If you have been away from the Sacrament of Reconciliation, God is not looking on you with judgment or criticism. He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him" (15:20). But the father is overcome with joy at his beloved son's return: "While he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him, and was filled with compassion.
Deciding to return home, he hopes his father will accept him as a servant. The son has rejected his father's love and wasted his life. God is like the father in the story of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32). Nothing you do could make God happier than to come to him in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, especially if you have been away from the sacrament for a long time. What if I haven't been to confession in years? Jesus uses the priest's voice to speak his forgiveness because he wants you to be absolutely confident that your sins are wiped away by his merciful love. This is why he says, "I absolve you from all your sins, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." It is Christ absolving sins through the priest as his instrument. This power is passed on to priests through the grace of their ordination it is as though the apostles were ministering to us today, offering us forgiveness promised by Jesus! When you say your sins to the priest, he stands in the place of Christ. In the Gospel, Jesus gives his apostles the power to forgive sins in his name (Matthew 9:6, John 20:21-23). Yet when we say our sins to the priest in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, we are not merely saying them to another human being. This is why the early Christians encouraged, "Confess your sins to one another, so that you may be healed" (James 5:16). Go in peace." If I say these things out loud, and the priest does not reject me, I know in a concrete way that God does not reject me, that I truly am forgiven. He knew that no matter how "spiritual" of a person we are, we are still human, and it makes all the difference in the world to us to hear another human voice say to us, "Your sins are forgiven.
Yet this shame that we feel is the very reason Jesus instituted the Sacrament of Reconciliation (also known as Confession or Penance). It may be that these are the very things which keep us from going to confession, because it seems impossible to say them out loud to another person. We all know that there are things we have done that we are ashamed of, whether it is easy to admit to ourselves or not. In confession we bring everything we wish we had never done, and Christ's merciful love wipes these things from our soul as if we had never done them: "As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our sins from us" (Psalm 103:12). Leave the confessional and do your penance. Our Savior Jesus Christ suffered and died for us. I firmly intend, with your help, to do penance, to sin no more, and to avoid whatever leads me to sin. In choosing to do wrong and failing to do good, I have sinned against you whom I should love above all things. My God, I am sorry for my sins with all my heart. Then he will give you your penance (usually a prayer or an act of charity) and ask you to pray an act of contrition. You may close by saying something like, “For these and all my sins I am sorry.” It is good to begin with your most serious sins. Make certain that you confess all your mortal (serious) sins and the number of them. Once you go in, the priest may start with a prayer.īegin by saying, “Father forgive me, it has been _ weeks/months/years since my last confession.”Ĭonfess your sins to the priest. Examine your conscience (see below) before you enter the confessional.
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