Lots of confessions

The week before Holy Week. My friends jokingly ask me if I do phone confesssions, or more frequently online confessions. Of course they can give me an online confession. But there is no online absolution. The reasons are obvious - there is no way to guarantee who you are talking to - the identity theft reason. But also, of course, a sacrament has a physical dimension - a sight and sound and touch, and sometimes smell dimension, that cannot be reproduced online. You are to come away from the sacrament with some idea of what it may have been like to be forgiven by Jesus himself. Today he is sacramentally represented by the priest. If Jesus wanted to meet you today, would you stay in your home and try to catch him on facebook chat, or would you run out of your house to wherever he wanted to meet you - in person? That is the difference a sacrament makes.

Fr. Steve said last night at the St. Lawrence communal penance service that confession is a sacrament of joy. We say that Lent is a season of joy as well; obviously not because of its comforts, but the stripping away of sin and superficiality produces its own distinctive joy. It is a joy of purchasing something with our freedom that is more valuable than the fleeting pleasure of sin, or the fading exuberance of convenience. Oftentimes, we can emerge from the confessional with a greater joy than almost anything else gives us. We know that the momentum of sin has been broken, and we sense the new moment of grace moving us to seek and to pursue the highest things once again, without counting the cost.

As a priest, it is really a special way to go through Lent. Hearing hundreds and hundreds of confessions is a duty, no doubt, and requires perseverance. But it is not monotonous. It is not like checking people out at the grocery store. It is more like that speed dating icebreaker that young people do on bus trips, and yet you get to go infinitely deeper, because of the courage, humility and faith of people, and because the mercy of Jesus accomplishes so much!