Faith and the Sacraments

Matt, I can tell you something of the Sacrament of Reconciliation in my life, hopefully helpful in your quest. My Confessions have been beneficial to my spiritual life, to my Faith in Jesus and the Church. I can think of only one example of a Confession in seventy-five years of confessing that I might call a "mistake" in that the grumpy old priest was so impatient that I wondered if while attempting to get sin forgiven I was actually sinning more because of my feelings of anger and resentment towards him! I took his absolution and asked Jesus to figure out the rest. One of my best Confessions was my First. At that time about seven years old I told the Redemptorist priest - I even remember his name, John Hallisey, that I stole sugar, my very first confessed "sin." We used brown sugar in our home and as a kid I loved the stuff and used to take a teaspoon full and run and hide as I ate it. I thought I was a thief and so my first sin was of stealing. 'Way back to 1938 Fr. Hallisey told me the following. "Young man, I want you to remember for the rest of your life, that you cannot steal what belongs to you. At home if you want, sugar, or milk, or butter or anything, as a member of that family you may help yourself. However your Mother or Father told you not to take something and you did, you would be guilty of the Sin of Disobedience, not the Sin of Stealing." Excellent advice to a little boy from a wise priest. As a result I learned as a very young child the need to make what I later learned was called "distinctions" as to the exact nature of the sin, information that has served me well all my life. Another memorable Confession happened close to fifty years later. One morning on my way to work, I found myself in an unusually dank and dour mood. I passed a Church where Confession began early in the morning and so I walked in and sat in the pew, thinking maybe if I went to Confession I might feel better. Negative prayer began and I found myself asking Jesus why I was bothering with this ritual of Confession and I answered my question by saying, "Because you, Jesus, recommended it!" Suddenly these words popped into my head, "I want you to remember that Jesus Christ is your friend and your brother." Spurred by that reminder I entered the confessional and at the end of my confession the priest said to me, "My good man, I want you to remember that Jesus Christ is your friend and your brother!" What a shocker, as there was nothing in my confession that might give reason for those words. I did my penance and no longer felt dank and dour having been reminded TWICE by Jesus of what I knew but needed to hear again, that Jesus was my friend and brother! One time as a penance a priest told me to go home and do something nice for my wife! Good penance! Once a priest so taken with the mercy and forgiveness of God that I left that confessional never more convinced as then that "all my sins were in fact forgiven." This is of course always true with any good confession. But it's a soaring feeling to have your confessor tell you so convincingly. Once I went to an old priest who complained that no one went to him for confession, so to make him happy I did. I learned why nobody went! In his exhortation he went through the creation story, naming animal after animal until he came to Adam and Eve, at which point he said, "God could have made you an elephant or a fish, or a snake but thankfully he made you a human being, on and on! The old man was happy to give absolution and I was happy too, happy to leave and laughing at the humor whole thing! I hope something here is helpful.

We are about to celebrate our 60th year of sacramental marriage. The marriage sacrament eventually and gradually became for us an ongoing grace filled experience. And you can tell your students that hard times, and there is sure to be hard times,that they can be endured "if God is for us who can be against us' Working with troubled marriages in Retrouvaille we found that if couples embraced the idea and awareness that the marriage sacrament was an ongoing 'presence' not just a 'promise' they made in a Church, they could salvage their marital recovery. This understanding gave many couples the inspiration to forgive, forgive ,and forgive and keep on trying. Retro presenting couples say, " you heard our stories and if you want get where we are , than follow this path'.. If it sounds like AA ... we stole it fair and square Peace Ed & Peg. .. ..