Ten Reasons I Love Hearing Confessions

6. Confessions Remind me How Good People Are – You would have thought it would be the other way around and that confessions would remind me how bad people are, but in fact, the confessions I hear are more about people’s humility and striving after goodness. They are more about people’s hatred of sin and loathing of their lack of progress and their longing for God and goodness. I don’t hear the failure. I hear the longing for success. I don’t hear the ugliness. I hear the striving for beauty. I don’t hear the petty, sad, pitiful sin. I hear their disgust with the petty, sad and pitiful sins.

7. Confessions Show Me God’s Goodness What a joyful thing to be reminded of the goodness of God! As I hear confessions I am reminded that he looks on us with pity, not with blame. He is not willing for any to perish and he has given us confession as a way to push out the lifeboat, to sail the seven seas looking for survivors of a shipwrecked humanity. He’s always there trying to seek and to save that which is lost and the fact that confession is that lifeboat is amazing to me.

8. Confession joins me with the whole church – This sacrament is a sacrament of mercy given by Christ himself through his apostles for the good of the whole church. Priests who hear confessions and people going to confession are in an army, a fellowship, a family, a brotherhood–all united in the peace of Christ and united in his mercy. It’s a good place to be and I am humbled and happy to be there.

9.Confession gives me time for prayer. I don’t pray as much as I should. I neglect my prayers with my busy life and confession gives me an hour to sit still and be with God. I pray the rosary. I pray the office. I pray for the penitents. I pray for peace. I pray and sit in God’s presence and so this makes me glad for confession

10. Confessions open the door to see God the Father The confessional is like a living, active drama of the prodigal son over and over and over again. There God the father waits at the gate for the child who is heading home. There I am with him to be his representative. There God is patient and kind and always forgiving. Confession is the door of the wardrobe open to Narnia. It is the gate of the sheepfold open for the straying sheep. It is the voice of the Good Shepherd, the still small voice in the opening to the cave. It is the voice at the burning bush and the Father welcoming home.