Not every parish provides a Portofess service like the one above provided by Joey Skaggs!
Lent is a season when we are encouraged to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation. For some, this is not an easy thing to consider. So, to help you in this regard, I'm pleased to offer you:
A Dozen Reasons NOT to Go to Confession:
1) Your natural tendency to love God in all things and to love your neighbor as yourself causes you to walk about an inch off the ground on an invisible cloud of holiness.
2) Your husband/your wife never tires of telling you what a perfect spouse you are.
3) Your faithfulness in getting yourself and your family to Sunday Mass is often mentioned by your pastor as a model for all Catholics.
4) You have been so faithful in honoring your mother and father that they’ve asked you to loosen up a little and enjoy yourself once in a while.
5) You have been so generous in helping the poor that you no longer can afford transportation to get to church for confession.
6) You speak to God in prayer so often that he sometimes asks if he can put you on hold for a few minutes.
7) You are so well known at school as an honest, hardworking and friendly student that you are often called to the Principal’s Office to offer your advice on school policy.
8) Your purity in thought, word and deed has been awarded a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.
9) You are so honest that you once felt guilty about stealing second base.
10) You are so completely content with what God has given you that winning the lottery would be a moral dilemma prompting you to ask that another number be drawn.
11) Your efforts for justice and peace have won you a nomination for the Nobel Prize.
12) You already come to the Sacrament of Reconciliation so often that your presence would needlessly lengthen the line of others waiting to go to confession.
-ConcordPastor
I guess when you look at that way it may be time to make an appt !!
ReplyDeleteLet's add one more thing to the list:
ReplyDeleteI strongly believe when I confess my sins to God, he listens, and forgives me. I don't need a third person involved. God is enough.
Yes! That's the list you passed out to everyone at an RE Congress one year. Thanks for posting it. I couldn't find my copy. Food for thought.
ReplyDeleteAnne
Personally, I appreciate the Church's viewpoint that reconciliation with the community is also called for:
ReplyDelete"Sin is before all else an offense against God, a rupture of communion with him. At the same time it damages communion with the Church. For this reason conversion entails both God's forgiveness and reconciliation with the Church, which are expressed and accomplished liturgically by the sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation."
(From the Catechism, para 1440.)
There is also the matter of the grace--and strength--that the sacrament confers.
I think this list is a riot. I got a major kick out of it before and again just now. Also, thought the Portofess was hysterical. Sometimes we need to laugh and these have provided the opportunity to do just that. I do have a dilemma. Would like to go to the Penance Service (7 PM) and to the St. Paul lecture (7:30 PM.) Okay to arrive late for St. Paul?
ReplyDeleteTo follow up on the post 2/20/2008 @10:25PM. I think, and hope, that we have it right. When problems with the clergy became so pervasive and known, I committed to "going directly to the source" -GOD- in times of prayer and when one needed to confess as the best practices. No offense to ConcordPastor, however, for me it will take awhile to do otherwise.
ReplyDelete25-30 years ago, I was at an RC parish where we had chaplaincy responsibility for a local hospital. I was a Eucharistic Minister who served the hospital under the auspices of our chaplaincy. Our chaplain trained all the EMs in many things, including his belief that the sacrament of reconciliation should properly belong to the laity. I don't remember his rationale for this, but it was very helpful in our work in the hospital. Not that we replicated any rites, but we felt free not to limit the content of our prayers with the patients.
ReplyDeleteWe never talked much about that part of our training because we knew how much trouble he'd be in if it got to the Cardinal, but enough time has passed and this is sufficiently anonymous for me to feel that that gentleman is now safe. I'm not sure he's even still alive.
Now that I've climbed the wall to Canterbury (or catapulted over via the slingshot of the Reformation?) I miss the sacrament of reconciliation. It's an option that's technically available where I am now, but one doesn't hear much about it. When I proposed a penance service during Lent, the other members of the Worship Committee looked at me like I had three heads. What's wrong with some quiet reflection, some shedding of denial, a still moment of honesty, and a comforting reminder that it's ME that God loves, and that God is glad when I can shed some of what comes between us? A good thing to do in Lent.
I once knew a man who was a Protestant. He never could forgive himself for something he had done in his past. I wished that he had had the benefit of the sacrament of reconciliation. I agree with those who say that God hears our pleas for forgiveness, but for me there is something very consoling about confessing to a priest and receiving absolution. Perhaps, because of the humility it takes to bare your soul, the forgiveness is that much more meaningful.
ReplyDeleteI don't go to Confession often enough (unfortunately not for any of those 12 reasons!), but when I do, it's definitely something consoling and helpful.
ReplyDeleteTo Piskie...when you become an Episcopal priest, you will be able to offer a penance service to your congregants if you wish!
ReplyDeleteThanks, anonymous, but I'm not going to be a priest. Well, I may just stay a lay person, but the discernment process I'm in is geared towards the Vocational Diaconate. That's sort of like Permanent Deacon in the RC church, and sort of not. Vocational Deacons have no more authority to baptize or officiate at weddings than lay people do.
ReplyDeleteThe only work we (oops! Vocational Deacons!) do which any old layperson isn't empowered to do is read the Gospel. We (OK, they. *sigh*) preach on occasion, but I've preached as a lay person. Our primary responsibilities are three fold: 1) to represent the church to those outside the church -- let the marginalized know we're on their side 2) to present the needs and concerns of those on the outside to those with power within the institution of the church -- advocate for the lost and the excluded and 3) assist the faithful in finding their own work of discipleship out in the world. Deacons stand with one foot in the church and one foot out. We are primarily servants but our servanthood manifests in our acting as ambassadors, advocates, and facilitators.
The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church recently addressed a gathering of vocational deacons and told them that they are, and should be, the "nags of the church." We're the ones who are gadflies to the establishment when someone hasn't been invited to the table. We're the ones hanging out in prisons, with the homeless, at organizations working for gay rights or recognition of transfolk as deserving of respect. We talk to kids hanging on urban street corners and know the hookers by name.
Our boots are scuffed, and we don't wear fancy vestments except on rare occasions, like when we sing the Exsultet at the Easter Vigil. At the end of mass, we're the ones who dismiss folks to go do Christ's work in the world.
Like that. Can you tell how much I want to be a Deacon? :-)
I failed miserably. ROB
ReplyDeleteTo the "anonymous" who addressed me: I'm discerning towards the vocational diaconate, not the priesthood. I wrote a lengthly impassioned comment on the order of the vocational diaconate, but it got lost in the cyber ethers. :-( And I was going to copy some of its language for my ministry statement. Ah, well. I hope the Spirit was taking notes and will inspire me similarly again.
ReplyDeleteIf I were to become a priest, however, and I wanted a penance service yet the worship committee of my parish did not, I'm not sure I'd force there to be one, or certainly not for one that displaced any service the worship committee wanted. I don't think forcing one's own agenda is necessarily a good way to lead, no matter how right that agenda may seem to me. Pisky clergy can be more clerical than many RC clergy I've known, but I hope that's not how I'd be, God willing.