Confession is about the Future by Fr. John Harris

Catholics are Guilt Ridden

It is often said that we Catholics are guilt-ridden. It is said that the Church is obsessed with sex and most of this criticism is particularly focused on the Sacrament of Confession. People say that Confession is about raking-up the past and being stuck in one’s shame. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Secular Media Smearing People

It is the secular media and the spirit of the age that is obsessed with sex. The media can’t get enough bad news by raking-up politicians’ and celebrities’ past sins. The tabloid press has brought this investigative journalism to a new low. Photographers follow famous people around the world hoping to get pictures of them in compromising positions. People are never allowed to forget their feet of clay. There is no forgiveness, for one knows not the day nor the hour when someone will root out something you said or did in the past.

The Accuser of the Brethren

One of the titles of the devil in the New Testament is “the accuser of the brethren”. The devil is the one who accuses us of our past sins and never lets us forget them. His power is limited to being able to accuse us of them and remind us of them. He is powerless to help us deal with the sins of the past. The devil is the great operator of guilt-trips. The only way the devil has of dealing with sins, besides accusing us of them, is to say that everyone else is as bad as we are.

I came to give you life

None of this has anything to do with Christ and His Church. Christ came to set us free from the past and to give us His life. Jesus says in the Gospel of St. John, “I came that you may have life and have it to the full”. (John 10:10) Our Blessed Lord is only interested in the past to set us free from it. The Good News is about us being free of sin, not wallowing in it.

Ask Your Nosey Neighbour

An incident related in the Gospels describes how Jesus went to dinner one evening in the house of a Pharisee. A woman, a local sinner, came and cried at the feet of Jesus and He did not turn her away. The Pharisee complained that “if this Jesus was a truly holy man, he would know what kind of woman she is”. For Jesus to know that she was a sinner, all he had to do was ask a nosey neighbour. It was precisely because He is the Holy One of God that Jesus can see beyond the sin to the renewed life of grace that is open to everyone who comes to him in humility.

I Myself Am Waiting For You

It is because God is so good that He can show such wonderful mercy to us. Only God has the freedom to see beyond sin to peace and mercy. In the Diary, Jesus speaks beautifully to St. Faustina about confession. In the Diary (1602) Jesus calls confession “this fountain of My mercy”. He says to St. Faustina, “Every time you go to confession, immerse yourself entirely in My mercy, with great trust, so that I may pour the bounty of My grace upon your soul. When you approach the confessional, know this, that I myself am waiting there for you. I am only hidden by the priest, but I myself act in your soul. Here the misery of the soul meets the God of mercy. Tell souls that from this fount of mercy souls draw graces solely with the vessel of trust. If their trust is great, there is no limit to My generosity. The torrents of grace inundate humble souls”.

Leaving Our Sins Behind

One preacher I heard compared a penitent coming into confession to a slave weighed down with chains. The heavy weight of sin, selfishness, weakness and the mistakes of the past are a heavy burden for anyone to carry. Once the penitent confesses the sin with sorrow in all humility then the Lord comes and cuts the chains away and the forgiven soul is free to fly out of the confessional box. You are no longer in a cage made by your past and your sinfulness but free to fly with the freedom of the children of God. In confession you tell your sins, in order to leave them behind not to be reminded so you can keep carrying them.

The First Sacrament Given By the Risen Lord

The sacrament was given to the Church by Jesus Himself on the night of the Resurrection. On that first Easter night, Jesus said to the Apostles, “Receive the Holy Spirit, whatever sins you forgive they are forgiven”. This sacrament is the first sacrament given to the Church by the Risen Lord. This is the first way we begin to live the new life of Christ, by having our sins of the past forgiven and receiving the freedom to walk into the future.

Grace for our Personal Journey

The Sacrament of Confession is the one place in the whole world you know you are loved. No matter what you have done or said, no matter how bad things are, the Lord is there loving you. It is a personal love. One theologian said that the particular grace of the Sacrament of Reconciliation is that it is tailor-made. It is the grace you need on your personal journey. That is why personal confession is so necessary. “I am not loved in a group, but personally by God.” He takes my struggles seriously. He wants to help me to be free.

We Can’t Change the Past

None of us can carry the burden of our sins, we can’t change the past. None of us can wipe the past clean. The great joy is to know that we don’t have to. Christ Jesus has done it for us. In Christ we are relieved of this burden. Jesus carried the weight of all our sins when He carried the Cross. He has done it for us. He died to set us free. All we have to do is ask for his mercy and accept his new life.

