The Sacrament of Growth and Mercy

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“And behold, a woman that was in the city, a sinner, when she knew that he sat at meal in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing behind him at his feet, she began to wash his feet with tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with oil” (Luke 7:36-38).

It's a rather beautiful scene. We have this woman who is anonymous, but we're told that she was a sinner, clearly known by her sins, publicly known. When she heard that Jesus was there, she performs this very special act of affection and of love.

She loves because she's aware of the sins that she has committed. She wants to be sorry. Contrition is an act of love. It's a desire to be better.

She comes to try and atone to Our Lord for those sins, and to show her love for Him in a special way.

Our Lord instituted the Sacrament of Confession, whereby we could have our sins forgiven. We could try and have a great sense of treasure about this sacrament. Our Lord need not have instituted the Sacrament of Confession, or He need not have made it the way that He did.

He made it in the form of a judgment: “Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven. Whose sins you shall retain, they are retained” (John 20:23). The priest has to make a judgment about the contrition of the sinner—that they're truly sorry.

Usually, the very act of coming and kneeling before a priest in the confessional is already a sign of contrition. But still, we have to confess our sins; we have to tell them openly.

We believe that in those moments when the priest is hearing our Confession, Christ is acting in him and through him, because we believe in all the sacraments, he acts in the person of Christ. Christ is making use of his being.

It isn't the priest who can forgive sins; it's Christ who forgives the sins.

Fulton Sheen liked to say, “When the priest raises his hand to give the absolution, the blood of Christ is dripping from his hands (Fulton Sheen, Through the Year).

“Without the shedding of blood,” we're told in Scripture, “there is no remission of sins” (Heb. 9:22).

Christ on the Cross won all the graces necessary to wash away all the sins of the whole of mankind for all time. When we go to the confessional box, when we receive the sacrament, we receive the benefit of that flow of graces, of that shedding of blood.

There is nothing that is so completely destroyed as sin that has been forgiven. Christ forgives our sins and that's the end of it.

It's good that we have a great sense of treasure and of gratitude and of mystery about what is taking place in the sacrament.

Many years ago in another country, a lady who came to Confession. She had her two-year-old son with her, or a bit younger even, and she brought him into the confessional box.

She told me, “When he heard the voice, he was looking around to see where the voice was coming from.” He couldn't quite decipher what was happening. He had never seen his mother talking to the wall before.

She asked me if she could bring him around the other side so that he could see that there was a priest there.

A few minutes later, the door opened and this child with the siddha in his mouth appeared, poker-faced, and began to stare at me, and then stared at the curtain, and then stared back at me, and then stared at the curtain, and then stared back at me, and then stared at the curtain. This went on about six times.

The child was totally expressionless, but you could see that inside his mind he was thinking, ‘What on earth is going on here?’

The mother told me that when they got home—she told me the following week—that he looked behind all the curtains in the house to see if there were any humans there.

Little children have the sense of mystery. They grasp that there's something unusual taking place here, ‘something I haven't quite fathomed before.’

Another mother who brought a little girl into the confessional went to Confession, and the little girl said to her, “Who are you talking to, Mummy? Are you gone stark raving mad, talking to the wall?”

Children grasp that there's something unusual. We're told that we have to “become like little children” (Matt. 18:3).

Little children who have that sense of mystery—they realize there's something strange or unusual or great. We have every reason to think in that way, to realize something wonderful is happening.

When you hear the Confessions of converts, it can be very instructive, informative. One man in another country told me, he said, “Father, you know, when I walk out of this confessional, I know I'm a free man. When I was a Protestant, we used to talk about confessing our sins directly to God.”

And he said, “That sounds very good. But the trouble with that is that you never know if you've been forgiven or not. But when I hear those words, ‘I absolve you from your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit’ I know I'm a free man.”

There's a lot of wisdom in that.

Another man, a convert also, said to me, “Father, would you ever mind, please, saying the words of absolution very slowly. Because I look forward to this moment my whole week, to hear those words, ‘I absolve you from your sins.’

Wow. It makes you think a little bit. Something very wonderful is taking place. It's very good if we have a great love for the Sacrament of Confession, realize the treasure that is there, and want to avail of that treasure in a regular way.

One great resolution from this meditation could be to try and get to Confession more frequently, to have a specific day or a specific hour; to make use of this great channel of graces to build up our soul, so that at the end of our life, we can look back and say, ‘Lord, I've received that sacrament in a regular way for so many weeks, so many years, so many decades.’

We come to realize the great benefits of being close to the sacraments. Every time that we receive the sacraments, in each sacrament we get an influx of the supernatural virtues of faith, of hope, of charity. These are wonderful treasures.

St. John Paul had an Encyclical early in his pontificate, Dives in Misericordia–“Rich in Mercy.”

