Why Don't I Feel Forgiven After Confession?

Why do lingering feelings of guilt, shame, doubt still haunt us after we have confessed our sins which we think are the cause for such feelings? St. Thomas Aquinas may have some insight into the issue here when he says, "...passion is properly to be found where there is corporeal transmutation." Which is just basically to say that when you have a certain emotion, there is a corresponding bodily change. When you feel fear, your heart races, you begin to sweat. When you see the woman you are infatuated with, you have a slight pain in your stomach. When you see your wife walk over to the bed to fulfill marital duties, you also have an appropriate physical response. 

And is well known, there is a difference between your passions and your intellect, or your will, in this case. When our intellect craves for something, we don't "feel" it like we feel our emotions. If I feel hungry, I have a bodily reaction to it, and is very immediate. When I feel sad, I have an immediate desire to cry. When I feel angry, I have an immediate temperature rise in my face. However, when the intellect desires something, like the desire to be ascetic, I don't feel it like I feel hunger. When my intellect desires to not be saddened by the passing of a loved one, I don't feel that desire like I feel the desire to cry. When my intellect tries to tame and channel my anger, I don't feel that desire like I feel my cheeks warming up. The emotions have an immediacy to it that the intellect does not. The emotions always demand our attention, while our intellect and will does not. 

Now, with that background, we ask, why don't I feel forgiven after confession? It may be because your body hasn't reacted to it yet. And because your body hasn't reacted, you may be confusing your bodily changes with your objective state of being, being forgiven. If you don't "feel" forgiven, it is because you are feeling with your body, with your senses. Your body and senses are what we feel with. We do not feel with the intellect. So, perhaps it may be beneficial to stop for a moment, and think to yourself, after having left confession, "What precisely am I feeling, physically?" Is your heart rate a bit elevated? Is my blood pressure up? Try some breathing exercises. Recenter your body, undo the physical changes your emotions cause, and see if you feel differently. 

Perhaps you don't feel the disjuncture between God's grace and you. This applies also to forgiving others and forgiving yourself. Every instance of forgiveness assumes there is something to forgive, that some wrongdoing has occurred. And the natural bodily reaction to such injustices is anger, and anger has some commonly known physical correlates. So you may not feel forgiven because you are still angry. If your girlfriend broke up with you for what you take to be unjust reasons, anger is justified. If you are angry at yourself for having committed some act that would be the cause for a break up, you would be just to be angry at yourself. And because your anger would be just, forgiveness would not be the absence of anger. So it is okay to still be angry and be in a forgiven state. It is anger under the control of reason. And what reason is that? The reason for anger: to correct the wrongdoer. So the best way to let go of the anger is have it fulfill its end: correct the wrongdoer. 

If your girlfriend broke up with you for dumb reasons: correct her. "This was not okay. I need you to see that this was not okay. I have been wounded greatly by you, and I need you to own up to it with a contrite heart." If your girlfriend broke up with you because you cheated on her, you need to be corrected. "I'm sorry I was unfaithful. I have hurt you in ways I cannot imagine. I will not do this to you, or to anyone else I may be with for as long as I shall live." Or something like that. How anger is properly resolved varies from case to case. 

What if that correction is no longer feasible, and you sit in unresolved anger? Maybe your girlfriend moved away before the issue could be resolved. Maybe I'll never see her again. What then? Here, it is important to know that a persons correction may not directly involve you. You may need to pray for a persons correction, and be prepared to not ever know whether that correction ever happened this side of heaven. This is typical of martyrs. And like martyrdom, it will not be easy. It is not easy to say, "God, I pray that you heal this person that has hurt me and you lead them to repentance so that I may be full of joy when I see them in heaven." 

And finally, what happens if we are not willing to do that? What happens when we are not willing to do what is hard? At this point, I have no answers. As Our Lord taught us to pray, "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." If we do not forgive others as we have been forgiven, this is simply to fail in your Christian life. This is where the buck stops. And it isn't pretty. So pray for another. 

Prayer, then, is the answer. As always. 

Content taken from Steven J. Jensen's book "Living the Good Life" and Fr. Brian Mullady's homily.