PrayTheRosary Apostolate

Dear Bill,
 Thank you for a wonderful question, the answer to which we should all consider, frequently, so as to never lose the piety and gratitude we should feel towards the wondrous and merciful Sacrament of Penance, instituted by Our Divine Savior, by which our souls can be healed.   

What our souls ultimately seek during our life journey is communion with God. Sin is separation from God. The communion with God that was given on the first day of creation is fractured by sin, and eternal life can only be granted when that fracture is healed. Some consider the Sacrament of Penance as the most personal and difficult aspect of our effort.

Confession of our sins is basic and necessary to achieve this union with God. But why to a priest?
 

       It is the divinely ordained teaching authority of the Church that assures us of the validity and necessity of the Sacraments; especially that of Confession.  The sacrament of Penance (confession), the Church teaches, is the normal, necessary means by which a Christian receives the forgiveness of God.  The efficacy of confession is derived from Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross, where He served as the divine substitute for our transgressions.   Not only does the Church teach the need of regular confession, but the Bible also records Christ’s institution of the sacrament following His resurrection from the dead when He first appeared to the assembly of apostles (John 20:19-23): 

"On the evening of the first day of the week, when the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.”  When He had said this He showed them His hands and his side.  The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.  Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you.  As the Father has sent Me, so I send you.”  And when He said this, He breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the holy Spirit.  Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” 

This moment, when Jesus breathed on His apostles, constituted both the institution of the Catholic ministerial priesthood and the sacrament of confession.   Christ gave His first priests, the apostles, the authority to forgive and retain sins.  It was His intention that all sin be forgiven through the Church by aural confession of sins to the priest.  We should realize that in Holy Scripture God breathed on man only twice: once when He breathed life into the clay of earth to create man (Genesis 2:7) and the second time when He breathed the life of grace into His Church.  Both instances were that of an intimate, riveting moment between God and man.  It is clear that the ability to forgive and retain sin given to the apostles, requires that each of us (even to this day)  confess our sins to the priests of the Church so that our sins can be forgiven or retained.

For further reading, Father C. O'Donnell, a Carmelite, gives a wonderful explanation here:

http://www.carmelites.ie/Archive/priestconfess.htm