Catholic Sensibility

Psalm 130 is liturgically known as “De Profundis” after its beginning words. “Out of the depths I call to you, Lord.” We need no reminder of the destructive power of “depths.” So, it would seem obvious that Psalm 130 is a lament. But, as the exegete Harry P. Nasuti tells us, we soon run into difficulties. There is no further description of the psalmist’s situation at all after the opening lines – we never learn about his human enemies, we never hear a specific request for divine assistance, we do not read a confession of his particular sins. What are his “depths”? Christian exegetes encountered “depths” as the Greek “bathos,” which called into mind two passages from St Paul. The Apostle had assured the Romans that “depth” was among a long list of things that would not be able “to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:39); he would also speak of “the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God” (Rom 11:33). “Depth” would then receive a negative and a positive meaning. For instance, St Augustine claims that we can be sunk in the “deep of evils” – and if we are “really in the deep,” we are likely to despair and continue in sin. But the truest prayer arises from this deep, recognizing that its only hope is in the Christ who has “despised not our depths” and whose saving action has “raised man even from the deep so that he might cry out from the deep, beneath the mass of his sins, and that the sinner’s voice might come to God: crying from where, if not from the depth of evils.” For later commentators, the “depths” are still the depths of human sinfulness, but it is precisely in these “depths” that we actively discover true humility and charity and begin to ascend to God. “De Profundis” is also a “Song of Ascents” (130:1). We are transformed in our “depths.” “If you, Lord, mark our sins, Lord, who can stand? But with you is forgiveness and so you are revered” (130:3). For Cassiodorus, Psalm 130 “begins from the depths, but like the advancing sun mounts to a great height, enabling us to realize how beneficial is the repentance which we see residing at such a lofty eminence.” How do we ascend? Cassiodorus concludes by telling us to “love the humility which has raised the faithful to heaven” and to “swiftly confess our evil deeds so that we may not meet our deserts.” Perhaps, then, this Lent we can be raised from our “depths” through the sacrament of reconciliation. Are you scowling? Confession might bring to mind bad memories of clericalism, intensified guilt, and a seemingly relentless focus on sexuality. And it is true that before Vatican II, as the historian James O’Toole has noted, the average confession probably took two minutes or less, justifying at least some of the criticisms of the 1960’s that characterized the confessional as a “slot machine” or “assembly line.” But, even after all this is taken into account - as it must be, I think that the sacrament remains valuable in our ascent to encounter a God of “kindness” and “full redemption” (130:7). I will turn to an unlikely source – a theologian of the Church of England who was probably even more aware of the abuses of the confessional than we could ever be. The historian-bishop Geoffrey Rowell notes that, after the Reformation, auricular confession was associated with clerical dominance and the invention of practices with very little biblical or patristic warrant. But the great Richard Hooker would consider it to still be a “profitable ordinance”: Because the knowledge how to handle our own sores is no vulgar and common art, but we either carry towards ourselves for the most part an over-soft and gentle hand, fearful of touching too near the quick; or else, endeavoring not to be partial, we fall into timorous scrupulosities, and sometimes into those extreme discomforts of mind, from which we hardly do ever lift up our heads again; men thought it the safest way to disclose their secret faults, and to crave imposition of penance from them whom our Lord Jesus Christ hath left in his Church to be spiritual and ghostly physicians, the guides and pastors of redeemed souls, whose office doth not only consist in general persuasions unto amendments of life, but also in the private particular cure of diseased minds. We often are either too complacent or scrupulous, forgetting that our “depths” are both negative and positive. Against the complacent, Hooker cites St John Chrysostom, “To call ourselves sinners availeth nothing, except we lay our faults in the balance and take the weight of them one by one.” For those who instead have fallen into “timorous scrupulosities,” Hooker writes that God has ordained “for their spiritual and ghostly comfort consecrated persons, which by sentence of power and authority from above, may as it were out of his very mouth ascertain timorous and doubtful minds in their own particular, ease them of all their scrupulosities, leave them settled in peace and satisfied touching the mercy of God toward them.” “And God will redeem Israel from all their sins” (130:8). Does this sound commonplace, even boring? Perhaps you need the spiritual benefit of self-examination and the articulation of your sins. Does it instead sound impossible, even bitterly ironic? Perhaps you need to find a “spiritual and ghostly physician,” a true “guide and pastor of redeemed souls,” to ease your “timorous and doubtful mind.” Part of rising from our “depths,” as Cassiodorus wisely told us, involves “swiftly confessing our evil deeds so that we may not meet our deserts.” I welcome comments. What do you think about confession?