Go to Confession Regularly

In his letter to the Irish Church Pope Benedict XVI encouraged us “to discover anew the Sacrament of Reconciliation and to avail yourselves more frequently of the transforming power of its grace”. This wonderful sacrament is about your future not about your past. Learn to walk in the freedom of your future and not to be enslaved by the sins of the past. Go to confession regularly.

Original Article

Confession - God Never Tires, by Fr. John Harris

How often do you hope it won’t be the same priest in case he might remember you? How often does the devil, the great discourager, tell you that you are wasting your time so give up going to confession? How often do you feel you are fighting a losing battle with sin in your life?

Struggling with Confession

We all have these same feelings, fears, doubts, discouragements and judgements. We become burdened with the weight of our sins and we feel it is useless to go to confession again with the same list of the same sins.

God Never Tires of Being Merciful

The first Sunday after his election, Pope Francis said, “We get tired of asking God for mercy, but God never tires of being merciful”. I think the Holy Father has pointed out a very real challenge for us all. Speaking both as a priest and a penitent, his words make great sense.

 

The Lord comes to take away our sins

The Pope knows how difficult it can be to live in the midst of the struggle with sin in one’s life. He knows that we can become terribly discouraged and fed up. This can be made even worse when we don’t accept the mercy of God for our past sins. I can remember going to confession once, and the priest said to me that I had carried all my old sins back into the box with me. Even though the Lord had forgiven all the sins of my past, yet I had held onto them, so that each week in confession, I kept repeating the old sins. He asked me, “Do you believe in the power of Jesus to forgive you your sins?” I said, “Yes”. Then he asked me why was I still clinging to them? The Lord comes to take away our sins and very often we don’t allow Him to do that. We go after them again and carry them with us as old companions on the road. When we don’t allow the Lord to take away our sins, we can become even more tired of asking for mercy.

Our tiredness of asking for mercy

The Pope is asking us to reflect upon our tiredness of asking for mercy. He wants us to focus on God and His mercy. He wants us to see confession as a sacrament of love rather than a torture chamber we fear. Too often we look at the Sacrament of Reconciliation only from our own point of view, when all the time we are being asked in the life of the Church to see things from God’s point of view. We only see our sins and not our loving Father waiting for us.

The love of Jesus Christ lasts forever

Recently, before publicly going to confession himself, Pope Francis said, “The love of Jesus Christ lasts forever. It has no end because it is the very life of God. This love conquers sin and gives the strength to rise and begin again, for through forgiveness, the heart is renewed and rejuvenated. We all know it: our Father never tires of loving and his eyes never grow weary of watching the road to his home to see if the son who left and was lost is returning. We can speak of God’s hope: our Father expects us always, he doesn't just leave the door open to us, but he awaits us. He is engaged in the waiting for his children.”

Sinners can't earn Mercy

These words remind me of words spoken by Saint Pope John Paul II, “We must not think that it is the sinner, through his or her own independent journey of conversion, who earns mercy. On the contrary, it is the mercy that impels the penitent along the path of conversion. Left to ourselves we can do nothing. Before being man’s journey to God, confession is God’s arrival at the person’s home”.

I confess to Almighty God

I have been reflecting lately on the fact that when we come together to pray at the Holy Mass, the first thing we do is to publicly admit that we are sinners. We say “I confess to Almighty God and to you my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts, and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do” and we blame no one else for this situation expect ourselves for we say that we have done all this through “my own fault”, indeed through “my own grievous fault”. We can only so publicly admit that we are sinners because we believe in mercy.

If we didn't believe in mercy then, like most of the world, we would either take pride in our sins or deny they were sins. Without mercy, our sins would indeed crush us. But praised be to God, we know that there is infinite mercy with God. That is why we must never get tired of asking for mercy. Mercy is our only hope of becoming people who can live in the freedom of the children of God, free to love as we ourselves are loved by our merciful Father.

In the likeness of God

We can only love each other when we relish the mercy of God in our own lives. As the Pope reminds us, “From the heart of the person renewed in the likeness of God comes good behaviour: to speak always the truth and avoid all deceit; not to steal, but rather to share all you have with others, especially those in need; not to give in to anger, resentment and revenge, but to be meek, magnanimous and ready to forgive; not to gossip which ruins the good name of people, but to look more at the good side of everyone. It is a matter of clothing oneself in the new man, with these new attitudes.”

