Why Bother Going to Confession?

trendsfitness.blogspot.com - By Mary Beth Bonacci



If we want to have the peace Christ gives, we have to root out sin, mortal and venial, from our lives. There’s no other way. Sometimes that’s not easy. We have to determine if our behavior is sinful—and if it is, we have to stop. We have to respect God’s law. We have to
be examples of His love. And when we fail to live up to that, which we all do sometimes, we can’t run away from our failure. We have to face up to it, repent, and move on.

Have you ever heard someone say, “What I’ve done is so bad, even God couldn’t forgive me.” If you murder your friend’s family, odds are you’ll never get that friendship back, no matter how sincerely you apologize. God, on the other hand, always forgives. No matter
what we’ve done, no matter how awful it seems, if we say to Him, “I’m so sorry, I wish I hadn’t done it, and I’m committed to trying hard not to do I again,” He takes us back.

I want to say that again, because many people miss this point. No matter what we’ve done, God always forgives us if we’re truly sorry. We just have to go to Him and ask.
“Going to Him” is a little harder to do than going to a person, because we can’t see Him.

With friends, we can look at them and hear them and work with them. They hear our apologies, and we hear them forgive. It helps the healing.

God knew we needed that, so He gave us a way. The sacrament of penance. Confession. We can actually go somewhere and hear the voice of someone assigned and called by Christ, who tells us that our sins are forgiven.

Confession restores our relationship with God. If we’ve committed venial sins, confession repairs the damage. And if we’ve committed mortal sins, confession reconnects the severed relationship.
The sacrament of penance is the system Christ gave us for the forgiveness of sins. It’s the only system He gave us.

He told the apostles, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them. If you retain them, they are retained” (Jn 20:22–23). In other words, priests have Christ’s sacramental power to forgive sins, and they do that in the confessional.
Christ knew what He was doing when He gave us the sacrament of penance. Like all the other sacraments, confession is a physical act.
He gave us a place to go, where we can “leave” our sins and take grace in their place. He gave us a place where we have someone to talk to if we have questions—someone who doesn’t even necessarily know who we are. God knows that, as human persons, we
operate on the physical level. In something as important as forgiveness, He wants it to operate on the tangible level. He wants us to be there, to go to it, to hear it.

I know it’s easy to want to avoid the confessional. You’re afraid the priest may recognize your voice. It takes effort. It may be a little scary. It’s a lot easier just to whisper in the dark, “God, I’m sorry.”
Don’t be afraid of the confessional. Go regularly. You don’t have to go face to face. The priest doesn’t have to know who you are. But you don’t have to be afraid of gong face to face either. You’re not going to shock him. He hears this stuff all the time.

He, better than anyone, knows that we’re all human. And he won’t tell anyone. He can’t. Even under the threat of death he can’t reveal what’s been said in the confessional. Your secret is safe with him.
But he will tell you something. He’ll say, “I absolve you from your sins.” You’ll know it, because Christ said it was true. That priest isn’t just some guy. He’s a guy acting for Christ. He’s the “ambassador of Christ’s loving forgiveness”.
And the relationship will be back. The peace will be back. All will be right between you and God.
Nothing is better than that.

Mary Beth Bonacci is the author of We’re On A Mission From God
(Ignatius Press) and is a well known speaker and syndicated columnist.

Posted by Jhoe XD