What About Confession?
Pope
Francis took up the question that many of the faithful are wrestling with as
they are under lockdown with churches closed: What about confession?
The Holy Father
addressed the issue March 20 during his homily at morning Mass.
The Pope introduced his
homily saying that the verse from the First Reading from Hosea: “Return to the
Lord, your God” always reminds him of a song sung by Carlo Buti some 75
years ago.
The Italian families in Buenos Aires used to
listen to it. They liked it a lot. ‘Return to your daddy, he will still sing
you a lullaby.’ Return. But it’s your Father who tells you to return. God is
your Daddy. He’s not a judge. He’s your Daddy. Go back home.
The Holy Father compared
the message to that of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, saying that the father
sees his son from a distance, “because He was waiting for him. How many
times He went up the terrace day after day, month after months, perhaps years
even. He waited for His son.”
Francis said that the
Father’s tenderness, as seen in this parable, speaks to us especially during
Lent.
[Lent] is the time to enter into ourselves and
to remember the Father and return to our Daddy. ‘But, Father, I’m ashamed to go
back because, you know, Father I’ve …done so many things wrong.’ What will the
Lord say? ‘Return. I will heal their defection. I will love them freely; for my
wrath is turned away from them (Hosea 14:4).’ Return to your Father. The God of
tenderness will heal us.
This Father will heal us
of “so many of life’s wounds,” the pope affirmed. “Going back to God is
going back to an embrace, the Father’s embrace, It’s not going to God. No, it’s
going back home.”
But
in lockdown?
This habit of returning
home “takes flesh in the Sacrament of Reconciliation,” the pope explained.
I know that many of you
go to confession before Easter… Many will say to me: ‘But Father…I can’t leave
the house and I want to make my peace with the Lord. I want Him to embrace me…
How can I do that unless I find a priest?’
Do what the catechism says.
It’s very clear. If you don’t find a priest to go to confession, speak to God.
He’s your Father. Tell Him the truth: ‘Lord. I did this and this and this.
Pardon me.’ Ask His forgiveness with all your heart with an act of contrition,
and promise Him, ‘afterward I will go to confession.’
You will return to God’s grace immediately. You
yourself can draw near, as the Catechism teaches us, to God’s forgiveness,
without having a priest at hand.
At the end of his
homily, the Pope expressed the hope that the word “return” might “echo in our
ears today”
Return to your Father. He’s waiting for you, and
He will throw a feast for you.
For health care workers
The Holy Father was
offering the Mass for health care professionals battling COVID-19 and for civil
authorities.
Yesterday, I received a message from a priest
from the Bergamo region who asked for prayers for the doctors working there….
They are at the end their strength…and are truly giving their lives to help
those who are ill, to save others’ lives.
SPECIAL INDULGENCE GRANTED BY THE HOLY FATHER
Hold control button and click
THIS WAS WRITTEN BY CARDINAL RATZINGER/POPE BENEDICT YEARS
AGO ABOUT FASTING FROM HOLY COMMUNION
“When
Augustine sensed his death approaching, he ‘excommunicated’ himself and
undertook public penance. In his last days he manifested his solidarity with
the public sinners who seek for pardon and grace through the renunciation of
communion. He wanted to meet his Lord in the humility of those who hunger and
thirst for righteousness, for him who is the Righteous and Merciful One.
Against the background of his sermons and writings, which are a magnificent
portrayal of the mystery of the Church as communion with the Body of Christ,
and as the Body of Christ itself, built up by the Eucharist, this is a
profoundly arresting gesture. The more I think of it, the more it moves me to
reflection. Do we not often take the reception of the Blessed Sacrament too
lightly? Might not this kind of spiritual fasting be of service, or even
necessary, to deepen and renew our relationship to the Body of Christ?
“The
ancient Church had a highly expressive practice of this kind. Since apostolic
times, no doubt, the fast from the Eucharist on Good Friday was a part of the
Church’s spirituality of communion. This renunciation of communion on one of
the most sacred days of the Church’s year was a particularly profound way of
sharing in the Lord’s Passion; it was the Bride’s mourning for the lost
Bridegroom (cf. Mk 2:20). Today too, I think, fasting from the Eucharist,
really taken seriously and entered into, could be most meaningful on carefully
considered occasions, such as days of penance—and why not reintroduce the
practice on Good Friday? It would be particularly appropriate at Masses where
there is a vast congregation, making it impossible to provide for a dignified
distribution of the sacrament; in such cases the renunciation of the sacrament
could in fact express more reverence and love than a reception which does not
do justice to the immense significance of what is taking place.
“A
fasting of this kind—and of course it would have to be open to the Church’s
guidance and not arbitrary—could lead to a deepening of personal relationship
with the Lord in the sacrament. It could also be an act of solidarity with all
those who yearn for the sacrament but cannot receive it. It seems to me that
the problem of the divorced and remarried, as well as that of intercommunion
(e.g., in mixed marriages), would be far less acute against the background of
voluntary spiritual fasting, which would visibly express the fact that we all
need that ‘healing of love’ which the Lord performed in the ultimate loneliness
of the Cross. Naturally, I am not suggesting a return to a kind of Jansenism:
fasting presupposes normal eating, both in spiritual and biological life. But
from time to time we do need a medicine to stop us from falling into mere
routine which lacks all spiritual dimension. Sometimes we need hunger, physical
and spiritual hunger, if we are to come fresh to the Lord’s gifts and
understand the suffering of our hungering brothers. Both spiritual and physical
hunger can be a vehicle of love.”
And,
in his 2007 Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis,
Benedict XVI offered this beautiful reflection on the relationship between the
Eucharist, suffering, and compassion:
“The
bread I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world” (Jn 6:51). In these words the Lord reveals the true
meaning of the gift of his life for all people. These words also reveal his
deep compassion for every man and woman. The Gospels frequently speak of Jesus’
feelings towards others, especially the suffering and sinners (cf. Mt 20:34; Mk 6:34; Lk 19:41).
Through a profoundly human sensibility he expresses God’s saving will for all
people – that they may have true life. Each celebration of the Eucharist makes sacramentally
present the gift that the crucified Lord made of his life, for us and for the
whole world. In the Eucharist Jesus also makes us witnesses of God’s compassion
towards all our brothers and sisters. The eucharistic mystery thus gives rise
to a service of charity towards neighbour, which “consists in the very fact
that, in God and with God, I love even the person whom I do not like or even
know. This can only take place on the basis of an intimate encounter with God,
an encounter which has become a communion of will, affecting even my feelings.
Then I learn to look on this other person not simply with my eyes and my
feelings, but from the perspective of Jesus Christ.” (240) In all those I meet,
I recognize brothers or sisters for whom the Lord gave his life, loving them
“to the end” (Jn 13:1). Our
communities, when they celebrate the Eucharist, must become ever more conscious
that the sacrifice of Christ is for all, and that the Eucharist thus compels
all who believe in him to become “bread that is broken” for others, and to work
for the building of a more just and fraternal world. Keeping in mind the
multiplication of the loaves and fishes, we need to realize that Christ
continues today to exhort his disciples to become personally engaged: “You yourselves,
give them something to eat” (Mt 14:16). Each of us is truly called, together
with Jesus, to be bread broken for the life of the world. (par. 88)”
