Ever since creation, human beings were born out of sin. For eternity, humanity drowned in the sins of their fathers, and eventually in their own sins. Human life was created through the union of human bodies, through the coupling of the human flesh, through the physical alliance of form that transforms the formless into form. Life was created through the fall of man. His birth was the fall into original sin.
Humanity was not supposed to live with their sins. On this Earth, humans were destined to find a way to purify themselves. A few centuries ago, few members of the church found a peculiar way of clenching the sins of all infidels. The Sacrament of Confession was instituted through the church which created an opportunity for the sinners to confess their sins. Sinners were given the opportunity to be forgiven through the confession of their evils.
The act of confession ushered in the purification of the sinner. When the sinner fessed up, his con was dissolved. That was the original purpose of confession. To fess-up. A priest, a messenger of God, had to listen to these confessions through a dark window. A priest had to lend his ear of awareness so that he could hear all the evils of this world. A priest could not impart judgment on the sinner, but rather, as God had asked, the priest could only forgive.
The act of speaking by itself was curative in washing away all human sins. Simply by sharing wrongdoings released humanity from their sins and allowed them to conduct themselves in a new light. The confession was the way for a man to be born again. Born without sin. Born anew without all the weight of sins weighing on his soul. Priests were the chosen people who had to listen to the sins of all humans. It was the priests that purified humanity.
Have you ever wondered who did the Priest confess their own sins to? If we are all created in sin, the priests must have sinned at some point in their life. Priests confess their sins to other priests. Thus all the sins stay locked into the priesthood. All the evil secrets of the world remained forever locked into the dark basements of the church.
In the history of the world, there has never been a confession of a priest to the public. It is always the public that was able to confess their sins to a priest, but today, for the first time the public would have the opportunity to hear the confession of a priest. It is time for the public to become aware of their own sins. The time has come for public secrets to be revealed so that the priest can be released from his sins.
This is the first confession of a priest to the public.
Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.
Most days, I am the one who receives the confessions of people, but today I want to share my own confession with you. Every confession is sacrosanct. Every confession is above all the laws of the land. As a priest, I have always protected the confession of the public sinners, so today I expect you to protect my confession. I expect that you will carry my burdens with you for the rest of your life. You are not allowed to share my confession with anyone, even at the cost of your life. I am about to share with you my greatest secret, but after I share it with you, my secret will become our secret. Do not reveal our secret.
You are about to hear my confession through the darkness. You will not ask for my name nor for my motives, but you will only hear that which I have to tell you. I must tell you since I am no longer able to keep all these secrets within my own spirit. As a priest, I too dream of purity of soul and body. For too long my soul has been corrupted by the corruption of the other earthly beings.
For years I have listened to your public confessions. In a dark room, I sat and listened to the darkness of men so that they don’t have to live with their own sins. Millions of secrets were shared with me. Each secret was worse than the previous one. Each confession was more brutal than the one that preceded it. These confessions were never supposed to be revealed to the world. I was to become the veil of the sins of humanity. But now I wish to remove the vail. Now I will reveal your sins back to you.
For decades, I listened to the confessions of petty thieves who had to steal food in order to survive. The poor thieves did not make enough money with their daily labor so they were forced to steal from the rich. Poverty-stricken parents couldn’t put any food on their children’s mouths, so they had to strike a deal with the devil and rob and ravage the properties of the rich. The rich, wanting ever more lavish lifestyles, robbed the poor by paying them poor wages and thus kept themselves rich while they kept the poor, poor. I listened to the confessions of the rich and poor, and I forgave their greed.
I heard the confession of the cheating wives who despised their husbands for taking away their youth and beauty. The women had intercourse with other men because through the course of their lives, they lost respect and love for their husbands. In the arms of other men, they found that which they perceived to be lost. I also heard the stories of the cheating husbands who deplored their wives for taking away their freedoms. Between the legs of other women, they sought the void that would feel the emptiness of their hearts. I heard the confessions of the cheating wives and husbands, and I forgave their lust.
