Confession is not for payoffs; it is for healing.

– Lewis B. Smedes, Give Us This Day, 2/27/15

My first confession was required as part of my RCIA program. It may have been the first sacrament I made prior to baptism.

I was forty-seven, and had no idea where to begin. Would anything I felt guilty about count? Should I stick to the ten commandments? Most of those weren’t applicable: murder, adultery, stealing.

I yell at my kids and I curse. A lot.

It felt silly.

But in looking deeper, into years and decades of feeling sorrow for deeds, I managed, with the guidance of my priest to find the right balance, to know what should be confessed and what should be ignored, what needed deeper understanding and what remained superficial.

It wasn’t my confession that freed me; it was the absolution and the absolutism of G-d’s forgiveness through my priest’s words and prayers. With his hands on my head, I could feel the weight lifted, literally going away from me.

It was so much more than I expected, and so much more healing than I could have imagined.

Transformation

In today’s reflection from Give Us This Day, Fr. Paul Boudreau wrote,

“The love of Jesus makes water into wine, traitors into apostles, and is given to us in order to transform the world, starting with ourselves and the people we encounter today.”

Transformation can be a somewhat daunting prospect when looked at as the big picture of our lives; as a journey’s end rather than the journey itself. However, as we teach kids to walk beginning with baby steps, we can see that transformation is best achieved with baby steps.

Little by little, through Jesus’ love and our self-awareness, we can follow our transformation, and reflect on it quietly and thoughtfully in small increments that we each find doable.