Fr. Gregory has a glorious post on confession. It is the first in a two part series on confession with this post centering on the historical growth and practice of confession in the monastic setting.
...Historically, the sacrament confession as we have it today developed out of the monastic practice of the novice on a daily basis revealing his thoughts to his abbot or spiritual elder. As more and more it became the custom of the church to ordained monastics to the episcopate, this monastic practice of confession of thoughts was integrated into the pastoral life of the Church. In other words, personal spiritual direction grounded in a trusting relationship between a spiritual father and his spiritual child, is the context out of which the contemporary practice of confession develops.
One of the things that strikes me as interesting about the relationship between spiritual father and spiritual child in a monastic setting is that the participants shared a common life. By this I mean they shared a regular life of not only of communal prayer and fasting, but manual labor a common table and dependence on one and other for their daily lives. Their relationship in other words was not purely formal but rather we might say domestic. This life of everyday intimacy demanded from the participants a fairly high degree of trust. Yes certainly the novice was dependent upon the elder for spiritual guidance and instruction and so had to trust him.
But the elder was also in a way dependent upon the novice. What I mean by this is nothing particularly extraordinary, nothing that anyone in the family doesn't know already. Food must be prepared chores must be done as well as all of the ordinary activity that makes up a common life. And so again, their life was a shared life...
One of the things that strikes me as interesting about the relationship between spiritual father and spiritual child in a monastic setting is that the participants shared a common life. By this I mean they shared a regular life of not only of communal prayer and fasting, but manual labor a common table and dependence on one and other for their daily lives. Their relationship in other words was not purely formal but rather we might say domestic. This life of everyday intimacy demanded from the participants a fairly high degree of trust. Yes certainly the novice was dependent upon the elder for spiritual guidance and instruction and so had to trust him.
But the elder was also in a way dependent upon the novice. What I mean by this is nothing particularly extraordinary, nothing that anyone in the family doesn't know already. Food must be prepared chores must be done as well as all of the ordinary activity that makes up a common life. And so again, their life was a shared life...
Complete post here.
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