Our Need for Forgiveness: Our Search for Wholeness

The practice of confession in the context of a liturgy or in a private ecclesiastical setting has declined drastically over the past fifty years, and in particular since the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century. Has the need for forgiveness diminished? Or have we forgotten that our search for wholeness begins with a contrite heart over past wrongs and the willingness to allow God to restore and guide us? I don’t think so.

The need for hearing the words spoken as if they were Christ’s is everyone’s need, and the need for restoration and correction, for a turning and a…