Faith
The Impact of a Great Confession
Each time I move to a new place, there are two people that I need to find. The first is a great barber and the second is a great confessor. Finding these two critical people in my life is never easy.
There’s something particularly terrifying about my first encounter with a new confessor. Maybe you feel the same way. We’re both getting to know each other and I don’t know the style of the priest who’s sitting on the other side of the screen. Regardless of who he is, he stands in the place of Christ. My anxiety is almost always wrong. In fact, I’ve only had one “bad” confession in my 20 years of receiving the Sacrament. I’m treated with kindness, gentleness, and a profound sense of understanding.
That’s what happened a few weeks ago. I queued up after Mass and saw the priest enter the confessional. I thought that it was going to be a really tough sacrament, but something profound happened. It was a confession unlike any other I’ve experienced, and one that I won’t soon forget.
After confessing my sins, he asked me two questions. Are you repentant? Are you willing to do better with God’s help?
Those simple questions knocked me down and not because they’re the basic requirements for absolution. I’ve never had a priest ask me those two questions so directly. Without thinking, and without rehearsal, I gave an enthusiastic yes.
I go to Confession often, and I’m haunted by the idea that I might just be looking for a car wash, that I go just to get clean without the intention of conversion. I don’t think that any of us can have such an intimate, personal, confidential encounter with God and walk away unchanged.
Confession is the ultimate do over. It isn’t supposed to be easy and it certainly isn’t supposed to be a caning. Jesus went through an incomprehensible period of torture and humiliation: a process designed to not just break a man, but to annihilate him. How does He ask that I make it up to Him? A small act of penance and a commitment to do better.
How unfathomable is His love and mercy. How inscrutable is the mind of God that He would endure all of that and, in the face of my rejection of His love, He’d welcome me back with such a low bar: a prayer and a promise.
I shrink when I think about the power of that kind of love. How loved would Alison feel if I loved her with a single pure drop of that love? How secure would my children feel if every interaction I had with them started from that spirit of love?
There lies the true beauty of Confession. I meet Jesus in the Sacrament and come back to life. Pure love touches me personally, ready to completely transform my life, if only I let it.
Offense & Defense
Watch any sporting event, and you’ll quickly learn that having a strong offense or defense is seldom enough to ensure a victory. If you run up the score on offense, but let the opponent do the same thanks to your weak defense, you’ll likely lose. In the same way, you can only win by scoring points, so having a strong defense isn’t enough. I’m learning that having a balanced approach to any problem is the key to success. This is a timely resolution with new year in the air.
Sin, even venial sin, is a terrible thing. Mary was greeted by the archangel Gabriel as “fullness of grace.” Her being was so full, so complete, that sin couldn’t take root in her. This was thanks to the grace of her Immaculate Conception, which we just celebrated, when God permitted her to be His perfect vessel, free from the stain of original sin. We have been stained, and through our weakness, tend towards sin.
Advent and Lent are both penitential seasons, calling us back to grace. We just completed the Jubilee Year of Mercy. The Church offers us the Sacrament of Reconciliation. These are just three of the innumerable opportunities that we’re offered to leave our sin behind and return to the life we were made to live. When you take advantage of any of these avenues of mercy, they are just the first step. We will always be recovering sinners. The question becomes, how do we best make use of this new beginning?
I’ve found that it’s important to let the scoreboard read zero. In any game, no matter how well or how poorly a team previously performed, the score is always reset to zero. We sabotage our recovery, and even our joy, by continuing to beat ourselves up for past mistakes. Reconciliation is that great reset, and to dwell on our previous failings, or worse, use them as justification to sin again, is to be ungrateful. If God, through the ministry of the Church, has absolved you of your sins, have the courage to absolve yourself. You’re at zero, move on.
Once you’ve resolved to start fresh, you’ll need a plan that involves both offense and defense. I’d guess that we’re weaker on defense, so let’s start there. I see our daily prayer life as our defense. Properly executed, it’s a constant rhythm that builds our immunity to sin, strengthens our love, and fills our selves with grace. The fuller we are, the less room there is for sin. What does a solid prayer life look like? To me, it’s not so much the components as it is the integration into your schedule. A good prayer life has you praying in a formal setting in the morning, during the daytime, and in the evening. Along with these formal settings, in which you may pray the rosary, a series of devotionals, or even listen to praise music (Benedict’s favorite), there should be trigger events. These triggers are mental reminders that you set for yourself to offer a brief prayer in your own words. It may be offering your day up in the first moments of your morning, praying for some intention while cleaning or doing something particularly unpleasant. By combining the scheduled prayer along with prayer during certain events, the day now has a rhythm that’s set by you raising your mind to God. Good defense isn’t built in a day or a season. Instead, it’s developed and refined over time.
