"Why a Priest when I got Christ?"
I get it. I know for myself, if I did not have to go to a priest I wouldn’t. I think it is completely human to want to keep our sins to ourselves. Why would I need to tell a priest? Doesn’t God know what is on my heart and that I am really sorry? Yet, I think if I am honest with myself, without admitting my sin to another, to a man who not only represents the people I have hurt through his humanity, but the God I have offended by his ordination, I would not truly be sorry. For if I am truly sorry, I will say it but also resolve to change my ways so that it doesn’t happen again. Yet, if I keep these sins to myself, I am essentially claiming these sins as mine and not desiring to do anything about it except admit I shouldn’t have done them. I think it truly takes an outward expression, both of wrong doing and penance, to remove what does not belong, an attachment to sin.
I think at the very center of this is our own humanity. We as humans need it. If we didn’t have the need to go to a priest for confession, Jesus certainly wouldn’t have felt it necessary to give his Apostles the power to forgive sins, but he did so because he knew due to our own flawed humanity and the effects of sin we needed a means, outside ourselves, to attain the peace found with freedom from sin and unity with Christ.
The humility it takes to kneel before a priest in persona Christi, in the person of Christ, acting as Jesus should be seen as a gift, not a burden. Just as gold must go into the fire to be purified, so too must we at times go through a trial or sacrifice in order to be freed from the bondage of sin. It is not as if one who drops to their knees in their bedroom at night and begs forgiveness from our heavenly father is not truly sorry or being insincere. God desires for us to be truly sorry and to seek his forgiveness, but he asks us to look outside ourselves, to come to fount of mercy that is his son Jesus, to attain the forgiveness only God can give as he has asked us to attain it.
By both our words and our actions we show that we are truly desire forgiveness. Just like it is not enough to say we love another, but must show it with our actions and deeds. So too must we, body and soul, humbly admit our failures before God and man, intimately united in the person of Jesus Christ. The priest allows for us to access the grace God desires to give to us in the Sacrament of Confession.
May we all have the strength to come before our Lord in humility and accept the mercy Christ so desperately desires to give.
God Bless,
Paul
