Liturgical Question I’ve been pondering for a hot minute:
My parish does not do confession before Eucharist except when we used Penitential Order in Lent. It’s the only criticism I have but I wonder if it’s worth bringing up? It’s deeply important to me but I don’t want to be a bother. ⚓️
To be fair, I can’t tell if they never do it or if it’s been so long since we did it in any traditional sense, that I just don’t have any sense of doing it. I’m going to ask around though cause I’m curious.
“It’s deeply important to me but I don’t want to be a bother”
This is the piece that makes me go “oh maybe this is why God is giving you this discomfort!” Naming what is important to us is so essential for belonging in a church community! Practice taking up that space!
“Practice taking up that space” is right on point. Saying what matters to us is a vital part of being in a loving community. Thanks for calling that out.
Yes! Often it’s the posture we do it with that matters. If you do it in a kind, reasonable way rather than a judgemental tone, most people will happily hear about what’s important to you.
As a priest responsible for planning liturgies for a congregation, I always want to be told off something we’re doing helps people pray— or if it makes it harder. I’d want to know.
See we’ve got co-interims right now and I don’t want to upset their flow with the congregation but also…I’ve never seen Eucharist w/o confession in TEC before. So maybe I’m the one in the wrong? Idk I just don’t want to upset the status quo. ⚓️
Well, I’m just me, not every priest (obviously). But I’ve done two interims and finding out about the parish’s piety/members’ prayer was super important to the work I was doing.
You could always approach it with curiosity— I haven’t seen Eucharist w/o confession, can you tell me why we’re doing it?
You don’t need to tell them that you’ll go somewhere else if they don’t add it back in, but they’re there to host your prayer encounter with God. (Yes, that’s sloppy theology as written, but it’s legitimate.) they are there to be your priest and pastor.
There’s a tradition of not doing Confession during the great 50 days of Easter, so some parishes forego it during the season to emphasize the joy of the resurrection. The typical Anglican placement is after the sermon & the prayers of the people, though the Penitential order puts it at the beginning
All that is to say, it is quite an outlier to have the confession omitted outside the Easter season. The rubrical allowance for omitting it “on occasion” means it’s intended to be rare. I think you have some good suggestions about how to approach the question elsewhere on this thread.
The petition for forgiveness in the Great Litany (“That it may please thee to give us true repentance”) on p. 152 or prayer 66 “Before Receiving Communion” p. 834 could be helpful.
