion service, while references to God’s mercy are manifold. For example, the absolution (“Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who of his great mercy hath promised forgiveness of sins”); the Eucharistic Prayer (“of thy tender mercy”); and the Prayer of Humble Access (“O merciful Lord … thy manifold and great mercies … whose property is always to have mercy”). Indeed, the General Confession itself ends with the emphasis firmly on God as the “most merciful Father.” Even in this prayer, “his wrath endures but the twinkling of an eye” (Ps. 30:5).
- Expression of Contrition
We do earnestly repent, And are heartily sorry for these our misdoings; The remembrance of them is grievous unto us; The burden of them is intolerable.
The second movement of the General Confession is its heart: a cry of contrition. It both expresses heartfelt sorrow and, more importantly, commits to change, to repentance. (The Rite II language is precisely equivalent: “We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.”) Repentance (metanoia) is the crucial thing; it is a change of mind, a turning away from sin and a turning again to God. It is a return to baptism. To repent is to be converted.
The prayer teaches us that our misdoings are not only the cause of sorrow, but also damaging to us. “The remembrance of them is grievous unto us,” we say, “The burden of them is intolerable.” Misdeeds remembered harm and oppress us; they are grave, heavy; they burden and encumber us. They are crushing us to death.
The image of an intolerable burden is especially striking—and comes directly from Holy Scripture. Gary Anderson, in his seminal study Sin: A History, demonstrated that the image of sin as a heavy weight or burden is the most common metaphor for sin in the Hebrew Bible. Anderson draws attention to its prevalence by rendering the idiom concretely. Thus, condemned Cain cries out, “The weight of my sin is too much for me to bear” (Gen. 4:13, trans. Anderson). And, in Leviticus, we read that “anyone who blasphemes his God shall bear the weight of his sin” (Lev. 5:1, trans. Anderson). The task of the scapegoat on the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16), Anderson argues, is straightforward: “to carry the burden of Israel’s sins,” bearing their weight into the wilderness, the place of nothingness.
The idea of sin as an intolerable burden—and its removal—was given vivid literary expression by that 17th-century Puritan writer John Bunyan in his Pilgrim’s Progress. The protagonist, Christian, begins his journey carrying a load on his back. He carries the burden until he comes to a hill with a cross on the top and a grave at the bottom. Then, Bunyan writes,
I saw in my dream, that just as Christian came up with the cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back, and began to tumble, and so continued to do till it came to the mouth of the sepulchre, where it fell in, and I saw it no more.
Then was Christian glad and lightsome, and said with a merry heart, “He hath given me rest by his sorrow, and life by his death.” Then he stood still a while, to look and wonder; for it was very surprising to him that the sight of the cross should thus ease him of his burden.
- Plea for Mercy
Have mercy upon us, Have mercy upon us, most merciful Father; For thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, Forgive us all that is past; And grant that we may ever hereafter Serve and please thee In newness of life, To the honour and glory of thy Name.
The end of the General Confession leads us to the foot of the Cross, pleading for mercy for Christ’s sake. “Have mercy upon us, Have mercy upon us, most merciful Father,” we cry. The doubling of the eleison lends a note of desperation to the plea. If even the memory of our sins is grievous, if their burden is intolerable to us, then we most urgently need relief. The language of this prayer teaches us the critical nature of our condition. It is unbearable. We are in acute danger. We require immediate help. We cry: “Rescue us!”
Our doubled cry for mercy bears a double request: we ask God both to have mercy upon our past and to have mercy upon our future. “Forgive us all that is past,” we plead. We ask our most merciful Father to remove the intolerable burden, to bear away the burden of our sin, to not hold our past against us. And we pray for future mercy: “Grant that we may ever hereafter serve and please thee in newness of life.” We ask God to make our life new.
Here again the language is thoroughly scriptural: the phrase “newness of life” comes from Romans, in which Paul speaks of the Christian life as a spiritual sharing in the death and resurrection of Jesus:
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. (6:3–4)
The parallel with the resurrection of Jesus makes it very clear that this “newness of life” is entirely the gift of God. We cannot serve and please God in newness of life by trying harder to be good. God alone grants this. It is all grace.
Answer
The Absolution follows the General Confession. The priest declares that God will give us what we have asked. “Ask, and it shall be given you” (Matt. 7:7). The priest’s words correspond to the words of our confession:
Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who of his great mercy hath promised forgiveness of sins to all those who with hearty repentance and true faith turn unto him, have mercy upon you, pardon and deliver you from all your sins, confirm and strengthen you in all goodness, and bring you to everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
We pleaded for mercy—and mercy we receive. We asked for forgiveness—and we are pardoned. We cried out under an intolerable burden—and we are delivered. We asked for “newness of life”—and new life we receive, the “new and unending life” given to us through Jesus Christ our Lord. We are about to receive his Body and Blood, “that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us.” Already our prayer is being answered.
The Rev. Christopher Yoder is rector of All Souls’ Episcopal Church, Oklahoma City. Raised in western Pennsylvania, he studied at Wheaton College and Duke Divinity School.
