"I absolve you..."

As we prepare for Easter we will be holding confessions all day tomorrow from 8am-2:30pm.  Many priests are generously giving an hour of their time tomorrow to hear confessions and students and faculty are invited to go to receive the sacrament at their convenience.

I was scheduled to meet with all the Theology classes today to discuss confession but ran into some scheduling conflicts.  Here is the reflection I was going to give:

Christmas is 9 months from yesterday.  We of course don’t know exactly when Jesus was born but since the 500’s, we have celebrated it on December 25.  Thus, we mark the moment he was conceived in His mother’s womb nice months earlier - March 25.  We call that day the Annunciation because it was when the archangel Gabriel announced to Mary that she would be the mother of God.  

Why is this a big deal?  Because God finally took matters into His own hands.  For millions of years, human beings had been dying for no good reason.  Very simply, humans die because they sin.  Death, we believe, is a punishment for sinning.  There was no death “in the beginning” because we were God.  But, we quickly changed our ways and began acting very un-God like...and God punished us by taking away our greatest power, eternal life.

But, God did not want to give up on us so 2,000 years ago He became a person to literally show us how it (that is, living life) is done.  He died 33 years later - even though He didn’t have to- in order to rise from the dead...to show us that if we are like Him, we too will rise from the dead.  

That’s what this is all about.  Every Mass, every prayer, every Theology class is about one thing - learning how to be like Jesus so we too may rise from the dead.  But of course we’re not always like Jesus and we need to admit that and ask God to forgive us so that when that time comes and we meet God, our souls may be clean and we may have the chance at eternal life.  That is why we have confession - it is a chance for us to wipe the slate clean, to ask God to forgive us our sins so that in the end, we can be with Him (and everyone else) forever.

Tomorrow we will have the opportunity during Theology classes to ask God to forgive us of our sins.  We do that by approaching a priest, admitting our sins, and asking him to forgive us on behalf of God.  We need to hear those words:

“may God give you pardon and peace and I absolve you from your sins...”

Do not be afraid to go to confession tomorrow.  Do not be afraid to tell the priest everything, he’s heard it all, trust me.  Nothing you will say to him will shock him and he can never, ever, ever, ever reveal what you told him, otherwise he will be excommunicated.  

God is waiting.  He wants to listen to you.  He wants to speak to you.  He wants to help you.  He wants to be with you.  Do you want to be with Him?

Amen.