Monday, September 17, 2012

Confession

This is what I prefer, except sometimes I'm afraid I
won't be able to stand up again when I'm through.

Father A. is African and he says, "No stories, no excuses, just accuse yourself." Okay, that's fine with me. 

When I confess to Fr. B., I confess without story or excuse and he says, "What was going on when you did thus and so?" He wants to get to the heart of the matter so I can arm myself against the temptation next time. 

Fr. C. is an old friend. He was my pastor when the kids were little. He wants to know how Bill is, how my family is doing, and what about this or that friend. He keeps me so long that I think the people in line must hate me and wonder what kind of horrible sins I have committed since last week because most of them know that I went to Confession then, too. 

Fr. D. quotes the same scripture that I was praying about privately before Mass--not something in the scriptrues for the day. Then for my penance, he tells me to pray for the group of people that I had privately offered my Mass for that morning. He's a new pastor and I was worried whether or not he would be a good confessor. This goes a long way toward reassuring me that he will.

Fr. E. is in the box. He opens the little door, listens, gives me absolution and my penance, closes the door. That's it.  

Fr. F. was a friend before he was in seminary. He sends messages to my kids. Tell so-and-so he should go to Mass. Tell her she should start a youth group in her parish.

I've never seen Fr. G. before and he makes me feel like the woman at the well. He tells me something out of the blue that is so exactly what I need to hear that it is scary. It's not something that has anything to do with anything I've confessed. How does he know?

I know that sometimes people are confused by all the different ways that priests hear confessions and the different expectations they have from the penitents--just accuse yourself/tell me what happened then. It must be especially difficult for people who don't got to Confession very often. But, I love it. I love it! It's like having a lot of different doctors to take care of all your different kinds of ills.

This list of priests may give you the idea that I run all over the place going to Confession when, in fact, I almost always go in the same parish after Saturday morning Mass. It's the priests that move around, not me. There are always two in the parish that alternate Saturdays and then I go talk to Fr. B when I need some serious direction. Unfortunately, he is going to be out of the area for three years, so I'm not sure what I'll do about that.

I started to go to Confession weekly several years ago after listening to some tapes by Fr. Thomas Dubay. He said that there were three stages in the spiritual life and that the second was getting rid of all venial sins--the second! I don't even remember what the third was because I couldn't imagine every accomplishing the second.

And then, there was this sin that I couldn't imagine stopping because I always committed it without thinking. It had to do with saying really unkind things. How was I going to stop doing something that I didn't even realize I was going to do until it was done? So, I figured that I needed to get serious, and that I needed all the grace I could get, thus weekly Confession.  After a few weeks, I began to notice that a small space seemed to open up between the time that I had the angry thought and the time I said something. It was just long enough for me to make a decision about whether or not to say it. I actually started to make some progress in this area. I was amazed because I had been praying about this for years and years and it had seemed absolutely impossible.

Later, I missed some Saturdays for different reasons, some of them good (I was sick for about 10 weeks, for example.) and some of them not. Of course, once you get out of the habit of going every week, especially when it means you have to get up early on the one day when you don't have to get up early, it's really hard to get started again. Now, I can only go about two weeks before I can really tell the difference in my willingness to resist temptation and to pray as often as I ought, and I'm pretty sure that my poor husband can tell the difference too.

So, I've had to really struggle to get back into that habit again. Every Saturday, it's a pitched battle. Even sometimes on Friday night I start thinking that maybe I will just sleep in the next day. I have to basically lie to myself to make myself get out of bed. "Oh just get up and eat," I say, "and then if you're still tired you can go back to bed." If I can sell myself that, I've got it made because I never do go back to bed. And then when I get to Mass I wonder why I ever considered not going.

Now the reason I've said all this is not to say that I think everybody needs to go to Confession every week. I have no idea what's best for anybody else, and I think that you and the Lord can figure that out by yourselves. What I really want to say is that the confessional is not just someplace where you go to leave something behind--your sins--and get forgiven. It's also a place where you to go to take something away, something that strengthens your soul in a way that nothing else can.

AMDG

13 comments:

  1. Great testimony! Thanks. I'm still in the honeymoon phase of being a daily mass goer (well, Sun. - Fri.) and weekly confession sounds edifying.

    Google tells me Heroic Virtue was the third. How you can achieve the second without the third is beyond me.

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    1. I'm a bit jealous of daily Mass goers. For 24 years we lived half a mile from our church and daily Mass was easy--not to mention adoration. Now we live in a county where there is one Mass per week at 8:00 a.m. on Sunday. I have to leave home at 5:15 a.m. to get to a Mass before work. Not only am I a bit short on heroic virtue (I remember that now that you say it.) but it means taking two cars on our 40 mile commute instead of one--kind of expensive. Sometimes I do manage though.

      AMDG

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    2. I have a question, what exactly do you mean by "offer my mass"? I've tried googling it and I'm not coming up with anything beyond having a mass offered, i.e. having a priest say mass for your intention. It seems your not referring to that though. I've heard of this before, but I'd love a brief explanation or link. Thanks.

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  3. It's just an extension of what you said. The priest offers the Mass for whatever the "official" intention of that day is but along with that, we join our intentions along with his. So, what he's offering is the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross and with that, we lift offer up ourselves and our intentions.

    Does that help?

    Are you a recent convert, Josh?

    AMDG

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    1. It does help. Thanks.

      I converted 10 years ago next Easter. Best thing I've done with my life. (Marriage and kids close second.)

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    2. I agree!

      I'm glad that helped because re-reading it I see that it looks like I threw all the words up in the air and let them come down in whatever order they chose.

      AMDG

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  4. This is a great post. I don't go to confession nearly as much as I should, so I don't have nearly as big a sample as you, but over the years I've met Fr. E more often than any others. I've never had the really providential-sounding kind of experiences you describe.

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  5. I've never met anyone other than Fr.E, but, to be honest, I like it that way.

    Reading this post was good for me. Thanks, Janet.

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  6. The providential stuff is a recent development.

    Thanks to you both.

    AMDG

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  7. It's a very good post. To me the point is that going to confession is not only about dumping stuff, liking taking the really big garbage to the trash yard, but also can be about spiritual growth. Grumphy

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  8. I mainly get Father E, and that is because that's what my confessions deserve. Gr

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  9. Thanks. And yes, exactly.

    Well, even Fr. B is like Fr. E when he's in the box, but so many churches don't have them and I don't feel comfortable behind a screen in a room where I can see the chair looking at me.

    When I went to visit my daughter at TAC, there was a visiting priest hearing confessions. He didn't know that he was supposed to switch on the light in the penitent's part of the confessional, and so I was in the pitch dark. It was rather eerie, but I kind of liked it. My friend, who is a convert, had never been in a confessional before and he assumed that all of them must be lightless like that. It was a few days before he mentioned it and we set him straight.

    AMDG

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