Quote

"Because of this, it is important to go to Communion, it is important that children be baptized soon, that they be confirmed, because the sacraments are the presence of Jesus Christ in us, a presence that helps us. It is important, when we feel ourselves sinners, to approach the sacrament of reconciliation. Someone might say: “But I’m afraid, because the priest will thrash me.” No, the priest won’t thrash you. Do you know who you will encounter in the sacrament of reconciliation? You will encounter Jesus who forgives you! It is Jesus who awaits you there; and this is a sacrament that makes the whole Church grow." --Pope Francis' address, On Sacraments, Charisms and Charity

Failure, yes.

I never thought I would see the Lent - and Holy Week - in which I did not make it to Ash Wednesday Mass, or to Maundy Mass, or to confession. So there's a first. Yet it's also a first in which I stuck to my Lenten vows.

How did I not make it to those three? It's called a new job. What, how did you not make it to confession? Well, I did make it to confession, in a sense. I went on a Wednesday evening after work this holy week (I got off early) to a parish that has regular scheduled confessions at that time, but at the time I went, there was a notice posted on the doors that said there was no confession tonight because all the priests have gone to some chrism mass. I went into the church nonetheless to just make sure, and sure enough, no welcoming little green light with the door ajar, but people practising their voices for Easter vigil Mass.

I don't know how true all that "intention" stuff is; you know, if you make the effort to go to confession and something prevents it that is out of your power then the absolution still applies. Though, of course you still have to confess as you would when you get the opportunity, or make the opportunity.

Once, I lined up for confession (well, I was the only one in line) before a Vietnamese mass, and the priest came out and said to go to him after mass for confession and that I could go up for communion.

Once, I was in line for confession (at the same parish) before mass and the time for mass came about before I could get into the confessional (same priest doing confession as does the mass, and there were people before me) and the lady who was standing next to me explained that I could go up to communion, explaining the intention thing.

That the Sacraments transcend time and our linear undertsanding of it is no stumbling block to me, but I wonder. I once listened to a priest tell about how Mass has already started when you make the intention to go...very profound stuff. Yet the Sacraments operate within time.

I know this new job is God's will for me (I may explain it later), and think He has been showing me something this Lent and Holy Week (of course God is showing everybody something all the time). I'll admit that I have too often gone into confession as though the whole thing was dependent on my own strength, or my own effort; not predominantly, but there is a tinge of it; sometimes more than a tinge. But a tinge is enough.

Maybe there is a part of me that doesn't quite believe in God's forgiveness, or more accurately, believes in the forgiveness but doesn't quite own it. No, it is perhaps a matter of trusting more and more, which if we do not do, we relapse; we start to go backwards.

Recently the word that has been growing in my mind is that everything, everything, comes to naught. And that this is good news. For everything will come to naught but for a New Thing. (This is sounding more grim than I intended...words slip, slide, perish, not what I really intended and all that.) The light of the resurrection blasts away our Lenten offerings and devotions, our good intentions with the bad ones (not an excuse to cease devotions, offerings, and intentions, etc.). In the midst of our strife we are called away, and some simple questions are asked of us: what did you do for Me - clothe Me, feed Me, shelter Me, visit Me?

I love Holy Saturday, for its mixture of both Good Friday and Easter Sunday, or as a space between them both, being the silent aftermath of one and the tingling anticipation of the other. I wish everyone would speak in hushed tones on this day; this day of each-man-to-his-own, before the stone door is rolled away. Instead of getting their turkeys and hams.

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.

A Good Sad Distance, or Close the Screen Please

There are realities about repentance, forgiveness and conversion that the closed screen of Confession not only symbolizes but helps to foster within the operation of the sacrament. For one, there is the notion that sin cuts one off from God's grace, and so we remain outside as it were, or roomed in a sinful world of our own making and consent; not seeing Christ, but having been stagnating in our own sins. So it is when we confess. Jesus is there, very present, yet we confess our sins in repentance as one whose sins have cut one off, in varying degrees depending on the gravity of the sins, from God.

As humans who repent, we need our space as it were, to confess, repent and make reparation. The face-to-face way of open-screen confession (at least for this writer) suggests automatic reconciliation (as in the priest's absolution feels more like an afterthought rather than the moment of cleansing) and can obliterate the awareness of that insensible, invisible grace that transcends all situations.

There is a certain distance that Jesus preserves when He forgives through the Sacrament of Confession. It is not a distance that is cold; it is not a distance that distances; but it is a distance that goes only into proving the total intangibility of the grace of forgiveness, of cleansing, of being made whiter than snow.

It is the antithesis to the approach of cymbals and sounding brass. It is rather like the speed of light: distance is not annulled, but it does not by any means have any final sway or say.

