The most missed practice during lockdown has, after Mass and Holy Communion, been the possibility of Confession – the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Questions have come from those who, I suspect, are regular penitents, and from those who seem to be less regular in coming, but who value the opportunity to cleanse their sins sacramentally. St Augustine has some very relevant words about our experience during lockdown. He wrote: ‘The entire life of a good Christian is in fact an exercise in holy desire.’ (On the 1st Letter of John) Lockdown has seriously challenged our comfortable assumption that the Sacraments are there when we want them. We feel we ought to go. We know we have a duty to go. We can go when we feel like it. So the important element of desire, of hunger for holy things, of a passion unsatisfied for the grace of God, is all too often missing. Lockdown by depriving us of all but private prayer has challenged, should have shaken that comfortable error out of our hearts and minds. We should feel more strongly that ‘exercise in holy desire’ which St Augustine thinks is ‘the entire life of a good Christian.’ St Augustine went on to explore this ‘exercise in holy desire’ by an image which any of us who have wrestled with fitting our shopping into a bag will recognize. ‘Suppose you are going to fill some holder or container, and you know you will be given a large amount. Then you set about stretching your sack or wineskin or whatever it is. Why? Because you know the quantity you will have to put in and your eyes tell you there is not enough room. By stretching it, therefore, you increase the capacity of the sack, and this is how God deals with us. Simply by making us wait he increases our desire, which in turn enlarges the capacity of our soul, making it able to receive what is to be given us.’ (On the 1st Letter of John 3.1-2) It is here that Confession fits in. Confession forces us to face, to recognize, to speak about, the sin which is in our life, in our heart and in our mind. It is an emptying out of wickedness and evil from our being and our life. By emptying out sin we make even more space for the grace and the love with which God wants to fill us. Confessing sin brings us face-to-face with our desperate need for God. Absolution shows us God taking away our sin and replacing it with his gifts and graces. This we have missed through lockdown. This we earnestly desire. This God gives us in Confession. Fr Patrick
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Everybody is in favour of community. Even loners often tell us how much they would like to be part of a community – if only they could find one that suited them. Human beings are social animals. We seek each other out to be friends. We need each other’s company. That has been one of the hardest parts of the recent lockdown. To be separated from our family, our friends, our acquaintances, one companions, our mates. It has been particularly hard for the elderly who have been forced to self-isolate, and who are still damagingly limited in the number of people they can interact with.
For Catholics all this reaches it fullness in the community of the Church. There we not only encounter the Lord Jesus, but we meet too our brothers and sisters in the faith. It is a damaging platitude, repeated by the unthinking, that the Church is the people not the building. Particularly in the British climate, we need a building to shelter us. More than that, the building becomes hallowed by the Masses celebrate there and by the prayers offered there. The very stones become saturated with worship and so support us as we seek to meet God. Most powerfully Jesus Christ is present in every Catholic Church in his Eucharistic Body in the Tabernacle. That’s why the recent and over-delayed opening of Churches for private prayer is so welcome. Once more we can adore our Lord in his immediate presence. But it is all too easy for us to fracture community, to damage the unity of the Church, to fail to recognize others as linked to us. St Augustine was powerfully aware of this, for in his day and place, there was a particularly hard line group who rejected Augustine and his people. He wrote: ‘We appeal to you above all to show charity, not only towards one another. But also those who are outside the fold, whether they are still pagans, not yet believing in Christ, or separated from us, confessing the same head as we do, but separated from the body. My friends, let us grieve for them as our brothers and sisters. Whether they like or not, they are our brothers and sisters, and they will only cease to be if they cease to say ‘Our Father’.’ (On Psalm 32.29) This is an ever more important message for those of us who today live in a society which can be sharply, even fatally, divided by hatred, bigotry and prejudice. The Internet has sadly given a means of publicity to those who are so corrupted. Twitter allows unthinking forwarding of lies and misstatements. If we are to build our community, if we are to recognize our equal value and importance as human beings, then we need to make charity central to our lives together. St Augustine challenged his hearers: ‘Pour out all your love to God on their behalf.’ That challenge remains for Catholics today. |
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August 2020
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