Confession has a much deeper place in the history of Christianity, especially at this time of year. As I write this, I find myself in the middle of the second week of the Lenten season, a time of introspection, reflection, transformation, and, yes, confession. During Lent, we discover the important place of confession in the process of transformation. Confession opens us up to the confronting work of the Spirit of God. Yet, sometimes, perhaps most of the time, we find ourselves pushing ahead with the masses at such a breakneck pace that "pausing," stopping for confession, is an impossible task.
Perhaps that is why Kierkegaard's Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing is one of my Lenten favorites. I continually find myself pulling this tattered, partially digested (by Shiloh, the family Labrador!) book off of the shelf around this time each year. The book is Kierkegaard's take on the "spiritual preparation for the Office of Confession" in the church. (The prayer that opens and closes that book are worth the price of the volume.) I leave you with these excerpts that serve as his summation of the volume:
My listener! Do you remember now, how this talk began? Let me call it back to you remembrance. It is true that the temporal order has its time; but the Eternal shall always have time. If this should not happen within a man’s life, then the Eternal comes again under another name, and once again shall always have time. This is repentance. And since at present no man’s life is lived in perfection, but each one in frailty, so Providence has given man two companions for his journey, one calls him forward, the other calls him back. But the call of repentance [the call back] is always at the eleventh hour, but not in the sense of being precipitate. For confession is a holy act, which calls for a collected mind. A collected mind is a mind that has collected itself from every distraction, from every relation, in order to center itself upon this relation to itself as an individual who is responsible to God. It is a mind that has collected itself from every distraction, and therefore also from all comparison. For comparison may either tempt a man to an earthly and fortuitous despondency because the one who compares must admit to himself that he is behind many others, or it may tempt him to pride, because, humanly speaking, he seems to be ahead of many others.
A new expression of the true extremity of the eleventh hour comes when the penitent has withdrawn himself from every relation in order to center himself upon his relation to himself as an individual. By this he becomes responsible for every relation in which he ordinarily stands, and he is outside of any comparison. The more use one makes of comparison, the more it seems that there is still plenty of time. The more a man makes use of comparison, the more indolent and the more wretched his life becomes. But when all comparison is relinquished forever then a man confesses as an individual before God—and he is outside any comparison, just as the demand which purity of heart lays upon him is outside of comparison. Purity of heart is what God requires of him and the penitent demands it of himself before God. Yes, it is just on this account that he confesses his sins. And heavy as the way and the hour of the confession may be, yet the penitent wins the Eternal. He is strengthened in the consciousness that he is an individual, and in the task of truthfully willing only one thing….
For pausing [answering the companion calling one back] is not a sluggish response. Pausing is also movement. It is the inward movement of the heart. To pause is to deepen oneself in inwardness. But merely going further is to go straight in the direction of superficiality. But that way one does not come to will only one thing. Only if at sometime he decisively stopped going further and then again came to a pause, as he went further, only then could he will only one thing.
Father in Heaven! What is a man without Thee! What is all that he knows, vast accumulation though it be, but a chipped fragment if he does not know Thee! What is all his striving, could it even encompass the world, but a half-finished work if he does not know Thee: Thee the One, who art one thing and who are all! So may Thou give to the intellect, wisdom to comprehend that one thing; to the heart, sincerity to receive this understanding; to the will, purity that wills only one thing. In prosperity may Thou grant perseverance to will one thing; amid distractions, collectedness to will one thing; in suffering, patience to will one thing. Oh, Thou that giveth both the beginning and the completion, may Thou early, at the dawn of day, give to the young man the resolution to will one thing. As the day wanes, may Thou give to the old man a renewed remembrance of his first resolution, that the first may be like the last, the last like the first, in possession of a life that has willed only one thing. Alas, but this has indeed not come to pass. Something has come in between. The separation of sin lies in between. Each day, and day after day something is being placed in between: delay, blockage, interruption, delusion, corruption. So in this time of repentance may Thou give the courage once again to will one thing. True, it is an interruption of our daily tasks; we do lay down our work as though it were a day of rest, when the penitent (and it is only in a time of repentance that the heavy-laden worker may be quiet in the confession of sin) is alone before Thee in self-accusation. This is indeed an interruption. But it is an interruption that searches back into its very beginnings that it might bind up anew that which sin has separated that in its grief might atone for lost time, that in its anxiety in might bring to completion that which lies before it. Oh, Thou that givest both the beginning and the completion, give Thou victory in the day of need so that what neither a man’s burning wish nor his determined resolution may attain to, may be granted unto him in the sorrowing of repentance: to will only one thing.
(From Purity of Heart, 216-219)
1 comment:
Thanks for sharing that Eric! I really enjoyed it.
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