I witnessed the confessions of the children of war. The act of war was caused by the greed of the few who wished to take the bread of the many. Those who didn’t work for their daily bread, through sheer force wished to take the bread of others. I heard the confessions of millions of murders of innocent civilians, stories of soldiers who raped and pillaged, the cries and suffering of mutilated babies. I heard the confessions of the starving children of war and I forgave their gluttony.
All these people came to me because they had nowhere else to go. They had nobody onto whom they could confess. That is why all confessionals always happen in darkness. Their sins are not supposed to exist in the light of the day. People were coming every day to me to confess to God the impurity of their souls. They shared their stories, and my job was to only listen. I was not to impart judgment on their souls for I was also lending an ear to stories that humanity didn’t want to hear. It was only God that could lend his ear to the voices that nobody wanted to hear, and I was God’s proxy. I was the ear of God.
I heard stories of angry mothers killing her own children. Some drowned their infants in the rivers of the world before their children were baptized. Death was the way they calmed their waves of anger. The killing was how they stopped the cry of their infants. I also heard the confessions of children who fought and killed their own parents. There was so much anger, rage, and hatred in all children who were raised by the wrong parents. As a priest, I heard the confessions of all the angry children of God and I forgave their wrath.
The people of the world drowned in envy. The poor envied the rich for possessing material wealth. The ugly envied the beautiful for possessing a beauty that they did not possess. The stupid envied the intelligent, the short people envied the tall; the unlucky envied the lucky. Through their envy, the first conspired against the second. Out of envy, the first wished to take away the virtues of the second. People told me their sins of how they took away the honors of their brothers and sisters. I couldn’t do anything about their envy. I could only listen. I listened to these people and forgave their envy.
Many people confessed about the abdication of their responsibilities. Parents gave up on teaching their children on how to live noble lives. Workers gave up on their work since they got tired of obeying their managers. Presidents gave up presiding over their people for they lost the trust of their people. People felt that they had nothing in common with people who served them. People had no shared values among other people and they confessed their resignation from society and laws. In the rejection of their responsibilities, they rejected their own abilities. I listened to their empty words of abdication and rejection, and I accepted their word. I heard their confessions and I forgave their sloth.
I heard many sinful words and imagined many sinful deeds done by my confessors. People were capable of inflicting unspeakable cruelties onto one another. But there was one group of people that was exceptionally callous in their actions. This cold-hearted group of people was so ruthless that it pains me to even speak about them. I consider the most hateful those people on Earth who took pride in their evil. It was the people who came to me to brag about the height of their crimes that I considered most impure.
Most people who came to confessions were honest in their attempts to be relieved from their sins. But the people who took pride in their killings, rapes, and tortures made their confession a final trophy to the pinnacle of their evils. They confessed their sins through pride without any remorse. I heard the confessions of serial killers who told me in great detail the depth of their cruelties. As if that was not enough, they told me the details of their next killings. They shared with me the joy they found in killing their innocent victims. I was the last victim of their crimes because I had to accept their killings as the will of God. God was the creator of all evils, so I believed that God made me his last victim as a result of His will.
I listened to these prideful confessions as I did with all the others. I heard everything they had done and everything they wished to do. I learned about the pleasures they took in their killings and rapes. I understood the depth of their evil that had no end. They did not repent for their crimes, but rather they took pride in them. They showed no remorse, no regrets for the actions they had caused. These sinners took pride in their sin. They told me that they will kill and rape again and again. The prideful children continued doing evil until the laws of the land caught up with them. I listened to these prideful sinners and with a heavy heart forgave their pride.
Every day, for years I accepted the confessions of the people who came to me. And I, the honorable priest forgave all the sins of humanity. I forgave the sins that I wished to forgive. I forgave the sins that I wished I didn’t forgive. I forgave without exceptions. That was how God told me to forgive. Forgiveness was created for giving.
I come to you today so that you too can hear the sins of your humanity. I wish to know if you too are willing to accept the sins of humanity. I wish to know if your forgiveness also extended to all the sinners of the world. All these confessions left a permanent mark on my unyielding and unquestioning love for God. If God was loving, how could he create such cruelties and evils? I believed that he was forgiving, and I accepted all the crimes and sins of men. I accepted them, and I forgave them.
