Reconciliation

More information on First Reconciliation for Children

The Sacrament of Penance & Reconciliation is about recognizing, acknowledging and resolving.

Fr. Jim will hear Confessions every Saturday in the Chapel in the Reconciliation Room from 3:30 to 4:30. 

Recognizing

• Examine Your Conscience – Where We Start
• When have I “missed the mark?”  What have I done?
• How has this impacted on myself & others?
• Do I desire a conversion in my life? (conversion being a turning from sin and a turning to God).

Acknowledging

• Confession – The Heart of the Matter
• We confess what we have examined inside ourselves that separate us from the love of God and of each other (helps us to stay “in communion” with the People of God; the Church). 
• There is “something” about releasing our frustrations, tensions, anxieties and anguish verbally – even when sin is not present in these there is a freedom attained in allowing them to come forth, to speak our mind to another – when sin prevails in our lives one of these will, probably, be involved.
• So often others can help us discover the cause (treating symptoms will never heal the cause and often we don’t look, or don’t want to look, past the symptoms to the real underlying cause).
• “When we sin, we can go to our room and ask the Lord for forgiveness, but Catholics take this a step further.  As a sacramental church, we express outwardly and tangibly what is happening in the intangible world of our spiritual lives.  The acts of going to a priest, verbally naming the sin – making it tangible – and hearing the words of forgiveness are outward signs of the inner world of sin and forgiveness.  “A Well-Build Faith,” Joe Paprocki, Chapter 10
• The priest represents both Christ and the Community.

Resolving

• Penance – Something we can do, or say, to show we’re sorry & want to make up for our sins
• Can be prayer, an offering, service to neighbor or works of charity.
• A striving to repair the damage done (like “un-gossiping” the gossip)
• Contrition – Regret, Sorrow
• The most important act of the penitent, necessary for the reception of the Sacrament of Penance.
• Sorrow of the soul, strongly dislike the sin committed, resolution not to sin, again.
• “I love you, I am sorry, I forgive you.”
• “Lord, I’ve fallen down and I need some help to get up.”
• We internalize prior to confession and externalize (verbally) afterwards (prior to Absolution).
• Absolution –
• Takes away sin, but does not remedy all the disorders sin has caused (CCC 1459).
• Does mean, God remembers our sin no more.

Isaiah 43:25, “Your sins I remember no more.”