Reconciliation

The Gift of a Good Confession

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Photo by Sami Aksu

I’ve never been a natural social butterfly and have put forth a concerted effort to develop and maintain passable people skills over the years. I’ll be the first to say that I’m much better in writing and verbal communication has often been a source of tremendous anxiety in my life. I’m the sort of person who googles neighborhood BBQ etiquette and rehearses grocery store checkout small talk in advance. 

As such, I made a similar habit when I first started attending confession after being received fully into the Catholic Church. In my examination of conscience I would write a short script of talking points to bring up in the confessional and would recite the following prayer. “Lord, help me to give a full and honest confession.” In the confession line I would rehearse my lines until my turn arrived. 

While these were all perfectly valid confessions and none of these practices are technically wrong, I often left the confessional feeling like I had somewhat missed the mark and wishing that I had been more articulate. Recently it occurred to me that perhaps this feeling had very little to do with the precise words I said, or failed to say, but that it was instead faith and trust in God that I was lacking. I was trying so hard to give a “good” confession that I forgot the most important part. I asked God to help me every time without truly leaning into His healing power, trusting that He would give me the words I needed.

I’ve since revised my process for preparing for the sacrament of reconciliation. I still write out an examination of conscience, though it’s now a few brief bulleted reminders rather than a full script. I also recite the same prayer but with this addition. “Lord, send your holy spirit to give me the words I need to lay my sins bare at your feet so that I may properly atone for them.” The first time I said this prayer in the confession line I was blessed with a new sense of calm and I ceased my nervous rehearsing. My mind was totally clear when I entered the confessional. It was one of the most honest confessions I’ve ever given. 

I still catch myself slipping into old habits on occasion and obsessing over how to get the words out right. It’s a work in progress but, as I discovered, atonement for our sins and absolution from them is most complete when we truly, totally and faithfully relinquish our human failings to God. Reconciliation is a sacrament, an outward sign instituted by Christ to give grace. Of course, we need to properly prepare ourselves to receive it with a focused and genuine examination of our past wrongs but then we must give ourselves over entirely to Him.

A State of Grace

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Photo by Photo by Arina Krasnikova

Our family is currently celebrating the arrival of a new member. We welcomed a new niece into the world recently and are over the moon to soon meet this beautiful baby girl. In the days leading up to her birth my sister was on a mission, hunting for parishes all over town in search of priests available to administer confession. She was determined to be in a state of grace when bringing her daughter into the world.

What a beautiful gift to their family to know that this new momma was in friendship with God when she gave our parents their first grandchild! On one hand, being recently confessed was a safeguard for my sister, should anything go wrong during the birth. Thankfully, it didn’t and both mother and baby girl are healthy and happy. By ensuring she was in communion with God as much as possible my sister also enabled her daughter to be born surrounded by grace and love. What better way to begin a holy and blessed life? It was the very best running start my sister could give. 

This got me thinking about how often we all run to confession when embarking on a journey or undergoing an important medical procedure. Life is full of risks and of course it’s not feasible to receive absolution from a priest every time we cross the street but it’s certainly something that should always be forefront in our minds as we proceed through life. The Catholic Church requires that its members receive the sacrament of Reconciliation at least once a year but how often on any given day do we turn away from God, even in small, seemingly mundane ways. We need sincere and regular Reconciliation to maintain a state of grace to receive Holy Communion and to be in friendship with Christ. 

My husband and I generally try to make it to confession every couple of weeks and emergency, short notice Reconciliation is rare for us at this point but as Catholics we all ought to leap at the opportunity to renew our relationship with the Lord. We should all run to confession as often as possible even if it means hunting all over town for available priests.

Broken Strings

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Photo by Steve Johnson

“God loves us in our brokenness.”

This was a sentence spoken in a homily on one Divine Mercy Sunday which reduced me to tears. It was perfectly timed, coming immediately after a confession in which I divulged my deepest regret. I had just confessed to being broken. I don’t mean to say that I was a victim of circumstance or abuse or even that my heart had been mangled beyond repair. My brokenness was not that of a discarded toy. More like an out of tune piano with a few broken strings. A practiced pianist could still bring forth countless sweet melodies but until its final tune up (purification of purgatory) there are some keys that won’t play.

