Embrace the Grace!

This Lent, I'm starting a campaign to, "Embrace the Grace" of going to confession.  Allow the Sacrament of Reconciliation, which one of our priest friends calls, "The Sacrament of Peace," to cleanse your soul and refill it with His peace.

This Lent, go to confession.  Go.  Run.  Don't walk.  Go.  Go!

Encounter Jesus in all His eternal mercy and allow Him to love you and forgive you of all your life's mistakes, big or small.  Embrace the grace of the sacrament, endure your Good Friday with Him, so that on Easter morning you, too, may rejoice -- He is risen!  Alleluia!

Jesus Is the Living Water

We've just been through a spell during which, due to a widespread power outage from a winter storm, we were without electricity for a few days.  After pondering our (comparatively minor) difficulties, it was clear to me:

Electricity wasn't the problem -- we had daylight all day, and candles, flashlights, and lanterns all night.

Heat wasn't the problem -- we had two woodstoves within four fireplaces and cords of seasoned wood stacked up.

Modern technological connectivity wasn't the problem -- we had chargers for all our devices that could be re-charged in our vehicles.

Food preservation wasn't the problem -- we had a small generator to periodically give our refrigerator/freezer a shot in the arm for continued freshness.

Water wasn't the problem -- we had fresh snow blanketing the ground, water bottles stored in the garage, and a lake on the other side of the woods.

However, running water was the problem.  You can only wash so many dirty dishes, dirty clothes, dirty shoes/boots, dirty rags, dirty cars, and dirty people in buckets of water before the bucket quickly becomes soiled and the water within it fouled.  I could see our accustomed level of sanitation rapidly deteriorating.

Running water was the problem.  Cool, clear, fresh, continuously flowing, running water.

In the Bible, Jesus speaks to the woman at the well and refers to Himself as the "living water":

Jesus answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” [The woman] said to him, “Sir, you do not even have a bucket and the cistern is deep; where then can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this cistern and drank from it himself with his children and his flocks?” Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again; but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” (John 4:10-15)

The woman didn't initially understand that Jesus Himself was the living water of which He spoke, the wellspring of eternal life.

No matter how many other things we are juggling in life, and no matter how well we think we are juggling them, eventually we will face a need for cool, clear, fresh, continuously flowing, running water.  Running water not only will cleanse whatever is dirty, but it will cleanse it continuously and repeatedly, as well as carry away all the dirt and grime.

Isn't Jesus just like this?

Isn't His Sacrament of Reconciliation (which Bishop Victor B. Galeone refers to as, "the Sacrament of Peace") just like this?

No matter what we are managing to multi-task in our own lives, we will need at some point (whether we initially are willing to admit it or not) to stop and turn to Jesus for a true, thorough, and complete cleansing.  Of our lives.  Of our souls.  Only He can provide the endlessly fresh deep cleaning that we need.  Continuously.  Repeatedly.  Honestly.  And thoroughly.  For free!

If you haven't been to Confession in a while, start thinking about it now.  Lent is coming next month (Ash Wednesday is March 4th), and it's the perfect time to renew our purification in Christ.  It's the perfect time to clean out the dirt, to "scrape off and fluff up" as my friend Alice likes to say.  Through the priest, Jesus Christ makes Himself available to YOU during the Sacrament of Reconciliation, to absolve you of your sins and, as he advised St. Mary Magdalene, to set your feet on a path toward Him to go and do this sin no more (cf. John 8:11).

We're never going to be perfect.  We're never going to be utterly, sparklingly, heavenly clean.  At least not here on Earth.  But in those few moments of Confession, the Lord will absolve you of your sins, wipe your earthly slate clean, and provide you with the graces you need to move forward in your life, beyond the weight and filth of whatever dirt your soul might be carting around.

So go.  Go.  Go to Confession!  Go!!!  I mean it.

Believe me.  There's absolutely nothing you can confess to the priest that he hasn't heard or heard of already.  He'll keep your secret, then let it go by handing it immediately over to God.

....and if you're still shy, pick a priest you've never met at a different parish and go screen.

But don't miss out.  Don't miss the gift, grace, and blessing of the true cleansing provided Jesus, the Living Water, every time you go to Confession.  Only He can fit your soul for heaven, and that's one power you don't want to be without!

The Light Is On For You

Hey, here's a thought.

Has anyone ever threatened one of your children?  Anything from complete annihilation to even just looking at your kid cross-eyed?  What was your immediate reaction?

No, be honest here.

Did you want to smile and embrace that person?  Welcome him or her into your home?  Thank that person for his or her kind attention to your child?  Let that person within a thousand mile radius of your child again?  Ever?  For as long as they live?

Yeah.  I thought not.  Me neither.

And yet, that's exactly what the Blessed Mother does for us.

I've never been able to understand why on Earth Mary would want to lead us, even welcome us, into the presence of her Son when we're the very ones who put Him on the cross in the first place. I know if anyone ever so much as touched one single solitary hair on my child's head....well, "Momma Grizzly" doesn't begin to describe what I would have in store for them.  Grrrrrr.

(...which explains why I'm never called The Blessed Mother.)

And yet, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, continues not only to invite us into the Divine Mercy of His Sacred Heart, but she actually appears to us through visionaries across the ages to renew her offer for us to come to her Son.

Wow.

This Lent, while we recognize that it was our sins that nailed Christ to the cross, please also recognize what Our Lady and the Church teach us about His infinite mercy: "The Light Is On For YOU."  Come to Jesus in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  Humble yourself for a moment.  Confess your sins.  Release all that scarring pain.  Allow Him to nail your sins (ALL your sins) to the cross in union with Him, so that on Easter morning you too may rejoice in the love, mercy, and resurrection of the Lord!

