Christian Counseling Service -- Devotions

Sacrament of reconciliation

Monday, March 18, 2019

From Luke 6
Help us, O God our savior, because of the glory of your name; deliver us and pardon our sins for your name's sake.

Us Protestants, we walk into an old Catholic church, walk past the beautifully carved wood of the confessional and wonder, "What happens in there anyway?" I've experienced confession at retreats a couple of times. I know the first words: "Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It's been a week/a month/awhile since my last confession."

And then you just begin to talk. It might take a little while, but there's no hurry. The more I uncover my own hidden places, the more there is to share. A silent, anonymous screen separates me from the priest, but more and more I feel like we are both in this together.

G. K. Chesterton, born in 1874 and who came to Catholicism in 1922, converted because this old religion of the popes was "the only religion which dared to go down with me into the depths of myself."

With me, he said. Chesterton knew he was no longer alone. When he confessed from the depths of his sin, God came and clothed him with a new skin. Covered, loved and forgiven by God, Chesterton could at last accept his limitations. As he read in Genesis:

"The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. And the Lord God said, 'The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.'" There are limits. We are not as strong as we think we are. And that's OK. Really, it is.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton was profoundly grateful for this companionship and new acceptance. He had always loved to play with children, and now he felt like one himself:

When a Catholic comes from Confession, he does truly, by definition, step out again into that dawn of his own beginning and look with new eyes across the world... God has really remade him in His own image. He is now a new experiment of the Creator. He is as much a new experiment as he was when he was really only five years old. He stands...in the white light at the worthy beginning of the life of a man. The accumulations of time can no longer terrify. He may be grey and gouty; but he is only five minutes old.

I find my own rituals of reconciliation. I have a confidant, I have a spiritual director, I have Margaret. I can talk to my journal, and all these things make me feel more whole. I am thoroughly grateful whenever I get below my surface scum and see more of who I am.

When I hear the words, spoken or silent, "David, all your sins are forgiven," I know God is speaking right to me. I am not alone. Like Chesterton, I breathe the fresh air like a child again.

This confession thing, carefully defined or not, is absolutely ALL it's cracked up to be. Thank you, Jesus.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your holy spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with your free spirit. (from Psalm 51)

G. K. Chesterton, Autobiography, Chapter 16, "God and the Golden Key"

Devotions Archive

Sacrament of reconciliation

Monday, March 18, 2019