Sunday, August 30, 2009

Don't put it off

This evening I dragged my sorry carcass into confession. I hadn't been in something like six months.

When you put confession off, thinking you will go when you are more recollected and can peacefully examine your conscience, you are not just putting it off for the day or number of days that you think. It doesn't work like that. You are in effect choosing to let a torrent of uncertain time go by, like pulling up a watergate; time that will accumulate strength, body, and most especially, a will of its own - within yourself.

With every hour and day you let more of that weight onto yourself, whether you feel it or not. That makes it that much harder to get into confession. Can you imagine a lifetime of that...and then on your deathbed?

You want to know why deathbed conversions are rare?

Maybe if I did not go this evening another torrent of six months would have cascaded by.

Don't put it off.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Great post. I very much need to confess my sins, but unfortunately i have to wait until Saturday to do so. One would think that with the depth and breadth of sins in which to indulge being so great (and our human propensity to fall into sin with abandon) that the magnificent Sacrament of Reconciliation would be more widely offered.