Stephen's Confession

At the beginning of Chapter 3, following the grave, “mortal” sin he commits at the end of Chapter 2, Stephen continues to troll the streets at night, waiting for the “whores”  to “call to his sinloving soul.”  (109).  He is drawn to the prostitutes who come out in the Dublin nights, and his “mortal” sins seem to propel his movement away from the Church and his revolt against Catholic values which dictate that he should maintain a sense of self discipline over his lusts.  At the same time he pursues impure women, he keeps a focus on the Virgin Mary, sometimes hypocritical, but often soothing to his soul.  On his bedroom wall is “the certificate of his prefecture in the college of the sodality of the Virgin Mary,” (111), and when he reads the Latin prayer to her in the chapel, he “lull[s] his conscience to its music.”  (112) 

 

 Stephen surrenders his soul in prayer to the Virgin Mary just as he surrenders his bodily lusts to prostitutes.

 A retreat in honor of St. Francis Xavier, a follower of St. Ignatius, causes Stephen to think about his grave sins and he is tormented afterwards by the thought of what he did.  One night, he returns home to imagine in his bedroom images of figures from hell, with “the malice of evil glitter[ing] in their hard eyes,” and a “rictus of cruel malignity lit up greyly their old bony faces.”  (149)  Stephen resolves to repent, and eventually surrenders to the Church to confess.  In this moment of epiphany, he finds his spiritual faith, and goes out in the city to find a Church so he can confess his sins.  He asks a woman on the street for the nearest Church, and she points him to the Capuchin Friary:

Stephen blesses himself, and confesses for the first time in eight months.  The retreat has convinced him that  he doesn't want to live with the knowledge that he will go to hell for his actions.  But by going to confession and mustering up the courage to do so, Stephen finds himself  liberated:  he “strode homeward, conscious of an invisible grace pervading and making light his limbs.”  (157).  He has gained some self discipline, a sign of maturity, which Stephen has not exhibited until this epiphany. 

When he returns to Belvedere and goes to Mass with his classmates,

he is ready to receive communion in his newly found state of grace, and “[t]he ciborium has come to him.” 
Repentant now, there will be questions - will Stephen continue to maintain a sense of maturity?  Will Stephen keep up his self discipline?  Will Stephen remain in control of his lust?