Never tire of asking for mercy

Never tire of asking for mercy, never become discouraged in your fight against sin and selfishness. The Lord is victorious over all the forces of darkness and sin. He is our hope and our mercy. Rejoice in God’s mercy and ask for it more and more each day.

Original Article

1725 Today, the Lord has been teaching me, once again, how I am to approach the Sacrament of Penance:

My daughter, just as you prepare in My presence, so also you make your confession before Me. The person of the priest is, for Me, only a screen. Never analyze what sort of a (89) priest it is that I am making use of; open your soul in confession as you would to Me, and I will fill it with My light. 

639 Thursday. During the evening adoration, I saw Jesus scourged and tortured. He said to me, My daughter, I desire that even in the smallest things, you rely on your confessor.

Your greatest sacrifices do not please Me if you practice them without the confessor's (94) permission; on the other hand, the smallest sacrifice finds great value in My eyes, if it is done with his permission. The greatest works are worthless in My eyes if they are done out of self-will, and often they are not in accord with My will and merit punishment rather than reward. And on the other hand, even the smallest of yours acts, done with the confessor's permission is pleasing in My eyes and very dear to Me. Hold firmly to this always. Be constantly on the watch, for many souls will turn back from the gates of hell and worship My mercy. But fear nothing, as I am with you. Know that of yourself you can do nothing. 

1560 February 3, [1938]. Today after Holy Communion, Jesus again gave me a few directives: First, do not fight against a temptation by yourself, but disclose it to the confessor at once,

and then the temptation will lose all its force. Second, during these ordeals do not lose your peace; live in My presence; ask My Mother and the Saints for help. Third, have the certitude that I am looking at you and supporting you. Fourth, do not fear either struggles of the soul or any temptations, because I am supporting you; if only you are willing to fight, know that the victory is always on your side. Fifth, know that by fighting bravely you give Me great glory and amass merits for yourself. Temptation gives you a chance to show Me your fidelity.

1561 And now I am going to tell you something that is most important for you:
Boundless sincerity with your spiritual director. If you do not take advantage of
this great grace according to (138) My instructions, I will take him away from you,
and then you will be left to yourself; and all the torments, which you know very
well, will return to you. It displeases Me that you do not take advantage of the
opportunity when you are able to see him and talk with him. Know that it is a
great grace on My part when I give a spiritual director to a soul. Many souls ask
Me for this, but it is not to all that I grant this grace. From the moment when I 344
gave you this priest as spiritual director, I endowed him with new light so that he
might easily know and understand your soul…..

132 (62) I must again mention that there are some confessors who seem to be true spiritual fathers, but only as long as things go well.

When the soul finds itself in greater need, they become perplexed, and either cannot or will not understand the soul. They try to get rid of the person as soon as possible. But if the soul is humble, it will always profit in some little way or other. God Himself will sometimes cast a shaft of light into the depths of the soul, because of its humility and faith. The confessor will sometimes say something he had never intended to say, without even realizing it himself. Oh, let the soul believe that such words are the words of the Lord Himself! Though indeed we ought to believe that every word spoken in the confessional is God‟s, what I have referred to above is something that comes directly from God. And the soul perceives that the priest is not master of himself, that he is saying things that he would rather not say. This is how God rewards faith. I have experienced this many times myself. A certain very learned and respected priest [probably Father Wilkowski, the sisters‟ confessor at Plock], to whom I sometimes happened to go to confession, was always severe and opposed to these matters [which I brought up to him]. But on one occasion he replied to me, “Bear in mind, Sister, that if God is asking this of you, you should not oppose Him. God sometimes wants to be praised in just this way. Be at peace; what God has started, He will finish. But I say this to you: faithfulness to God and humility. And once again: humility. Bear well in mind what I have told you today.” I was delighted, and I thought that perhaps this priest had understood me. But it so turned out that I never went to confession to him again.

269 Once, when I had finished a novena to the Holy Spirit for the intention of my confessor [Father Sopocko], the Lord answered,

I made him known to you even before your superiors had sent you here. As you will act towards your confessor, so I will act toward you. If you conceal something from him, even though it be the least of My graces, I too will hide Myself from you, and you will remain alone. And so I followed God‟s wish, and a deep peace filled my soul. Now I understand how the Lord defends confessors and how He protects them.