I Confess

When I was in my teens I lived for a week with a Protestant family in the Shankhill Road, Belfast. They were a wonderful family as are all Belfast families until someone mentions Catholics and an inherited prejudice takes over. This also applies to Catholics in relations to Protestants as so I am not being sectarian. Any way the girl jeered me that we catholics had it so easy. You sin then go to Confession, have it forgiven, and sin again. I can only look at my own life and admit to an outsider at times that must have been just how it looked. However God is not fooled so easily. When we go to confession we must have a real purpose of amendment - we must determine that we will never sin again. I know we do, because we are not saints but if we use confession it does help us to overcome our sins. It all depends on our own dispositions. Take the early Church. Having been baptised and living in a wonderful Christian community with the Apostles still alive and preaching how could anyone sin. Indeed it was thought in the very early days that they would not and everyone was a saint. Reality however took over. At first the penitents for forgiveness had to stand up and confess their sins to the priest and the congregation. Now there was a test. That we have to confess only to a priest now is due to - who else but the Irish. Irish Monks around the fourth century started giving absolution to their students and this became popular. You bet it did. So the practice spread to the ordinary lay people. In this modernist era there is a baffling notion going around that people who go to Church do not sin so there is no real need for confession. Let me be the first to contradict this. I sin and I sin in thought word and deed but I will not make a public confession about it. I need confession not just for my sins but for the grace that confession brings. Grace that fills my soul and helps me lead a better life. I would never present myself at the altar to receive the God who loves me if I had committed a seriou sin. My love of God I hope would never have diminished. So that is why I go to confession. If I quarrel with my wife Confession helps me say I am sorry not just to the priest but to my wife. It is one of the most beautiful sacraments in the Catholic Church.