While defense may be the most challenging to develop, offense requires the most courage. If defense is your prayer life, offense is your decision making. It requires that your conscience be properly formed and prepared to make correct decisions. Offense is also having the courage to do as we promise in the Act of Contrition, to sin no more and to avoid whatever leads us to sin. It’s a tall order, but one that is very possible if we put in the work. In order to be truly successful in the spiritual life, and to conquer sin, you have to have the courage to cut out anything in your life that’s leading you to sin. You may even find that which is tempting you is completely benign, but is at the same time threatening your joy. After all, we were made to live a life of true happiness, and sin disrupts that intention.
A good offense and defense are necessary to make lasting change in your spiritual life. It can be sobering to reflect on just how long (often years) you’ve struggled with a particular sin. Instead of giving into despair or complacency, use it as the motivation behind your campaign of change. Work to cultivate your prayer life and watch it bear fruit. Excise those things in your life that inevitably lead you to sin. Persevere long enough, and you’ll find that sense of peace and joy that’s eluded you this entire time.
If you’re feeling stuck when it comes to your prayer life, perhaps I can help. Grant Us Peace is a blueprint for spiritual fitness, and it’ll get you going in the right direction. It’s 21 days of reflections and a short action step designed to get your prayer life moving. With the New Year around the corner, now’s the perfect time to pick up your copy. As a bonus, you get the sense of pride in knowing that you’re supporting the Catholic Husband blog!
Perfect is the Enemy of Good
As 2016 comes to a close, we’re on the cusp of the New Year Resolutions bonanza. Each year I share my thoughts on the idea of resolutions, and my goals for the upcoming year, and now as I write this article, I get that same pensive feeling. The year never turns out how I expect, and each December hope blossoms eternal. This has been a year of great change for me with the arrival of Felicity. Reflecting on my challenges and successes this year, and contemplating the adventures that are to come next year, this idea of “perfect is the enemy of good” weighs on my thoughts.
We are integrated people, with many domains in our lives. We have the domains of faith, family, health, finances, and career, among others, that come together to make up who we are as people. These domains are connected in an intricate way so that if one area suffers, many areas suffer. I’ve struggled, in particular, with my time management over the past six months, and I’ve felt how it impacted my entire day. I want to do things well, and I want them to go according to schedule, but that’s just not a realistic expectation.
Perfect is the enemy of good applies to more than just our work or our fitness program. I’m aware of how it applies to my faith life and sin. A routine of prayer is essential in the Christian life for those who truly want to imitate Christ. Just like exercise routines, it’s so easy to set out on a grand adventure of contemplation and sacrifice only to fail before the day has even begun. If we miss that first scheduled prayer time of the day, we agree that it’s best to wait for tomorrow to do it perfectly, and a month later, we still haven’t started. Tomorrow seems to be the perfect day to start anything.
I was once told that it’s never too late to do the right thing. It’s better to do something rather than nothing at all. Tomorrow may seem like the perfect day to start something, but right now actually is the perfect time to start something. What we need is momentum, and as soon as the ball gets rolling, it’s easier for it to keep rolling than to stop. There’s no perfect schedule, perfect ingredient, or magic solution to living the life that you want to live. There is only doing.
I’m working on setting my goals for the upcoming year and gathering the tools that I need in order to be successful. Instead of making resolutions for 2017, I’m going to spend more time doing and less time figuring out the perfect way. Perfection is a lie. True beauty is overcoming all obstacles and continuing to press forward.
Returning to Divine Freedom
The faith of the martyrs has always been an inspiration to me. Throughout history, men and women of all ages and states in life have laid down their lives in defense of the Church and Truth. Their executions have seldom been merciful. Rather, their deaths were calculated to inflict the greatest pain, humiliation, and terror. Miraculously, the opposite has happened. These gruesome executions occur even to this day around the World.
