DESPITE THE FACT THAT I KNOW I WOULD BE HAPPIER IN THE LONG RUN IF I JUST CLEANED MY ROOM

Last night was the diocesan wide Night of Confessions.  For three hours Fr. Anthony, Fr. Miller and I manned the confessionals at St. Sebastian and heard pretty steady confessions all night.  Fr. Pfeiffer joined us for dinner after and we talked about what a wonderful experience it was for us.

But more importantly it was the satisfying experience of those who went to confession.  The absolute relief many people expressed when they finished was an honor to witness.  I made the comment that I wonder why more people don’t take advantage of this.

Well, maybe I don’t wonder that much.  First, there is the courage it takes to make a good confession.  No matter much relief there may be after, you still have to have the courage to go in the first place.  One of my relatives just had knee surgery.  Now she is SO glad that she had it done.  Life is so much easier (and pain free.)  But still, before hand she had to work up the gumption to go into the hospital and have the surgery done in the first place.

Then there are all of the typical arguments that people have:  Why should I tell my sins to another human being?  Why do I need a priest to absolve me?  I can just tell my sins to God . . . and there are all kinds of responses to this but here is one very human reason why should do this:

It works.  Jung who was developing his psychological treatments in Vienna found that most of his patients were Protestants and Jews despite the fact that most of the population was Catholic.  This led him to speculate that the Sacrament of Reconciliation makes psychiatry much less necessary.  The sacramental practice already largely handled (and had for 2,000 years) what psychiatry was developed to do.  No wonder Jesus gave it to us.  It is good for us.

Not that we do it in order to feel good.  But it is a nice side benefit.  So why don’t more people do it?  Why don’t they exercise and diet more?  Why not read better books?  Why not expose themselves to well produced art?  Why not fix up their houses?  We know we would be so much happier in life.

Why not?

GUEST BLOGGER - IS IT TIME TO RETURN TO THE SACRAMENT OF RECONCILIATION?

Guest Blogger:  I am happy to have as our Guest Blogger today Deacon Michael Petkosek.  He won't be a deacon much longer as he will (if God wills it!) become a priest for the Diocese of Cleveland this spring.  Here is a reflection he gave on returning to Confession in the advent season.  Thank you Deacon Petkosek.  Please keep him & his class in your prayers!

My return to the active practice of the faith took place on a Saturday afternoon in 2006. I was a young professional and had just begun my career at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. The ruckus of college living had by then settled into a more mature focus on career and the necessities of life. Spurred by the disciplined atmosphere at Wright-Patterson of serving something beyond oneself, I began a serious reflection on faith and the state of my life. It had been years since I last celebrated the Sacrament of Reconciliation and I knew that I had misarranged my life during that intervening time. And so it was that I turned off college football on this particular autumn Saturday, sat in the corner of my bedroom, and practiced out loud the words of an honest confession. Then I went to the local parish to come face to face with God through his priest, and found the welcoming forgiveness of the Prodigal Father. I was home.

Returning to the Sacrament of Reconciliation can be difficult if we have been away. Often, as in my case, the weight of a misdirected life compels us to return and we find ourselves finally running in desperation to the Church and her ministry. But that is not necessarily everyone’s story, and sometimes we may need the right situation to draw us toward this sacrament that we know ourselves to need. Advent is that situation.

The Season of Advent is the turning of the liturgical year for the Church. It is a time of hope that anticipates Christmas and invites us to renew and deepen our life in Christ. A feeling of resolution pervades the whole Church as she resets her calendar, and the opportunity for a fresh start calls us to make resolutions in our practice of the faith that will enrich our lives this Christmas, over the coming year, and for the eternity of our existence.

An examination of Christ’s ministry may help to lessen our fears if we are struggling with the courage to approach the Sacrament of Reconciliation. We should keep in mind that when it comes to the forgiveness of sins, we are dealing with something that Christ did during his time on earth. The Evangelists clearly regarded Jesus as someone who possessed the authority to forgive sins and exercised this divine prerogative. We need to look no further than Jesus’ encounters with the paralytic in Mark’s Gospel, the woman caught in adultery of John’s Gospel, or the sinful woman forgiven in Luke’s Gospel to find the early Church’s profession of faith in Jesus’ ministry of forgiveness. We should also be encouraged by the reality that it is this same ministry that continues in the Church. It is in John’s Gospel, where the Last Supper Narrative most directly relates to the continuation of Jesus’ work through service to others, that these words are attributed to our Lord, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you… Receive the holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them…” (20:21-23). There is not a more clear Biblical account that situates the forgiveness of sins as an action of the Church. 

Coming to grips with our sinfulness can be scary. But, we should not let ourselves be fooled by the false notion of God as an administrator of punishment. The Good News is that God loves us in the midst of our sin and is constantly at work in drawing us to himself, even when this takes the form of being called back to God—like my experience of return from a misarranged life. In the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the other half of the story is the Prodigal Father who never stops loving his wayward son. The father so hopes for his son’s return that, upon seeing him afar off, runs to meet him and never speaks of the incident in any other manner than my son has returned. The son had suffered the consequences of his actions—the effects of sin—but these are repaired upon returning to his father. The son is restored immediately by a father who longs for his presence. This Prodigal Father is God and the entire parable represents the experience of our sin. God is always eager for our return and the Sacrament of Reconciliation brings us back into the Father’s house, clothed with dignity, as the Prodigal Son was restored to his father’s house.

