Why I Love the Sacrament of Confession
It might sound odd for me to claim that Confession is one of my favorite sacraments, but how could it not be when I have found such tremendous mercy and redemption in it?
If I am merciful to others in my ministry and teaching settings, it is because I have been shown great mercy. More than once, I have been the prodigal son who runs off with the wealth and blessings of the Father, waking up later in my filth and empty self-centeredness, only to return to the open arms of a God who knows and loves me with reckless abandon.
One of our Faith’s greatest treasures is the sacrament of mercy itself, Reconciliation, commonly called Confession. Now, I could point to the establishment of this sacrament from the early Church councils, reference writings of the Church Fathers, elaborate on Scripture’s encouraging us to confess our sins (1 John 1:9) and gave His apostles the power to loose and bind sins (Matt. 18:18), but I prefer to share with you the awe and appreciation I have for this holy mystery.
Confession has proven to be the steadfast reminder of my fallenness and need for the mercy of God in order to run well this earthly race.
A God of Grit and Grime
I realize that my love of Confession seems like a strange notion in our modern time. To confess anything implies that I committed a wrong. In our relativistic times, in which there is supposedly no objective truth and “sin” is a lost concept, can anything be wrong? Does sin even exist anymore?
To go before a priest in Confession and personally, bodily, and vulnerably own up to my sins certainly stands in sharp contrast to the airbrushed and flawless facade I’m expected to keep up online. We live in an age of disconnection, in which we can hide behind phone screens and digital barriers and block anything uncomfortable. We can manicure our social media presence to make sure we’re portrayed as spotless with the perfect filters. We can delete our flaws, block annoyances, and delete browser histories so we look as if we have nothing to hide.
But there’s a problem. We’re not perfect. We all have things that we hide.