This is by way of saying that the closed screen that once symbolizes how one has been cut off as it were, now becomes powerless in Christ's transcendent forgiveness, which is so transcendent it operates "right through walls".

Jesus does not make a show of His forgiveness. How could He?

One of the most immediately felt forms - and I believe there are infinite forms - of Christ's forgiveness and mercy is a special sense of what seems to feel like He is leaving you your personal space. But He has not just left you to your own space; He has opened up that personal space; He has become that personal space. He descends into your exile, becoming diffuse; His becoming diffuse being your very lifeblood. He exiles you from your exile and has you occupy the spatial freedom that is His own self and mercy. So it can be as though there is both distance and profound intimacy. His distance is without coldness; His intimacy is without cloying intrusiveness.

The transformation wrought on one in Confession can be likened to the transformation that occurs on the altar to the species of bread and wine. [I say "transformation" and not transubstantiation because I am making something more of a metaphorical/poetic comparison and do not want to get into theological mistakes; though what does take place on the altar is indeed transubstantiation and not just "transformation".]

The awareness of this transformation is heightened when the screen is there, closed. When the screen is not there, the awareness is lessened (Again, my personal experience). It is this way for the customs and observances and rituals that go into performing the liturgy of the church and her sacraments: if it doesn't heighten, it's not just then being status quo; it is failing.

This transformative experience in Confession is but the beginning of course; it is not a once for all deal. It is work, works, in cooperation with His mercy; continual, ongoing conversion, so that we do not abstract ourselves from our many foibles and faults and bad inclinations; our continuing habitual sins, which we rather benignly refer to as "struggles", while we are consenting to those foibles and faults and habitual sins. There is to be no compartmentalization; no dichotomy; no split personality. It is our pilgrimage, until this distance has been closed by purification; that distance which is sad, and part of our original sin and state, and yet necessary somehow: it is a good sad distance - and Christ doesn't want us to stagnate in it. Nor does He want us to be afraid of it, and thus try and tinker with it. He uses that distance. He wants us first to recognize it.

This good sad distance is nothing other than the trajectory of our life. Our life is at once a lot more beautiful than we know it, and a lot more rough hewn than we know it. Our life is not a potentialized photo album, with photos filling in their reserved empty places as we progress through time, while the album becomes accumulatively more substantial. Our life, our one, own, personal earthly life is unequivocal "rough matter" that is meant to be continually ordered; and our progression through time is to be at one with that ordering.

This realization is heightened with the closed screen: feel the swelter that your sins bring on; in proportion to it (or rather, out of proportion to it) Christ pours the coolness of His mercy; you will step upon your older self to rise.

"Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world, for my sake, will keep it for eternal life."

With the closed screen there is also a greater focus on the words that are confessed, and the words that are spoken by the priest. We know how visuals can take away from sound's power. With the screen, the words that the priest speaks to the penitent become very special; weighty; absorbable. With the closed screen, the ear naturally inclines to what the priest is telling the penitent. Likewise, the confession of the penitent becomes as singular words spoken into clear silence. The words spoken with the screen closed have a way of bringing the sins that are named out into the light.

The good sad distance closes, or is completely suspended, with our surrender, and without our pride trying to alter it.

Reconverted storage rooms

In addition to the 24 hours of Confession set to be in New York, there is some other good news in a piece at Father Z.'s here (with his emphasis in black and comments in red), on the revival of Confession in one parish.

Kill Goose

Time can be like a goose that flies over your head. You have to get a throwing stick, hunker down and wait for it to fly by and knock it out of the air, then grab it by the neck and chop its head off, cut it open and pull out its guts, defeather and season it, put it on a spit and roast it slowly over a fire. You have to make it yours. If not, then it just flies past. Getting the goose implies more slowing down than gearing up.

I'm moved by things that are done deliberately as proof that we have the upper hand on time, and not time on us. I do not mean that we have unlimited time or that we have power over the amount of what time God gives to us; but that we are to see that God gives the time to us: that he doesn't give us over to time.

Time made for feasts and retreats - or as in some cultures, days given over for a marriage - are measures by which time is shown to be at our helm. Where we don't have the time is precisely where we are meant to chop off the goose's head. This is not to undermine priorities; but what if we don't meet our priorities well because we haven't seen to the more important priorities?

This is by way saying how much I like the idea of New York parishes having, on March 6 and 7, 24 hours of Confession. Creative Minority Report has the scoop here. I wish this could become a common thing in dioceses everywhere. Of course I also wish that parishes would have regular scheduled confession times longer than what they are and on more days than what they are.