My love of 20th century spy craft led me to pick up the book Church of Spies this summer. It’s a historical account of the subversion of the Third Reich by Pope Pius XII and the German underground. There were several groups operating in German territory seeking the overthrow of Adolf Hitler. The most audacious of them all was actually led by faithful Catholics. The July 20th plot, among others, was organized by this Catholic underground. Pope Pius XII lend his support to their effort. He pledged to help the post-Hitler German government negotiate a just peace treaty. The Catholic Resistance wanted so much more than a government sans-Hitler. They wanted to create a just society and pan-European peace. Many of their ideas, and survivors, helped to forge the European Union. Their hope was that by tying the economies of Europe closely together, they could prevent war.
The resistance had an impressive roster. Their members included the senior leadership of army intelligence and religious houses within Germany. These brave souls risked their lives, and those of their families, to show the world that a “Decent Germany” existed. Many paid the ultimate price in the closing days of the war. Their executioners faced justice at Nuremberg for their war crimes. I found that even reading the descriptions of their deaths was revolting.
One of those plotters who was executed in 1945 was a Jesuit priest named Fr. Alfred Delp. Fr. Delp lent considerable aid to the resistance. He mentored the members as they sought to forge a new government. I came across one of his letters in the October edition of Magnificat. I thought it was so apt for the time that we are living in.
Fr. Delp wrote that we are “incapable of living fully because we have not found divine freedom.” He Catholics to put their faith and the Gospel into action, and only then could they be free.
Pope Francis reminds us of this calling, but I think it’s important to go a step further. We’ve started to place more faith in politicans and government than in God’s Providence. Presidential candidates serve as our new saviors. Despite this grave error, God wants us back. As Fr. Delp wrote, He is always waiting for us, knocking on the door, and finding creative ways to call us back to true freedom.
There is Truth, God exists, and evil is all too real. Push back the darkness with the light of Christ that you carry within you, stand up for what is right, and answer that knock on the door.
“Where divine freedom is concerned, there is no question of bargaining, of exchanging one set of chains for another as in the case in human affairs. With God the only way to complete freemen is complete surrender.”
Take Permission to Pray
I’m a recovering productivity addict. I used to love optimizing everything. I’d find the best apps, the fastest way to get a job done, and I’d proceed with vigor. Every minute had to be scheduled, every task planned out, and every execution flawless. This way of life was taxing on me. A few weeks ago I shared how I struggled to find time to pray in my daily schedule. Perhaps you face the same challenge. I think I’ve figured out how to bring it all together.
Take permission. Prayer is a fluid time. I think it works best when we’re free to follow these sacred minutes wherever they lead. Sometimes they’ll start in the Bible, in conversation, or even Grant Us Peace. From there, who knows where they’ll end up. It’s when the schedule crushes me that prayer feels forced. Timekeeping turns prayer into a grind instead of grace.
I know that when I give the first minutes or hour of my day to prayer, my whole day goes better. I’m more calm, centered, and energized. When I’m disciplined enough to wake up on time and start my day with prayer, I set myself up for success.
When I gave up on life hacking, something powerful happened. I allowed myself an hour to get going and enter into prayer, and my life fell back into alignment. My process is simple. I come downstairs, get a glass of water, turn on nature sounds, and set a timer for 25 minutes. What happens next is up to the Spirit.
If you’re struggling to find time to pray, take permission to make room in your schedule. Block out 15 minutes or an hour and keep your day at bay. Be okay with not checking things off of your to-do list or getting about the business of the day. Let the time be a gift you give to yourself and the first fruits that you offer back to the Giver.
Giving Up on Giving Up Slowly
One of my favorite Relient K songs opens with the verse, “I’m giving up on giving up slowly.” It’s a song about redemption, resolve, and hope in a better life that is beginning now. It’s the moment we all experience when we walk out of the confessional.
A life without sin is the life we were made to lead. Along the path, we meet resistance. Before we are challenged by forces in the world, we have to beat ourselves. We must beat the sins, habits, tendencies, and tastes that knock us off of our game. We face down doubt, reluctance, and fear. Can it really be true? What about all of this that I have to give up? Is this really a better path? Maybe I’ll try tomorrow.
Tomorrow turns into a week, turns into a month, a year, a life. Before we know it, we’re further from the destination than when we started. All of these small choices that we make carry us a little further off the path and into the weeds.