Christ wants us to be rich in the spiritual things. We're called to be spiritual millionaires, and it's in the sacraments, and through the sacraments, that we become those spiritual millionaires.

Lord, I want to be a spiritual millionaire. I might be a material pauper, but I want to be a spiritual millionaire.

You've given me the possibility of such, and that's much more important than being a material or dollar millionaire, because “all those things of this world pass away” (1 John 2:17), but the spiritual treasures last forever.

Now, Lord, let's place that possibility within reach. If ever we lose the treasure of the state of grace, it's very good that we try to get back into the state of grace as soon as possible, because we have that sense of treasure.

Also, we know from experience that the Sacrament of Confession is “the sacrament of joy” (Pope Francis, Meeting with Young People, September 14, 2021). It brings joy and peace to our soul. Everything bad or ugly in our soul has been washed away.

If ever we think, I have no sins, then we could widen the search, like a lost file in the computer. Something we can't find—we put a bigger search engine going.

And even if we find we, maybe, don't have any major sins to confess, we could find a series of small things perhaps where we could have practiced virtue a little better: the extra mile that we didn't walk, the talent that we didn't develop, a lack of zeal in certain areas, a lack of love, a lack of commitment.

If we examine our conscience well, we'll discover the lack of virtue in our life.

Fulton Sheen says, “Self-disgust is the beginning of conversion” (Fulton Sheen, The Cries of Jesus from the Cross).

God gives us the grace “to see ourselves as we really are” (Rom. 12:3), to see ourselves as we are in His eyes. That can lead to a lot of self-disgust: all the bad things that come out of the human heart.

As we get older, we may recognize those things a little easier, a little clearer, things we haven't quite seen before. God gives us the grace to see with a little more clarity what we're like on the inside.

And that can lead us to grow in Confession. This woman who was “a sinner in the city”—somehow, she had an awareness of the greatness of her sins and the gravity of sin (Luke 7:36-39).

Jesus, give me the grace to have a sense of the gravity of sin.

Sin is the greatest evil in the world, the only real evil. All the other things this world we may consider as evils are not real evils.

They can be pathways to heaven: unemployment, lack of material things, illness, cancer, misfortune. All these things can be crosses that we can use for our holiness.

The only thing that can keep us out of heaven is sin.

Therefore, Lord, give me a hatred for sin, a hatred of offending you, because you are pure love, divine love. Your Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, is divine love Incarnate.

We're called to lead lives of love. Contrition is a sorrow for love—sorrow, because we're aware of who it is we have hurt, we have offended.

In the Confiteor of the Mass, the “I Confess” in each Mass, we say, “for what we have done and for what we have failed to do.”

Our sins may be greater, but our omissions may be greater—"things we have failed to do,” things we could have done and didn't do because of our laziness, or our lack of thoughtfulness, our slowness.

Possibly things that God was hoping for from us, but we let Him down, we dropped the ball.

If we prepare our Confession well, it won't be a routine; it will be a ritual done for love.

Even if we come back to Our Lord with the same things, it doesn't matter. You see, if this table wobbles on one leg, if one leg is shorter than the other, if it has some defect, it will always wobble on that leg. It would be very unusual if the table wobbled on a different leg every different week.

We all have certain weaknesses—consequences of original sin. We all tend to wobble on the same leg. We have the same defects, the same things we see.

But the fact that we're not improving, or we don't see ourselves improving, doesn't mean that the sacrament is ineffective.

It just means that we need to go back with a deeper contrition, because ultimately, our contrition is a desire to be better, a desire to improve.

Every time we go into that confessional box, we're saying to Our Lord, ‘Lord, help me to be better. I realize on my own I can't do anything. Help me to improve. I need your help. I need all the graces that I can get.’

Confession takes away all the obstacles to graces and to virtues that may be there—the obstacles to the graces that God wants to pour into our soul, and to make us those spiritual millionaires.

Sometimes our pride blinds us from seeing our sins, from seeing ourselves as we really are.

St. Josemaría in the Furrow says, “We have to instill in our souls a true horror for sin. Lord—say it with a contrite heart—may I never offend you again” (Josemaría Escrivá, Furrow, Point 134).

One of the conditions for a valid Confession is that we have what's called purpose of amendment: the desire never to sin again.

That's really what the priest has to judge about. “This person is really sorry.”

If somebody comes to Confession and says, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned, I murdered fifty people last week, and if I get half the chance, I'll murder another fifty this week.”

That person can't receive absolution because they're not sorry. But if they say, “I murdered fifty people last week and I'm so sorry, and I hope I will never ever murder anybody ever again in my whole life” then that person can receive the absolution.

He might murder another fifty this week, but in this particular moment, he is sorry—he has a purpose of amendment. That’s all that Our Lord demands from that valid Confession.

We have to try and work at our contrition. Our contrition is effective. I want to be better. I want to improve in this virtue.

