Wonderful post.
Thank you so much for posting this.
Great post about a great sacrament.
Good article! I love Confession. My only complaint is that the only time you can go is 4:30 p.m. on Saturday. Why not during the work week, when priests are supposed to be, like, working ... aren't they?
I wish he would have written something about confessing venial sins.
To the best of my knowledge I have not committed a mortal sin in a long time, and I feel that I am wasting the Priests time with my piddly sins. I have even been told that by a confessor, though in more charitable language.
In part of the tradiional Mass the Priest says something like "may your sins be blotted out by the power of the Mass." They might say the same thing at a NO also, but I forget.
So anyways I wonder if I am required to go to confession when I can't think of anything to say. I don't want to appear holier than thou, but I am not the kind of person who tries to justify that my sins are not really sins. I have even told my confessor that "yes, what I did was a sin" when he tried to tell me it wasn't. To liberal confessors nothing is a sin. Which brings me to another fear - that you will not be absolved if the Priest doesn't recognize that you have sinned.
Make sure that the Priest says all the words or you might not be forgiven. I have actually had to ask a couple of Priests to do that.
Thank you so much for this piece! And posted on a Saturday too. :)
The tone of that makes a penitent feel real good. You sense it with some, most actually. I hope God hasn't lost his capacity for taking a personal interest in our lives as the individuals we are and not "type" us or put us in little file categories like this priest has.
It's only human that priests would develop that disinerest, callousness, or whatever the physic mechanism is that goes on in yourself when things get too routine.
People in the medical profession get like that, too. You always remember the ones who seemed to take an interest in you as a unique individual and not as a case #.
That priest would have done better for me this morning to write something different.
Just some food for thought. Maybe a little exercise in role reversal or something might do wonders for his soul . . .
However, I should never be in the role of the confessor.
I'd be laughing at some of it, taking notes on some of it, and getting phone numbers whenever possible.
I'm Evil Light. Picture Hitler, only instead of gassing the Jews, he gives them all really bad Noogies, and maybe a Pinkbelly.
bump
Ping.
Why did you put this in the Evangelical Christian topic? Please don't tell me it is because the evangelicals post in the RCC topic - that is not a legitimate reason. I am not trying to start anything - I am asking because I simply don't understant the whys and wherefores behind doing this.
I see this happen a lot in the Evangelical topic and others that are not RC alone. (and again, vice versa). If I want to read about RCC, I will click on that topic. If it is general interest Christianity, that is one thing, but I don't get why this often happens.
It is why I cry my heart out to the Lord when I pray for priests. God is good. Thanks be to God for our priests.
Great article.
I'm very upset because I can't find anybody to go to confession to here in my diocse in Florida, except for an Opus Dei priest who hears confessions in a city about 2 hours south of here once a month (but not necessarily every month).
I'm a non-native speaker of Spanish, and not having committed any mortal sins recently, I bide my time and look for orthodox Spanish priests. And then I end up having to go to Spain and go to confession in a foreign language. Some of my friends here who only speak English can virtually never find a good confessor, so at least I'm lucky in having a confessor several thousand miles away...
A terrible commentary on the state of Confession in the US, I would say. No?
Thanks for the good post. I have a regular confessor, a Trappist monk that I go to when I have a need to confess...
About 20 years ago, I read a short passage written by St. Augustine, about penance that had such an impact on me, I memorized it:
"Who shall grant me to rest in Thee? By Whose gift shalt Thou enter into my heart, and fill it so compellingly that I shall turn no more to my sins, but embrace Thee, my only Good?
What rather am I to Thee, that Thou shouldst demand my love, and if I do not love Thee, threaten such great woe? Surely, not to love Thee is already a great woe..."
It was one of those moments when the Lord of Mercy reached out and touched me directly through the saint's writing...I wish I could convey it in this post...
**I do so for the sake of the thousands of Catholics who need a good confession, but don't make one because of what they think might go on in the mind of the confessor while they tell their sins. Also for the sake of the thousands who are not Catholics and who have been taught to think that just about the most horrible institution in the world is that in which one human being is supposed to tell another his sins. Well, here are some of the things, 'that go on in the mind of the confessor.'**
Sacrament of Reconciliation bump to the top for a great article!
bttt