What if things were different? What if we gave up on giving up slowly? What if we raised the stakes and went all in? What if we laid down this empty life that we’ve chosen for ourselves and embraced the life-giving cross?
How different would you feel each morning? How different would your marriage be? How different would your relationship with your children be? How different would your job feel? The Cross has a way of touching every area of our lives. Everything would be different.
I’m giving up on giving up slowly. I’m excising all of the things getting in my way. I’m done with excuses and believing that a setback negates all of my progress. I’m done neglecting my spiritual life for a few lousy extra minutes of sleep. I’m done. I’m done. I’m done.
Making Time for Prayer
Over the past year, I’ve felt an increasing desire to incorporate more prayer time into my day. There’s something cathartic about quiet prayer time, and I often feel the benefit almost immediately. The challenge with finding these time blocks for increased prayer is that it cannot be rushed. Prayer, like any conversation, requires a set amount of time and there’s no rushing this process.
My bookshelf is full of books that I want to read. In fact, I have a list of books that makes up my reading queue and as of right now there are over 20 titles on that list. The same can be said for my prayer life. There are so many devotionals, so many books for spiritual readings, and so many ways to pray. These options can make a prayer habit challenging because I want to explore multiple forms of prayer each day.
There are two main challenges to daily prayer: time and cycle. Interestingly, these two challenges are the same that we face any time that we want to incorporate a good habit into our lives. Time is simple: we have X number of hours that we’re awake during the day. What are we going to give up in order to use its time for prayer? Cycle is the recognition that there will be times of great growth, and times of isolation. How will we take advantage of the growth in order to power through the spiritual winters?
This post really is nothing new. In fact, I didn’t intend for it to be new, groundbreaking material. Instead, it’s a reminder for me personally, and perhaps for you, that I need to be serious about integrating prayer into my day, and I need to be bold enough to invite my family to join me. It’s easy to intellectually grasp that daily prayer will improve my life, I just need to put it into action.
Making the Invisible, Visible
Faith is a gift, and one that parents try to transmit to their children. Those who have a strong sense of faith understand how it acts as a level and fulcrum, boosting the ordinary drudgery of our lives into something almost supernatural. The biggest challenge in the transmission of the faith is not explaining complicated doctrine, or even making the many mysteries of faith understandable. Rather, the biggest challenge is making the invisible, visible.
The phrase “out of sight, out of mind” is popular because it’s mostly true. We tend to concentrate more on what’s in front of us rather than on what’s not. This shortsightedness lands us in all sorts of jams, from sin to compromise on our goals. This tendency presents a major roadblock in helping a child understand who God is and, frankly, why they should care.
The Church gives us many externals that help us to bridge this gap. Alison and I have consistently reinforced in Benedict’s mind who God is, and that He’s very present. When going to Mass, we talk about going to Jesus’ house, and how we’re quiet while we’re there. In the sanctuary, we encourage him to say hello to Jesus and to blow Him kisses. These externals present in a very real way the presence of God in our lives.
Yet, I’ve found an even better way to make the Invisible, visible, not just in Benedict’s mind, but in the daily life of my family. We have three holy water fonts in our home: one by the front door, one in the master bedroom, and one in the kids room. Several times a day, we will bless each other. Benedict in particular enjoys dipping his hand in the font and then giving Alison, Felicity, and I blessings.
This small and simple gesture, an almost forgotten one as we enter into the Church and leave, is nurturing the seed of God placed on Benedict’s heart and in his mind. These little blessings throughout the day, added up, will hopefully produce a bountiful harvest of faith in his own life.
As a parent, I don’t want to see him suffer, and I know that a strong sense of faith will help him go further in life, happiness, and peace than he could on his own. As Alison and I labor to transmit the faith to Benedict and to his sister, I hope that through these series of small, simple gestures, we can make the Invisible, visible to them.
Sin Drags You Down
I’m never more keenly aware of the physical effects of sin in my life than right after confession. I walk out of the Church with a great sense of relief, perhaps even a bit lighter. Truly I feel freed from that which was holding me back. This feeling, replicated each time I go to confession, leads me to wonder, how much does sin really drag me down?
We know that sin is an offense against charity, against love. We know that sin affects all of us and that it impairs our judgement and ability to act freely. We bind ourselves to evil instead of running free with love. That’s the 10,000 foot view. On the day to day level, as we make our decisions, sin begets more sin. We wander deeper into the ocean before we turn back to the lighthouse of mercy and make it to solid ground.