“But don't be frightened,” he continues, “when you become aware of the burden of your poor body and of human passions: it would be silly and childlessly naive to find out now that ‘this’ exists. Your wretchedness is not an obstacle but a spur for you to become more united to God and to seek him constantly, because he purifies us (Ibid.).

Our Lord lifts us up onto a new level. If he sees our effort to get to Confession frequently, He gives us more graces.

Sometimes to get to Confession may be very easy. In this center, it’s very easy, it's sort of laid down for us.

But some day we might be working or living far away from a church, or from a priest who hears Confessions, or we might be working in a country where there are very few Catholics. We could be anywhere.

But still, it would be great to have that love of the sacrament that leads us to seek out that forgiveness in a regular way.

Some people in this world travel three hours every week by public means to receive the Sacrament of Confession. They have a great sense of treasure, and that effort alone is a great penance.

Sometimes the greatest penance we can do is the effort to get to Confession, because we might have to cross the city, we might have to make a journey, we might have to spend money.

But there's no greater way of showing Our Lord that we're really sorry for our sins and we want to be better. A great pathway to holiness.

In the past forty years I've had mothers and fathers of families tell me, “Father, you know, when I get to Confession regularly every week, I notice there's a difference in my family. I can see the effects.”

It’s a very beautiful thing to hear from a mother or father of a family that has seen the social effects ‘of me being in the state of grace.’

I've been told sometimes, “I see that when I have this grace and I get to Confession, somehow there's more peace in my home.”

It’s a very beautiful thing. When we're in the state of grace, the Blessed Trinity is in our soul: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

It's logical that the fruits of the Holy Spirit would be there around us, in our workplace, in the people we deal with. That effort, or that heroism at times, to get to regular Confession can be enormously fruitful. They come in contact with Christ in the Confession.

John Paul II said, “Acknowledging the weakness of the past is an act of honesty and courage” (John Paul II, Apostolic Letter, Tertio Millennio Adveniente, Point 33, November 10, 1994).

When we are preparing for Confession, we could ask Our Lady to help us to make a good Confession, to help us to examine our conscience, to see the things this week that we may not have done well, our lack of virtue.

Of course, if there's something big in the week, that should stand out in our mind. We should have a certain sensitivity of soul. That's the first thing that comes to mind, and the first thing we should say and get off our chest.

Sometimes it may be difficult to say things in Confession. But if we realize it is Christ who is there listening to me, we're supernaturally oriented, then it becomes easier.

Or if there's something in the past that we've never confessed, or there's something grave that's bothering us, on our conscience, it’s very good to get it out. That gives us great peace.

Somebody said once, “The softest pillow to sleep on at night is a tranquil conscience.” We've confessed all our sins, if we've got all the garbage out, then we can be happy and peaceful.

That's how Christ wants us to live. He wants us to be happy in this world.

There was a lady once who, in the early 1960s, wanted to go to Confession to Padre Pio. She was in the States, and she flew to Rome.

She landed in Rome at 8 o'clock in the morning on a Sunday. She got to her hotel and she was rather tired, so she decided she'd take a rest; she'd take a bit of a nap.

There were no evening Masses in those days, but she decided she'd catch a late morning Mass. This is Rome, there are many Masses.

She laid down and took a nap, but she slept the sleep of the just and she woke up at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and she missed Mass. She didn't mean to miss Mass. She knew she hadn't committed a mortal sin.

The following day, she went to Confession to Padre Pio, and confessed all her sins. When she finished, he said to her, “Is that everything?”

And she said yes. And he said, “Are you sure?” She said yes.

He said, “What about yesterday, when you landed in Rome at 8 in the morning, you lay down and took a nap, you slept the sleep of the just, you woke up at 3 in the afternoon, and you missed Mass?”

He could read souls. He said, “I know you didn't commit a mortal sin, but your negligence hurt Our Lord.”

The saints didn't function just in the realm of “venial or mortal.” They functioned in the realm of negligence. Little things.

Sorrow for sin is not sorrow because we broke a law. It's sorrow because we've hurt someone that we loved, and therefore the negligence is so important.

We hurt Our Lord when we're a bit lazy, when we're a bit disordered, when we're not punctual, when we don't tell the truth, when we indulge ourselves a bit more than we should do, or we don't finish our work well.

These are all negligences. When we examine our conscience, it's good to look at these things. Refine our Confession a little bit, so that we make full use of those moments.

If we have the misfortune of ever falling into a serious sin, remember St. Peter. He denied Our Lord three times, “and then the cock crowed” (Luke 22:34, 60-62).

It's like a wake-up call. He realizes what he has done. He remembers Our Lord's prediction. We're told, “He went out and he wept bitterly” (Luke 22:62).

He committed a grave sin, and he realizes it, and he weeps tears of sorrow. We're told, “The Lord turned and looked upon Peter” (Luke 22:61).

