Then get serious about confession

Lent is a time for repentance and the sacrament of reconciliation, which we usually call ‘confession’, is God’s particular gift to the Church where we can experience God’s forgiveness. This article appeared on 17 November in Catholic Sentinel, www.sentinel.org, where Bishop Vasa writes a weekly e-column. It has been slightly edited.

Choosing as I have to focus some additional energies on the Sacrament of Penance, I could not help but be struck and attracted by the L’Osservatore Romano headline of 18 October: ‘Time spent in the confessional reveals the merciful Face of the Father.’

L’Osservatore Romano is the official weekly newspaper of the Vatican. The headline refers to the remarks of Pope Benedict XVI to the Bishops’ Conference of Canada who were in Rome for their ad limina visit.

Parable

After offering a brief reflection on the Parable of the Prodigal Son the Holy Father writes: ‘Dear Brothers, as you reflect upon the three characters in this parable – the Father in his abundant mercy, the younger son in his joy at being forgiven and the elder brother in his tragic isolation – be confirmed in your desire to address the loss of a sense of sin, to which you have referred in your reports.’

The Holy Father continues: ‘From this perspective, the bishop’s responsibility to indicate the destructive presence of sin is readily understood as a service to hope: it strengthens believers to avoid evil and to embrace the perfection of love and the plenitude of Christian life. I wish, therefore, to commend your promotion of the Sacrament of Penance.

‘While the sacrament is often considered with indifference, what it effects is precisely the fullness of healing for which we long. A new-found appreciation of this sacrament will confirm that time spent in the confessional draws good from evil, restores life from death and reveals anew the merciful face of the Father.’

Goodness from evil

What a beautiful way to describe the ministry of the priest in the confessional: ‘Time spent in the confessional draws good from evil.’ Confession involves a genuine conversion in the heart of the penitent, but as the Holy Father indicates, it does even more than this; it literally draws a great good – conversion, an experience of healing, an experience of the Father’s mercy – out of that which was offensive to God.

We could almost cry out with the cantor at the Easter Vigil, ‘O Happy Fault, O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer,’ so great a sacrament. What a privilege for the priest to have an essential part in this conveyance of the Father’s mercy. What a privilege to patiently await the opportunity to reveal the merciful Face of the Father.

Tragic loss

The Holy Father then addresses the loss of the sense of sin. He says: ‘Understanding the gift of reconciliation calls for a careful reflection on the ways to evoke conversion and penance in man’s heart. While manifestations of sin abound – greed and corruption, betrayed relationships and exploitation of persons – the recognition of individual sinfulness has waned. Behind this weakening of the recognition of sin, with its commensurate attenuation of the need to seek forgiveness, is ultimately a weakening of our relationship with God.

‘Not surprisingly this phenomenon is particularly pronounced in societies marked by secularist post-Enlightenment ideology. Where God is excluded from the public forum the sense of offense against God – the true sense of sin – dissipates, just as when the absolute value of moral norms is relativized, the categories of good or evil vanish, along with individual responsibility.’

Why confess?

While the Holy Father does not come out directly and state that confession is ‘necessary,’ he does point to the weakening of the recognition of sin and indicates that this leads to a diminishment of one’s felt need to seek forgiveness, which leads to a weakening of one’s relationship with God. The implication is clear: If one is serious about his relationship with God, one must be serious about the utilization of the Sacrament of Penance.

Unfortunately, if one is not serious about the utilization of the Sacrament of Penance, the implication is that this could stem from one’s weakened recognition of sin, its evil and its consequences.

Wellspring of life

Confession requires us to stand face to face before our very selves, to look as honestly as possible at who we are and what we do or fail to do, and then to acknowledge and express with equally challenging honesty, before the merciful face of our Father, that we have failed to live His life as fully as we ought.

This is not easy. It was not easy for the Prodigal Son to ‘come to his senses’ and conclude that he needed to come back to his father’s house and acknowledge that he had sinned against him. Confession is a response to grace and it is a great source of grace. This source, as the Holy Father notes, ‘is often considered with indifference.’

Make it a habit

For those who have fallen out of the habit of regular, monthly confession, a resolution to utilize the sacrament seven or eight times, or even a dozen times, during the course of the next liturgical year could produce some wonderful spiritual fruit. Such a resolution, faithfully pursued and implemented, would go a long way in reawakening within us our own sense of sin and its destructiveness and rejuvenating within us our joy at the thought of standing before the merciful face of our Father.