I went to confession yesterday, not because I was troubled by anything in particular, but simply because I am trying to get in the habit of going to confession more regularly. Actually, I wasn't really planning on going at all, but when my husband came home he told me that he had made a point of getting home early enough so that I could go to church. Thanks love!
I always feel so much better after confession. Being a convert to Catholicism, I haven't gone to confession more than a handful of times, but so far, each time I go I am given exactly what I need. It really is an amazing gift.
As a Protestant Christian, I always viewed The Catholic practice of "going to confession" as another road block that the Church had placed between the people and God. I confessed my sins to God in prayer and through corporate confession as a part of the church services I attended. Of course, God forgives sins when we confess them in these circumstances, but to have a priest, and God through him, listen, look one in the eye, and say the words of absolution is to experience forgiveness in a much more personal, nurturing way.
The priest who heard my confession stated that penance should be a gift, not a punishment. This statement started me thinking about all the gifts God gives me that I just don't bother opening. If there were packages on the table each morning, packages wrapped in brilliant papers with elegant bows, I would never be able to walk by and resist the urge to open them. Yet how easy is it to talk myself out of opening the gifts of daily prayer, Eucharist, confession, and trust that God places before me each day?
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