(Twenty-fourth Sunday of the Year (C):
This homily was given on September 11, 2016, at St. Pius X Church, Westerly,
R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani. Read Ex
32: 7-14; 1 Timothy 1: 12-17; Luke 15: 1-32.)
[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Twenty-fourth Sunday 2016]
The title of my homily today is, “Three
Ways to Make Confession Easier.”
That’s easier for you—and easier for
the priest!
Obviously the theme of all our
Scripture readings today is the same: the
awesome and boundless mercy of God.
In the first reading Moses intercedes
for the disobedient and hard-hearted Israelites, and God responds by showing
them mercy.
In the second reading St. Paul talks
about the radical change that took place in him once he became a
Christian. That change was the work of
God’s mercy—a fact which Paul explicitly acknowledges in the passage.
And then we have the story of the
prodigal son as our gospel reading today—a story that Pope Francis has rightly
described as “the parable of the merciful father”.
Because at its core that’s really what
the parable is all about.
God’s mercy is boundless, and is always
available to us. But like Moses—and St.
Paul—we need to reach out to the Lord in order to receive it.
And the way we reach out is through repentance—and by expressing that
repentance in the confessional, especially if we have serious, mortal sins on
our souls.
Recall once again my mercy equation:
Recognition plus Repentance equals Reception
Recognition of sin combined with
repentance for sin leads to the reception of mercy.
When a person goes to confession with
the right disposition of heart, that mercy equation is fulfilled and his sins
are taken away.
But recognition and repentance are not
easy—especially regarding serious sins—which is why confession can be a very
difficult experience for us at times.
And yet, there are some things we can
do to make it a bit easier. I’ll share
three of them with you briefly this morning.
First
of all, we can make the experience of going to confession easier and more
pleasant by knowing what our sins are before we go into the confessional. Many people get nervous about going to
confession because they’re worried about remembering the Act of Contrition, or
the opening formula (“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned …”)—but the priest
can help you easily enough with details like those. What he can’t tell you is what your sins
are—unless, of course, he has the ability to “read souls” like Padre Pio and
John Vianney did! They could sometimes
tell people their sins before they confessed them—or when they purposely
neglected to confess them.
Don’t worry. I think you’re safe with Fr. Najim and me!
But this means you need to examine your
conscience thoroughly beforehand, so that you don’t leave out any serious sins
that need to be confessed.
If you don’t have a list of questions
to help you do this properly you can always get one from a priest. You can even find some good examinations of
conscience online. There’s an excellent one,
for example, on the Knights of Columbus web site.
And, if your memory is poor, feel free
to write some notes to yourself as you go over the examination of conscience
questions, and then use those notes during your confession.
Just make sure you don’t forget to
destroy the notes afterward!
The
second thing we can do to make the experience of going to confession easier and
more pleasant is to remember to confess any and all mortal sins according to
“kind” AND “number”. In
other words, if you commit a mortal sin, you not only need to identify the sin
itself, you also need to let the priest know how often you committed it. With a venial sin it’s sufficient to mention
the sin and leave it at that. For
example, it’s fine for a little boy to come to confession and say, “I argued
with my brother”. That’s an acceptable
way to confess that sin because it’s venial.
But if that same boy grows up, gets married, has an affair, then
eventually repents and goes to confession, it will not be enough for him to
say, “I committed adultery”; he will also need to say how many times he
committed that sin.
Now here, in all honesty, is where it
can get very uncomfortable for the penitent AND THE PRIEST! If you confess a serious sexual sin like
adultery but don’t tell the priest how often you committed it, he will probably
ask you that question—even though it makes him very uncomfortable doing so (at
least it always makes me uncomfortable!).
If that ever happens to you, please
understand something: It’s not that Father wants all the sordid details! It’s not that he’s prying into your affairs
(pardon the pun!). He just wants to help
you to make a good confession and get rid of the sin in your life!
Now someone might say, “But, Fr. Ray, I’ve
been away from the sacraments for 20 years.
I know that missing Sunday Mass is a serious sin just like adultery is,
but I have no idea EXACTLY how many times I’ve missed Mass during the last 2
decades!”
In cases like that, when you don’t know
the exact number, it’s sufficient to say that you committed the sin “many
times” or “frequently”, or to say that you missed almost every Sunday and Holy
Day Mass for the last 20 years.
The bottom line is: In some way the
frequency of the sin needs to be mentioned whenever the sin is mortal.
Which brings us to the final thing we
can do to make the experience of going to confession easier and more pleasant: Relax about the Act of Contrition!
Some people stay away from confession,
or have a meltdown whenever they go to confession, because they either don’t
know the Act of Contrition or they’re afraid they’re going to forget it when
the priest asks them to say it (which, of course, usually becomes a
self-fulfilling prophecy: they get nervous about forgetting, which causes them
to forget!).
Many Catholics don’t realize that
there’s a lot of flexibility in this part of a confession. You have some options. For example, if you want to, you can say one
of the standard Act of Contrition prayers, like the one that begins, “Oh my
God, I am heartily sorry for having offended you …”
But you don’t have to!
You can use your own words, if you wish—and many people do. Most of these prayers are simple—nothing
fancy: “Dear Jesus, I’m sorry I’ve hurt you and others by my sins. Help me to be better in the future. Amen.”
You can even use the one-line prayer of
the humble tax collector whom Jesus talked about in Luke 18: “Lord, have mercy
on me, a sinner.”
That’s all you have to say!
“Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
That’s a simple prayer that says a
lot—when it’s spoken from the heart.
So there you have it, three things you
can do to make the experience of going to confession easier and more pleasant:
know your sins when you go into the confessional; confess any mortal sins you
may have according to kind and
number; and don’t get uptight about the Act of Contrition.
And remember, to make it more
convenient for you to receive the sacrament on a regular basis, we’ve begun to
offer confessions every Wednesday evening here at St. Pius from 5 to 6pm (in
addition to our regular time on Saturday afternoons).
Wow—how much easier can it get?
