Converts to Orthodoxy: How was your first confession?

[Macarius]

The last sentence Kyriaki said I think best sums it up. You can just tell. The Holy Spirit tells you, if you are prayerful and attentive to listen. You can tell when the Holy Spirit is with you (that lightness and peace) or if you've sinned such that you have left the Holy Spirit (that heaviness and ill feeling). It isn't, properly, a "feeling" (like an emotion); just a strong knowing that one needs to confess.

On a more basic level, one's priest will also tell you. You can ask, in confession, what sins would bar you from the chalice. You also just get a "feel" (intuition), after a while of confessing to someone, of if you need to stay away from the chalice before confession. Some priests require confession before communion (in general), some require it for a wide range of sins but not all, and some reserve the requirement only for the most egregious sins.

To reference a prior thread, it is very much "economia" - household management.

 

[MrJim]

...and not receiving would make it evident to the priest that one is "guilty" and needing confession?

 

[Macarius]

...and not receiving would make it evident to the priest that one is "guilty" and needing confession?

Not receiving communion is functional excommunication; if we have the chance to commune with God and, for no good reason, fail to do so, then that's a pretty egregious sin. It doesn't matter if the priest notices.

 

[MrJim]

Not receiving communion is functional excommunication; if we have the chance to commune with God and, for no good reason, fail to do so, then that's a pretty egregious sin. It doesn't matter if the priest notices.

Can you explain ^ that further?

 

[rusmeister]

It's the edge of the knife, the eye of the paradox. The Eucharist IS Communion, in refusing it we fail to be in Communion. We must be afraid NOT to take part, and afraid to take part. "In fear of God..." I sinned, today, even. I sin every day. I go to Confession whenever I can. I could almost NEVER commune if I followed a strictly legalistic understanding of "no Confession, no Communion".

And a danger is insincere repentance; becoming OK with sinning. But the opposite danger is to fall out of Communion and to think that one is "worthy" when one DOES commune.

Before the icon of Christ, EVERY time, my last prayers before receiving are "Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner!", and "Remember me in Thy Kingdom!"

But I think Fr Alexander Schmemann's booklet to be of more help than my words.