I’ve posted in this blog about my father’s insistence on weekly confession when I was a child and how it distorted my image of a loving God into a God who was a judgmental tyrant. Like iamtheclay, who stated in her post that she had not gone to confession in a long time, I stayed away from the sacrament of reconciliation for many years, twenty-two years in fact.  But, unlike iamtheclay, in my “coming home” to reconciliation I had a transforming spiritual experience. 

I decided to go to confession when my sister-in-law was diagnosed with colon cancer, hoping to bargain with God – I didn’t know any better at the time.  But, I was doing it for her.  When I told the priest how long it had been since my last confession he got a huge grin on his face and said to me, “Welcome home!  God loves you SO much!”  I was startled by his words, a wave of heat seemed to wash over my body from my head to my toes and back up again.  The words seemed to hang in the air “God loves you.”  With each sin I confessed, the priest’s grin grew wider.  I considered that he may not be altogether there if you know what I mean.  After I received the blessing of absolution he was so kind, assuring me of God’s love and joy that I was there (like the father in the prodigal son).  He asked if I needed anything; if he, the church, or our church community could help me in any way.  I felt so humble, so loved, and so sinless for the first time in a long time.  A burden had been lifted that I hadn’t even known I was carrying.  I went there for my sister-in-law but God meant it for me.  Reconciliation on that day was redeeming grace for me and my life was forever changed.  I wholeheartedly agree with Cooke and Macy’s claim that “Every time we participate in a ritual of reconciliation, we learn the Christian world is one of constant forgiveness: forgiveness by God, forgiveness by and of the community, and forgiveness of and by ourselves” (116).  After my confession I truly felt loved, not only by God, but by the church and my faith community.  As Cooke and Macy point out, “by the community accepting their forgiveness, they can believe God has forgiven them and, by doing something to show their sincerity, hopefully, they can eventually forgive themselves” (114).

For me, reconciliation is a place where I am accepted and loved as I am, a place of “continual conversion and renewal” (Johnson, 283), a place where I can lay my burdens down without the fear of rejection.

 

photo credit:  cof-interspiritual-mindfulness.blogspot.