The Mystery of Christ reflected in the Sacrament of Confession

...Divinity and humanity are not separate spheres within the Son. Everywhere we try to penetrate into his humanity, we encounter the mystery of his being more than a man, that is, his divine sonship. He is not beyond all understanding, and yet precisely in our understanding, the incomprehensible overwhelms us; rather than being able to see him in his entirety, it is we who find ourselves seen by him and drawn into his ever greater dimensions. Because we are incorporated in this way, we lose any overview of our own situation. It is he who contains us in his perfect openness both to the Father and to the world.

    Whenever we confess according to his will, we must consider his double attitude so that we, too, may learn the correct attitude. He shows us who he is by opening himself to us: he is the one open to the Father, who in disclosing himself to us, also shows us the Father, also glorifies the Father.

...confession is the fruit of the divine human life. The Lord's turning to us, the form bequeathed to the Church, would be the...legacy that in some way is comprehensible in itself, and the turning to the Father would be the unsurveyable sphere of inspiration. We can understand a great deal about confession, just as we could about miracles. We know, for example, that before, the woman was hemorrhaging, and now, she is healthy. Only the nexus between these two facts remains incomprehensible. Or we understand that our Lord was dead and now lives, but we do not understand how that is possible. We do understand, however, that the things extending into the sphere of understanding are related in the sphere of the incomprehensible and are its manifestation. We understand a great deal about confession in the same way: for example, that there must be penance, that it is advisable for a person to admit his errors, and that there must also be an an authority and  a judgment upon good and evil on earth. We also more or less understand many things about faith: that the God-man did penance for our sins on the cross and for that reason the penance we accept for our guilt acquires somehow a symbolic character. Yet all the comprehensible elements are integrated into a whole which as such remains beyond our vision. In the course of the centuries the Church may acquire an increased understanding both of many individual elements and of the incomprehensibility of the whole, and with both of these an understanding of the mystery of Christ, the way he wished to remain alive for us in the vitality of the Father.

  Confession    Adrienne von Speyr   pp 148, 149