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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