It's a very beautiful moment. Our Lord seeks him out with His most loving glance. Christ doesn't banish him forever for having committed such a terrible thing. He's the good shepherd who seeks out the lost soul.

“The Lord turned and looked upon Peter.” The Lord is turning and looking upon each one of us, seeking us out with His most loving glance, lifting us up again.

From that moment of conversion, Peter went forward to become a great saint and a great apostle. This is the story of our life: beginning again.

“Judas went out and he fell into despair, and he hung himself” (Matt. 27:5). He was the opposite. He didn't find that contrition. He didn't come back. He didn't begin again.

The Sacrament of Confession is the great sacrament of beginning again.

We have a great treasure to share with many people. It's a really wonderful thing to try and do the apostolate of Confession. Share with people our experience.

Try and bring souls to the confessional box, so that they can discover this great treasure that's available for everybody, so that they can have a new peace in their life.

When we begin to explain the Sacrament of Confession to people, it helps us to realize its greatness ourselves.

There was a girl in Tokyo one time who heard a meditation like this, and realized, “I have to try and do the apostolate of Confession.”

She was studying in a university, and she was in the library one day, and there were maybe a couple of hundred people in the library.

She was thinking, “Here in Japan, it's maybe 0.1 percent Catholic, so perhaps there's one person in this whole room of a couple of hundred people who's a Catholic.”

But she felt she still had to do the apostolate of Confession. ‘How do I do it?’

She decided to “launch out into the deep” (Luke 5:4). She said to the girl sitting in front of her, “Hey, would you like to go to Confession?” The girl said, “What's that?”

She said, “You see, it's a thing whereby you go into this little dark room, and you kneel down there, and you tell the person on the other side of the grill, the priest that's there, all the bad things. You get out all the garbage, all the rubbish that's there inside you. And then you feel wonderful. You feel free. You feel liberated.”

The girl said, “Oh, I think I'd like to try that.” She began to attend catechism classes, and six months later was baptized and went to Confession.

People are waiting to hear about the wonderful things that God has given to us.

“It seems,” we're told in the Furrow, “as if you obstinately refuse to learn from the second part of the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:15-24), and you still feel attached to the wretched happiness of the pigswill. With your pride wounded by your weakness, you've not made up your mind to ask for pardon, and you have not realized that if you humble yourself, the joyful welcome of your Father God awaits you, with a feast to mark your return and your new beginning” (J. Escrivá, Furrow, Point 65).

“Your forgetfulness,” he says, “and your faults are still there, and they hurt you. At the same time, you go on your way bursting with happiness. Precisely because they cause you the pain of love, your failings no longer rob you of your peace” (J. Escrivá, Furrow, Point 861).

We can look forward to this great sacrament, the sacrament of liberation. We're liberated from all the evils of this world. We're helped to begin again.

Our Lord fell down three times on the way to Calvary, but He got up again. The first time, the second time, the third time.

We go to the confessional to experience divine mercy. “Mercy is poured into our hearts.” Mercy, which is another word for love (Rom. 5:5).

It's a beautiful reality. We have this proof of God's merciful love, of His all-embracing tenderness towards us. He welcomes us back each time like He welcomes the prodigal son (Luke 15:22-24).

He's the good shepherd. He always understands. We need never be afraid of saying anything, of any particular sin. Of course, the priest has heard it all before.

When a priest hears all the bad things coming from a soul, he knows this soul is on the right track. This soul is timed to be holy, because the priest himself is human. He's experienced all these things.

“‘What I owe to God as a Christian!’ we're told in The Way. ‘My failure to respond to God's grace, in the face of that debt, has made me weep with sorrow; with Love sorrow. It is good that you acknowledge your debts; but don't forget how they are paid: with tears… and with deeds (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 242).

“God gives his grace to the humble” (James 4:6; Prov. 3:34). The very fact that we go there and kneel down, confess our sins to the minister of divine grace, is an act of humility.

God gives us the grace to be better, to improve, to grow, so that ultimately, at the end of our life, we're closer to that goal of holiness.

It's a very concrete sacrament that helps us along that pathway. When you think about it, it's a very simple, short thing. It takes two or three minutes. It doesn't take a big amount of time.

Christ has made it very easy for us. If we had to pay an awful lot of money every time we went to Confession, that would make it a bit more difficult.

Or if Our Lord says, ‘Now, to confess your sins, I want you to go on national TV at nine o'clock at night and say, Bless me, Kenya, for I have sinned, and confess our sins to the whole country,’ that would be a little more difficult.

But He made it in such a way that it's very private, very personal, very quiet, very silent, very anonymous. We don't have to say who we are. It couldn't have been constructed in a better way.

We could ask Our Lady for the grace to make better use of this great sacrament and to help everybody around us to sense this great treasure that God has given to us in this particular sacrament.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

MVF