Because isn't that the reason for which we're all here?  To know, love, and serve Him in this world AND to be happy with Him forever in heaven?

How do you expect to get into heaven if you're carrying around the baggage of sin?  Big sins.  Little sins.  Dramatic sins.  Mundane sins.  Repetitive sins.  Drop that luggage on the turnstile of confession and let is goooooooooooooooooo.  Gone.  Forever.

Te absolvo!

The Light Is On For You.

Ember Wednesday

Remember, this Wednesday is the first Ember Wednesday of the Church year!  See my post here for all the details on the ancient feasts of "Ember Days".  You won't want to miss this special opportunity to join the universal Church (because that's what "catholic" means, you know -- universal!) in prayer and fasting during Lent.

Many hands make light work!  Let's carry each other and the cross of Christ -- together!

Going to Confession Is Like Brushing Your Teeth

“Brush your teeth,” I tell my kids every night.  And why wouldn’t they?  Everyone knows brushing your teeth wipes away the detritus left in your mouth after a full day of eating and living.  Whether healthy or hedonistic, your daily culinary activities inevitably leave dirt, film, or some other undesirable gunk on your teeth.  Plaque buildup, dentists call it.  We all want to show others a brilliant smile, so we clean our teeth regularly.  It won’t make your teeth perfect, and you’re going to have to brush them again tomorrow.  But, for now, it expunges the day’s dirt and makes them shine.

Well, going to sacramental confession is a bit like that.  You go to confession to wipe away the sins that have accumulated since the last time you went, whether that was 40 days ago or 40 years ago.  It won't make you perfect and you're going to have to go again in your lifetime.  But, for now, *poof!* your soul has a brilliant shine!  Pure as the day you were born!  All your sins are forgiven.  Really!

Sure, you have to do some penance for the temporal punishment due to sin, but you also have to spit after you brush your teeth, to get rid of all that gunk you just scrubbed off, don’t you?  And you have to rinse out your toothbrush and wipe up the sink a bit.  No one is embarrassed by that sort of clean up.  In fact, in my house, that kind of tidiness is downright praiseworthy!

So seriously, regarding confession, why are you embarrassed?  Why don’t you go?  Who’s going to know?  I mean, when was the last time – in all of known recorded human history – that you heard of a priest running outside the church to put up a hand-lettered sandwich-board sign listing all the sins someone just told him within the confines of the sacred seal of the confessional?  He can’t.  Not, “He won’t.”  He can’t.  The solemn seal of the confessional is sacred, and the priest is forbidden to share anything you might reveal, no matter how mundane or incriminating.

Not anything.

And believe me, if you are a student of history with even half an imagination, it doesn’t take much to dream up some of the colorful offences many historical figures might need to have confessed.  I don’t want to name any names, but…..

No, never mind.  Let’s not add “gossip” to my own lengthening list.

Fortunately for most of us, there’s virtually nothing we can say in confession that genuinely would shock a priest.  Do you think he’s never heard sins like yours before now?  And if he has – say, from you the last ten times you were there – so what?  You have to brush your teeth again every day because you engage in a fairly steady daily diet, right?  Well, so too are your other living habits.  Fairly steady.  Same stuff, different day.

This, I think, is the other side of confession:  Am I too boring?  Do I have enough good material?  I mean, really, does Father want to hear for the forty-eleventh time that I yelled at the kids, took the Lord’s name in vain twice, gossiped inappropriately, and didn’t listen to my mother?  Well, I have it straight from the proverbial horse’s mouth that a priest would be appalled if every time you went into confession you came up with new and exotic sins to confess.  Just what sort of unstable eccentric life would you be living then!?

People brush their teeth every day to rid themselves of the normal accumulated filth that is detrimental to their oral health and inhibits their ability to share a sparkling smile.  We're all very attentive to the needs of our teeth. So why wouldn’t you take such good care of your soul?  After all, ultimately, your teeth just will be used for identification purposes when you’re dead.  Your soul will live forever.  And do you know precisely where your soul is going to live forever?  If you’re like me, you want penthouse accommodations, but more realistically will be enormously grateful if you even can slip in the back door to Purgatory, because then you’re only going up from there!

Remember who made you?  God made you.  Why did God make you?  God made you to know, love, and serve Him in this world and be happy with Him forever in the next.

So go to the Divine Dentist, visit the Divine Physician.  Let him clean your soul.  Let him make your soul sparkle and shine like new, so that you are fit to reside in His presence for all eternity!

Don’t let pride prevent you from lasting peace.  Don’t let the devil make you think that your sins are so uniquely profound or insignificantly mundane that the priest is going to laugh you out of the confessional and then run to post them on Facebook.  This is a sacrament, not social networking.  What do you think the priest actually is going to say, “Weeeeell, I don’t know.  Is that your final answer?  Let me think about that absolution thing.”  Of course not!

With a good confession, true contrition for your sins, and a firm purpose of amendment, you will hear some of the most beautiful words in the English language:

“God, the father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of His Son, has reconciled the world to Himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins through the ministry of the church. May God give you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

Please, go to confession.  Hurry.  Don’t wait.  Because Our Lord is waiting for you.  An outpouring of grace and mercy awaits you.

GO!

And while you’re on your way to confession, please, forward this post to someone you love, maybe someone who might not have been to confession in a while.  That way, years from now, you can smile at each other in heaven!

BONUS POINTS:  I found absolution in Latin!

Deus, Pater misericordiarum,

qui per mortem et resurrectionem Fílii sui

mundum sibi reconciliavit

et Spiritum Sanctum effudit

in remissionem peccatorum,

per ministerium Ecclesiae

indulgentiam

tibi tribuat

et pacem...

Et ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis

in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.

Amen.