The celebration of the sacrament is meant to be an experience much like a Gospel encounter with Christ. We should say to the priest what we would say to Jesus if we were a penitent who encountered Jesus in a Gospel story, for indeed we are. The stern formality once associated with the sacrament exists today only as a caricature portrayed by the entertainment media. Instead, the rubrics of the liturgical rite that guide the celebration of the sacrament are almost transparent and are intended to facilitate a conversation. The priest is to serve as a visible instance of God’s welcome and mercy, someone who helps us to experience what the paralytic, the woman caught in adultery, and the sinful woman once experienced. The Church’s intention is to invite us to make a thoughtful examination of our conscience—to help us evaluate our circumstances honestly as did the Prodigal Son. We are not necessarily directed to produce an exhaustive list our venial sins, but a state of our life at the present moment; we should talk about sinfulness as much as we name specific instances of sin. Of course, any grave sins that an examination does reveal to us need to be named specifically in the confession. 

As we approach Advent, my hope is that you will desire to encounter Christ through his ongoing ministry in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. The Father desires this privileged encounter with his mercy for you; the priest in the confessional is the Prodigal Father running to meet you. I can attest that that Saturday in 2006 was a Gospel story that has been added to the entirety of Christ’s work. In the Story of the Young Professional, I am as a contemporary of the Prodigal Son. May this Advent lead you to the same joy, especially if you have been away. 

15 SUGGESTIONS FOR REVITALIZING THE SACRAMENT OF CONFESSION LOCALLY

We often hear that the sacrament of confession is dead.  I don’t buy it.  I think it is like a local restaurant that I like that has inconvenient hours and even when I make it a point of going to their horrible hours it is closed on that particular day or the owners are on vacation and have a sign tacked to the door.  I show up with friends only to be turned away.  After a while it falls off of my radar screen and I don’t even think to go until some bazar thing happens like finding myself in front of the store just when I happen to be hungry.  Thank goodness the wait staff is good and they don’t run out of my choice (too often.)  How they stay open I don’t know.  Likewise it is amazing that the sacrament of confession is still in use for these same reasons!  There must be something about it that it still survives at all!  We’ve done just about everything we can do to kill yet it remains more resilient than Godzilla.  

I don’t claim to have all of the answers, but here are 15 suggestions on how (in the long term) to take the sacrament from being Wall Flower at the dance (there but not very popular) to at least being the punch bowl attendant (still not overly popular, but most will at least stop by when they are thirsty.)

1)  If you are in an area with parishes in relatively easy driving distance, don’t have confessions at the exact same time as everybody else.  If someone can’t make it to one, they can’t make it to any of them.

1. Have more than one scheduled opportunity to go to confession and at different times of the day.  Once again, if someone can’t make your Tuesday night confessions because of work, they will never have the opportunity.  Or if they work nights and you only have night time confessions . . . 
2. Don’t rely on “confessions by appointment.”  I didn’t even go to see my doctor when I thought I was having a stroke because it seemed like such a bother.  (I know, I know.)  And this is much more important.  “By appointment” is largely for trauma cases, the super comfortable person, and 5th steps.
3. When starting a new confessions time, it takes months of getting the word out for people to really start taking advantage of it.  It has to enter their consciousness.  That takes a while.  Commit for at least half of a year (part of it in a penitential season) before deciding if it is a poor time to have the sacrament.
4. Do NOT cancel confessions.  Think of the poor soul hanging on the faith by their fingernails that FINALLY worked up the nerve to go to confession only to show up and find out that there are no confessions that day for some mysterious reason.  But if there are times that you must cancel, make sure that it is well announced and advertised and that there is a sign on the door explaining the extraordinary circumstances.
5. Nothing will work if you don’t preach it.  There are great events that I want to attend in my own area of West Akron - BIG ONES - and I miss them because they don’t cross my mind.  I get on with life and the next thing I know I’ve missed them for another year.  You don’t have to beat people over the head with sin - but we do need reminding.
6. Advertise.  Make sure that the bulletin, the parish signs and the web site all list confession times clearly and that the information is accurate.
7. Pray for those who would benefit from going to confession.  Ask their guardian angels to get them there.
8. Even if you are a lion in the pulpit, be encouraging and merciful in the confessional.  Your reputation will proceed you.
9. The biggest and most common complaints that I hear in the confessional are:  The priest talks too much, the priest didn’t let me finish, the priest told me I don’t need confession for one reason or another (my sins weren’t big enough).  I’m sure there are grave deficiencies in my methods that this or that person does not appreciate.  That’s why it’s good to have other priests available when possible.  
10. Find ways to stop someone who is at confession more for counseling than confession.  Can you imagine showing up early for confessions that only lasts for a half an hour and the person two people in front of you being in there for 20 minutes?  Sometimes I will say to such a person, “This sounds like it needs attention outside of the sacrament.  Let’s continue this conversation later in the rectory.”
    
11. Do what you can to make confession obvious and welcoming. Make the church look open.  (Have the lights on.)  Have confessions in an obvious place (not a side room that people should just know to go to.)  Make it as private (sound proof) as possible.  
12. Let people know that if they have not been to confession in a long time and are afraid that they forget how to go or don’t remember prayers that you will talk them through it.  It will be just fine.  In this case getting to confession is more important than remembering how to do it exactly correctly.
13. Let people know where they can find an examination of conscience.  (There are oodles of them on line for various persons and vocations.)
14. Advertise the times of surrounding parishes (if there are any close) for people to go to if they are ashamed/embarrassed/uncomfortable/just-plain-not-of-a-mind to go to their parish priests.
15. When handling large groups of confessions such as for a school, do not rely all the time on the rite for group confessions.  From the start, people need to learn how to and be comfortable with going to confession on their own.  
    

Yes it’s a pain.  Yes, it’s time consuming.  Yes, there are more and more things required of priests.  Yes, it can be trying sitting in the box on a day that is slow on confessions.  But really there are few things more important than for the father of a congregation to be with his people when they need healing.