Snowed in

I always attend Mass in the evening. And today I should have gone this morning. I know I won't get anywhere in my 93 Honda, nor in my parents slightly-better-in-the-snow car. My brother is taking off with his truck on a different schedule and route.

I think I've missed Mass through no fault of my own, maybe one, two times; either due to illness or weather.

In my more wretched years I purposefully missed Mass one time. I was actually on my way to Mass, and when I got to the church I just kept driving by. That one time did not sit well. Which is the way it should have sat, since it was a mortal sin.

Tonight is kind of tough though. I could have risen earlier and gone to Mass, but didn't, thinking I would go in the evening. Now I'm snowed in. I wish to get to Mass tommorrow morning.

And confession.

By the by, I've never been able to enjoy life, or anyone, or anything, as I am able to as when I've been to confession. Take away confession and I'm a zombie - literally.

What sole attributes of mine that are worth remarking on at all, when said and done, are nothing other than the accumulated times I made efforts to get into the confessional.

Never have I entered into the confessional with a perfectly realized laundry list of sins to tick off one by one. The feat has always been to get into the confessional. I do get the major course of them said, and they give light to others. I've been entering into the confessional saying, "Mother Mary, give me the words to speak to your Son. Jesus, draw the words out of me; give me a good confession". They have never failed to answer this prayer.

Thus, without a doubt, my best moments are those that I cannot attribute to myself. O necessary sin of Adam! How is it that my best moments involve the dirtiest places of myself? O vital weakness that makes me dependent of Him! How can I continue without the assurance, sacramentally made in a concrete minute of time, of His forgiveness?

To know that Jesus forgives is not enough. I know He burns with love to apply that forgiveness specifically and concretely within time to a person, and to have that person experience it fully.

Jesus loves to forgive. It is impossible for Him to do it begrudgingly. But I must be sorrowful for my sins, and I must resolve never to commit them again; to make up my mind and heart in this minute of time never more to offend God - and then, step into the confessional.

How do I know these things but through my own sins, which I have been able to face only with His grace? This is what makes the devil angry: that Jesus reaches down into the darkest places of your soul (in different ways according to each soul) and makes it the best part of you. He breaks it, and yet makes it able, limber, resilient; broken in. Not snowed in.

Bless me father, for I have sinned...

The road to hell is shoulder to shoulder with nice people who never do anything very bad, but also never do anything very good...This road is a broad, nicely paved road with a very, very slight downward incline--enough to keep us coasting, but not enough to notice that we're going downhill.

From Father Dwight Longenecker's recent post Why Confession? over at Standing on my Head.

When a person is immersed in the vital, life-giving heart of the Sacraments, like confession, one thing will dawn upon that person, and it is this: how not normal is the "normal" discourse between people in their everyday interaction. "Not normal" in both its good sense and its bad sense, as the situations vary.

The person may start to wonder if he or she is being sanctimonious. Which world is the real one? will come to that person and quietly demand an answer: is it the world you have been familiarizing yourself with for so long, or this other world that you enter for a few minutes, or less, once every few weeks, or months, or years?

This is not of course a gnostic division that views this world as not real; this world is very real, more so than we observe, and the very physical practice of going into a confessional and pronouncing your sins with your mouth is proof that this is not some gnostic division but is a division between the subjective world of the self and the objective, more real world of the supernatural.

When a person's subjective world becomes infected, or illumined with the objective world of the supernatural it leaves a kind of...good wound. A being emptied out that you cannot produce by yourself. As Pope Benedict has said in so many words, having your sins forgiven is also the way in which you see your sins for what they are: to have the full grievance of your sins and to see your inability to remove the stain that has been removed, is the same moment of experiencing God's mercy in the full.

Efficacy of Sacraments

The example of confession is good.

When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." --John 20:22-23

Where does Jesus say people have to go and confess their sins to have them forgiven? He spoke the above words instead. There are the other references to the apostles bidden to bind and loose.

How do these apostles forgive anybody's sins when they do not know what the sins are that they are forgiving, or for that matter, to which they are withholding forgiveness? Jesus gives them not the power of extending some kind of blanket-forgiveness, overriding their wills, but, in complete trust, also of withholding that forgiveness. On what grounds are they to withhold? Well, if the person seeking the obliteration of his or her sins is not truly sincere and repentant. How does the apostle know this without hearing what the sins are? Again, say the person is truly repentant. How can the apostle, a human being who gains knowledge through his senses, forgive that person without knowing what exactly the forgiveness is being applied to?

The fact of having to confess your sins is so self-evident and implied. Jesus did not, and does not, stand on His dignity. He instituted. He does not explain the concessions of what He instituted. What He instituted unfolds and explains itself.