What Sins Should I Confess?

"Pastor, what sins should I confess?  Are there some that I should keep quietly between me and God and others that I need to tell you directly and out loud?  And what about the sins that I've forgotten?  Or never knew about?  How does confession and absolution 'work'?"

I'm actually going to talk about the "how" of confession and absolution in later posts.  But the Catechism gives a good answer to this basic question: "Before God we should plead guilty of all sins, even those we are not aware of, as we do in the Lord's Prayer; but before the pastor we should confess only those sins which we know and feel in our hearts."

In other words, because we know that we're sinners even after our sins have been forgiven, we always need forgiveness for that.  And then there are the sins we're not aware of and for which we have never asked for forgiveness:  We need forgiveness for those, too.  So we approach God to confess sins we know, sins we don't and the fact that we are still sinners.

Sometimes you will want to speak your sins aloud to the pastor and hear the words of absolution spoken (more on why and how later).  In those cases, you don't necessarily confess your general sinfulness (though you can) or the sins you don't know (though you can).  In those cases, you focus on the sins that are weighing down on you and that have caused you to seek out the word of absolution privately.