shrive

No play to make first-night audiences shrive themselves for past sins is American Landscape.

From Time Magazine Archive

For the sake of Simon Peter, Who so gladly would us shrive, We are walking in the sunlight, We are breathing and alive.

From Two Fishers, and Other Poems by Herbert Edward Palmer

Saint Petronila shrive me! when we became most intimate, and after much beating about the bush, I discovered that his master— Perez.

From Olla Podrida by Frederick Marryat

The poor wretch made answer for himself, crying out piteously and in a choking voice, for a priest to shrive him.

From Historical Romances: Under the Red Robe, Count Hannibal, A Gentleman of France by Stanley J. Weyman

"Come hither, hither, Friar John, And count your rosarie, And shrive this sinful gentleman, Under the greenwood tree!"

From The International Monthly, Volume 4, No. 4, November 1, 1851 by Various

The dying man's ears, nose, mouth, hands, feet by holy unction were shrived.

From Time Magazine Archive

Then I shrived him, and that very morning gave him the Lord's sacred body in the Church of the Sepulchre.

From The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay by Maurice Henry Hewlett

Apparently nothing amused him so much as the thought of confession and communion, of being shrived by some stout, healthy priest as worldly as himself, and preferably Irish, like himself.

From Twelve Men by Theodore Dreiser

A holy friar who shrived the dying man told me the name of him who fell was Gaspar.

From Olla Podrida by Frederick Marryat

The worthy prior then proceeded to prescribe several light penances, most of which were confined to moderate increases of the daily duties of religion; after which he shrived the navigator.

From Mercedes of Castile The Voyage to Cathay by J. Fenimore Cooper

Then I grab the lever, record myself with a manly fling, and walk out, shriven, to go to work.

From The New Yorker ● Nov. 5, 2018

I mean the midlife crisis story, in which a man suddenly finds himself shriven of the beliefs that have hitherto defined him.

From New York Times ● Feb. 15, 2017

But 30,000ft above the Atlantic, he is seized by the need to be shriven, and makes his confession to a cassette recorder he addresses as "Father Sony".

From The Guardian ● Feb. 21, 2011

She died, still pregnant, but properly shriven, and within a minute Dr. Corbit had her abdomen open and a 34-lb. girl in an incubator.

From Time Magazine Archive

“I swear by heaven, though now I must be shriven for doing so! Therefore come, let us go and together lose our sins.”

From "Ophelia" by Lisa Klein

For Italy's 45,000,000 people, surrender came as a national shriving, a chance for national redemption.

From Time Magazine Archive

There are those who suggest irreverently that Miss Nichols is shriving herself before the critics by importing accredited Art.

From Time Magazine Archive

With louder summons ring the rampart-bell, And haste the shriving father from his cell; A soldier's heart rejoices in alarms: And let the trump at midnight sound to arms!

From The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 With Memoir, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes by George Gilfillan by George Gilfillan

It seemed as if the trees were shriving after all the green riot of summer, and making ready for sackcloth and ashes.

From D'Ri and I by Irving Bacheller

“They need little shriving that are opposite my culverin,” said this strange priest. 

From A Monk of Fife by Andrew Lang

It was I who shrove him when he lay dying of his wounds, and a nobler soul never passed from earth to heaven.

From The Brethren by Henry Rider Haggard

But the neighbouring wives, Who ne'er shrove in their lives,— Such wickedness Sathanas whispers!—

From The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme by Thomas Cooper

To be shriven, or shrove, means to obtain absolution from one's sin.

From Old English Sports, Pastimes and Customs by P. H. (Peter Hampson) Ditchfield

Shrovetide was, in times gone by, a season of such mirth that shroving, or to shrove, signified to be merry.

From Folk-lore of Shakespeare by Thomas Firminger Thiselton-Dyer