Witnessing so many cruelties every day through their confessions, made my own soul impure. Hearing stories of sins, made my own spirit filled with the sins of men. But a priest’s duty was not to be filled with sins, but rather to remain pure. My greatest wish was to empty all the sins of humanity. When I freed the people of their sins, I took their sins from their awareness into my own awareness. People upon their confession became free, but I became the one who carried their sins onto my own shoulders. I was the one who carried their cross onto the holy mountain called life.
I carried their sins day and night. But there came a time when their sins became too heavy for my own soul. There came a time when I could no longer carry all the sins of the world. All the transgressions of the world were buried deep into my subconscious mind. But just because their sins were buried, doesn’t mean that their sins were forgotten. I never forgot their sins. Such evils could never be forgotten, for if they are ever forgotten, they will be repeated again. The humanity that forgets its mistakes is doomed to repeat them. I never forgot any of their mistakes.
All priests get sworn into lifelong clerical celibacy. As a priest, I also gave my vow of sexual abstinence for the duration of my life. I rejected all the desires of the body in order to maintain the purity of my spirit. But all repressed desires eventually flowed to the surface of my soul. Everything that was repressed and hidden from my awareness eventually came out of hiding and back into my awareness. I have shared the sins of humanity with you so that I can get them out of my awareness. I wished to be pure again without any sins. I wished to confess to you the sins of the sinful humanity, but now it is time to confess my own sin.
Oh, Father, much like humanity, I too have sinned. Please forgive me.
I have repressed my sexuality for decades in order to remain pure. But the confessions of others made my impure. I carried too much guilt while I only sought innocence. The only innocence that I ever saw was on the faces of young boys. Children for me symbolized the purity I sought. Children were too young to commit any sins. They lacked awareness of good or evil. Their spirits are unaffected by the ugliness of the world, and I saw tremendous beauty in this fact. When every adult in the room carried sins, it was only the children that carried the torch of innocence. Only in the innocent children, I saw the light out of my darkness.
More than anything I yearned from innocence out of the sins of humanity. There came a day when my repressed desires floated to the surface. And that crucial day, created new sins in my spirits which I now carry in shame. It is for this crucial day that I now wish to confess to you. I wish to confess my impure thoughts and eyes that saw a young boy and wished for his embrace. I wished to return back to my childhood innocence, and the innocent boy seemed to be the path to return back my freedom without any guilt.
That day when all the sins of humanity floated back to the surface of my own mind, I wished to reject everything I had repressed for so long. Something pressed on my soul that wished to throw away the vow of celibacy and take away the innocence of the young boy. My soul, which like a compressed spring had compressed the sins of all humanity sought to recoil into freedom and innocence. My soul wished to transfer all my sins back to the innocent little boy.
With great shame, I come to admit to you the source of my own sin. I believed that an innocent and pure young boy can take me back to my own path of purity. I believed that renouncing my celibacy would bring me back to the times of my own childhood days. That was the path that I thought could take me out of my sins. I believed that the young boy was the way for me to find my purity again.
But I didn’t do that evil and shameful deed. I couldn’t take the innocence of a little boy. Instead, I decided that the proper way out of sins is that you should hear my confession. I listened to your sins for my whole life, but now it came time for you to hear my own confession. For eternity, I had listened to the confession of the public and the public had never heard the confession of a priest. For the first time in the history of humanity, I came to tell you that I repent my sins. I guess I am not much different than you. I am not much different than other humans. I too have impure thoughts. I too live an impure life. I too deeply regret my sins.
That is my confession. I forgave humanity for their sins. It took true humility to go beyond my pride and see all sinful children as mere imperfect humans. What is a priest but a human who wished for perfection only to achieve imperfection. What is a priest but a human who gave his forgiveness to those who wished to be forgiven. Forgiveness is for giving.
Can you absolve me of my own sin?
Can you give me your forgiveness?
Can you forgive me?
Amen.