The famous author Oscar Wilde said this about two years before his death in 1900:
I told you that I was going to write something. I tell everybody that. It is a thing one can repeat each day, meaning to do it the next. But in my heart—that chamber of leaden echoes—I know that I never shall.
As a writer, I certainly know what he means. But here in this Lenten season, I find that his statement describes my feelings about going to the great sacrament of Confession. "I will go next week," I say, reviewing for the tenth time the listing in the bulletin for what days and times the priest is available.
What makes some of us hesitate so? Do we have too many sins to admit to, or can we scarcely come up with one in the space since our last Confession, certain therefore that the priest will think we are holding back or maybe place us, mentally, in the same warm space where the Pharisee of the Bible stood when he thanked God that he was not like the rest of men?
Today I finally went, after praying that the Holy Spirit would give me the words to say and the grace to learn from what was said to me. It turned out to be, as usual, a mystically curative experience.
We pray 53 times with each Rosary, "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death." How happy, I believe, the Blessed Mother will be with us if we go to that mysterious date having unloaded the burden of our sins all along the road of life, rather than collecting them in a giant sack that we hand to her while pleading, "Dear Mother, can you please do something with this?"
Best wishes for a good Confession.
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