By consequence of my own bad decisions, I was, I am and I will always be at least somewhat defective as a follower of Christ in this earthly life. No one can rewrite the past, no matter how much we might wish to at times. Of course, I understand that past mistakes don’t necessarily make me a worthless human being but there was one in particular that still haunted me as I approached my sacraments. In my newly found faith I knew that God deserved better. Thankfully, He did not abandon me to my regret.

In that confessional and throughout that homily as the priest’s eyes found mine, I believe I met Christ. I had previously accepted and practiced His teachings but on this Divine Mercy Sunday we came face to face. My deepest shame was met with an overwhelming, seamless, outpouring of kindness, compassion, love and forgiveness which struck me to my core. I can still see the young priest’s face, glowing warmly from sunlight through a nearby window, his eyes smiling paternally as he said these words to the assembly while looking directly at me. Another piece of the wondrous puzzle which is our faith finally fell into place. God’s forgiveness is so much bigger than me and my sins. I can still recall the flood of relief from this realization every time I think back to that day. 

We are all broken. In some way we all have a few busted strings and are defective in our pursuit of Heaven but, mercifully, God loves us anyway; perfectly, completely and without condition.

Free from Regret or Free from Sin

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Photo by MART PRODUCTION

I spent most of my life believing that the secret to happiness was to lead a life of no regret and fully dedicated myself to that cause. There is a lesson to be learned from every mistake and I’ve made plenty of those. I explained away each and every one of them by extracting a nugget of truth from the experience and carrying it with me through all of my endeavors. This is a useful practice and I highly recommend it to maintain a solution oriented lifestyle. 

However, a life of no regret is not necessarily a life without sin. I was convinced that guilt was a useless emotion. So long as I learned from my blunders I felt free to move on from them. In this way I often successfully refused to acknowledge any shame I might feel for those things that I wish I’d done differently. 

It wasn’t until I became Catholic that I realized the error in my thinking. Everyone knows that the first step to solving a problem is admitting that you have one. This was the critical missing piece of the puzzle that only Catholic reconciliation could drive home to me.

Even after fully embarking on my journey to faith, I questioned the merits of Catholic confession. I’m no saint but I always considered myself a generally intelligent, compassionate, good person and God is all knowing. He knows my heart. Why then would I have to divulge my wrongdoings to some priest who may or may not know me when I could simply offer my sins directly to God?

The first answer is the simplest one. During confession the priest acts in persona Christi. In Latin this means that he is acting “in the person of Christ.” By confessing my sins to him I am confessing directly to Christ and God himself. However, this only answers part of the question. It gives the ‘how’ but I still wondered why.

It’s easy enough to doll out the words “I’m sorry” when we know we’ve made a mistake or as a means of avoiding conflict. They can even become automatic in an effort to be polite to those around us. But in order to truly be absolved of our sins we must first feel remorse for them. A hurried apology on our way to the next activity doesn’t cut it when seeking God’s forgiveness. The act of sincerely seeking atonement for our wrongs helps us to be worthy to receive it. Thus I discovered the use for guilt. Only when we grasp the weight of our mistakes are we properly motivated to seek forgiveness and to strive to do better.

But even a sincere apology to God Himself does not absolve us of our sins. Catholic reconciliation is not complete until we have performed a penance. We offer some action of atonement to God in reparation for our sins. It is an assurance of our commitment to turn away from sin in the future and turn instead toward God in all things. We’re only human after all, flawed and fallen and ever seeking God’s grace. In the blessed sacrament of reconciliation and all other sacraments that we celebrate in the Catholic church, we can be granted that grace on Earth.

I’ve never been so motivated to better myself than when I first allowed regret to color my life. In many ways I did a complete 180, upending the status quo and rewriting my core views of the world. I’ve also never been so relieved and full of joy as I was when I finally realized how God is divinely merciful, loving and forgiving us in all of our brokenness, including mine. We aren’t meant to wallow in shame but we are meant to feel it and to do something about it.