When we say that sin affects all of us, those whom are most affected are our family. Sin turns our attention and priorities selfishly inward, so when I sin, I turn some of my attention away from my family. Instead of selflessly giving all of myself and expecting nothing in return, I selfishly put myself at the head of the line. This creates an increasing amount of discord in the household. We get out of sync as our priorities no longer align. Naturally, this happens by degrees, but with enough time spent away from God’s mercy in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the great the divide grows.
It’s easy to miss the subtle signs as sin takes a great hold in our lives. I think that we tend to tolerate some lower level sin. Instead of working to root out all sin, we focus on the big stuff and let the little stuff slide. A lie or two, some gossip here and there, nothing too serious. Yet, it is serious. It’s the stuff that drags us down and pulls us out to sea. It’s like the old Catholic fallacy of, “I’m aiming for purgatory.” If you aim for purgatory, you might miss and end up no place that you want to be. If instead we aim for Heaven, we just might make it.
Part of sin’s mind game strategy is despair. If you truly believe that you can’t live the life of a saint, then you’ll lower your expectations, allow those gateway sins into your life, and be impaired by sin’s presence in your life. Instead of giving into despair, our best daily course is a strong regimen of prayer. Prayer that permeates our day is like an antibiotic, slowly but surely eradicating sin in our lives. When we make no provision, nor give any room to sin, we can live the lives we were meant to live: lives of true freedom.
Sin has a very real effect on our daily lives, our decision making, and our overall mood. The best way to live in true love and pure joy is to go to Confession regularly and establish a routine of prayer throughout your day. You, and your family, will love living with a truly free you.
We’re Too Comfortable
When it comes to fallen away Catholics, especially those who had a negative experience of the Church many years ago, it seems that each person has a singular event that pushed them over the edge. More likely than not, it was a harsh encounter with a religious. A nun yelling at them or a particularly brutal confessor, the trauma that resulted sadly caused them to leave their home. Like a young runaway, they found themselves in a strange place, cold, alone, and hurting. I think that so much of that hurt comes from an experience that didn’t reconcile with their vision of the Church. The Church, and Christians in general, are supposed to be loving, kind, and gentle people, while being compassionately firm when correcting one another. Those in the religious life are supposed to epitomize those characteristics. So when anyone has a difficult encounter with a religious, one can understandably question the entire system.
I think that it’s a valid reaction to be shocked and hurt when experiencing a blistering confessor. When I go to Confession, I’m in a pretty vulnerable place. I acknowledge where I’ve gone wrong and am frustrated and sad that I’ve made poor choices that were entirely, if not easily, avoidable. I want the carrot, not the stick. I want to be reminded of the ultimate reward for a life well lived, not a beating for the mistakes that I’ve made. A positive reinforcement with some helpful suggestions always carries me further than an indignant response from my confessor. We all feel this way.
These emotions of the penitent is what makes it so important for priests to really focus on their skills as a confessor. This is truly the moment that can make or break faith. The penitent takes a risk, naming their sins and seeking forgiveness. If all goes well, they may reform and make it to the finish line. If the experience is a scarring one, those wounds may cost the game.
While we need tender care in the confessional, there are also times when we need to be called out. Sin takes root and thrives when we’re comfortable. In fact, I might even make the argument that we’re too comfortable. From time to time we really need a reality check in the confessional, but one that comes from solid counseling, not firm admonishment. I think back to the Gospel of Matthew when Jesus tells Peter, “Get behind me Satan.” Had Jesus left it at that, Peter’s hurt very well may have caused him to, like the rich young man, go away sad. Although it’s not written, I like to think that Jesus pulled Peter aside and then offered kind words and encouragement. This is the model of Confession that I think we can get behind. Clear boundaries are drawn, then we’re built back up and sent on our mission.
It’s terribly sad when people feel excluded from the life-giving mission of the Church. While we all have, and will, experience very difficult encounters with religious, faithful, and our fellow Catholics, it’s important to analyze our own emotions and motivations. Perhaps we’re all just living a little too comfortable and could use more accountability in our lives. How we respond in these situations could make or break us. Choose to accept the situation in humility and let nothing prevent you from actively participating in the life of the Church.