Letter #102: Out of Curia into Confessional

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Letter #102: Out of Curia into Confessional

[2013-12-16]

[Engleză]

Sunday, December 15, 2013 -- Out of the Curia into the Confessional

Pope Francis Makes Confession a Priority

Pope Francis has take another dramatic decision.

Francis has personally directed his closest collaborators, the cardinals and archbishops of the Roman Curia, to take turns hearing daily confession in the Church of Santo Spirito in Sassia, an ordinary Roman church outside of the Vatican. (It is just down the street from the Vatican, at via dei Penitenzieri #12, next to the Santo Spirito hospital and across the street from the Curia Generalizia of the Jesuit Order.)

And it is even possible that the Pope himself, at a time of his choosing, will go to this church, in coming weeks, at 3 p.m., to hear confessions. (Pope Francis made a brief, unannounced stop at this church in April, as I reported at the time. Link)

Santo Spirito in Sassia is the church in Rome dedicated specifically to the Divine Mercy devotion announced by St. Faustina Kowalska 80 years ago and promoted by Pope John Paul II, who died on the Feast of Divine Mercy. The center of the devotion is the belief that God's mercy, God's love for sinful human beings even though they are undeserving of that love, is always available, no matter what sins may have been committed.

This initiative expands an already existing one.

For several weeks, the man who has become known as "the Pope's arms and hands" in Rome, because he works bringing the Pope's help to the poor of the city, Archbishop Konrad Krajewski, hears confessions daily at 3 p.m. in the first confessional on the right as one enters the church.

From tomorrow on, the plan is not only for Krajewski ("the Pope's hands") to hear confessions in that confessional, but also for another curial official ("the Pope's chief collaborators") to hear confessions in the confessional on the other side, to the left as one enters the church.

The announcement of the Pope's initiative was made this evening after the 6:30 p.m. Sunday Mass by the parish priest, Father Jozef Bart, who is from Poland.

"We had been planning for this initiative for some time," don Jozef told me after Mass. "It had been planned to begin in January. But this week the word came down that the Pope wished to begin immediately."

"And do you think the Pope himself may actually come to hear confession?" I asked.

"He may," the priest said. "But we don't know when."

"Why is he doing this?" I asked.

"Because he wishes to emphasize the importance of confession, and of God's great goodness in forgiving human sin."

The new initiative began already on Friday afternoon at 3 p.m., when Archbishop Beniamino Stella, the newly-named head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Clergy, the office with oversight authority over all of the priests in the Church worldwide, entered one of the confessionals near the front of the church and began to hear confessions from ordinary Romans and pilgrims.

The initiative is scheduled to continue this week, though the list of which cardinal or archbishop will be present which day is not yet finalized, don Jozef said.

It is an old Church tradition that one of the best ways to prepare for Christmas, for the coming of the Christchild into the world, is to go to confession.

And so, implicitly, what Pope Francis is asking of all Catholics during these final days of Advent, is to go to confession...

Let's follow Pope Francis's guidance in this matter, in these nine days before Christmas.

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Reflection

(The following reflection is an abridgment of a meditation on confession from an anonymous Greek Orthodox author.)

Throughout the world, confession is in decline. The "traditional" way of thinking of sin and forgiveness has collapsed.

One repents not because one is virtuous, but because human nature can change, because what is impossible for man is possible for God.

Just as the strength of God is revealed in the extreme vulnerability of His Son on the Cross, so also the greatest strength of man is to embrace his weakness: "for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I render glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me" (2 Corinthians 12.9).

The Greek term for repentance, metanoia, denotes a change of mind, a reorientation, a fundamental transformation of outlook, of man's vision of the world and of himself, and a new way of loving others and God...

It involves, that is, not mere regret of past evil but a recognition by man of a darkened vision of his own condition, in which sin, by separating him from God, has reduced him to a divided, autonomous existence, depriving him both of his natural glory and of his freedom...

It is clear that what is at stake here is not particular acts of contrition, but an attitude, a state of mind.

"For this life," states John Chrysostom, "is in truth wholly devoted to repentance. This is why it is necessary to repent, not merely for one or two days, but throughout one's whole life."

Repentance is not a self-contained act: it is a "passing over," a Pascha from death to life, a continual renewal of that life.

It consists of a reversal of what has become the normal pattern of development, which is the movement from life to death.

To experience this reversal in repentance is to have tasted of the glory and beauty of God; it is the mark of man's presence before God in the abundance of His mercy and of God's presence before man in the abyss of his weakness: "Set Your compassion over against our iniquities, and the abyss of Your lovingkindness against our transgression."

In repentance it is man's total limitation and insufficiency that is placed before God, not simply particular wrongdoings or transgressions...

Repentance and tears

For the Fathers of the Church there is an intimate link between repentance and tears.

There are other criteria, but grief is paramount, and its intensity is proportionate to the depth of repentance.

"Truly you are blessed, Abba Arsenios, for you wept for yourself in this world! He who does not weep for himself here below will weep eternally hereafter; so it is impossible not to weep, either voluntarily or when compelled through suffering."

Gregory the Theologian believed that everyone must weep. He even identified repentance with tears, whatever other ways of expressing it there may be: "All must shed tears, all must be purified, all must ascend."

Symeon the Theologian is even more definite: "Remove tears and with them you remove purification; and without purification no one is saved."

The word penthos (mourning) has the same root as pathos (passion): both stem etymologically from the verb "to suffer."

A Christian speaks of worthy suffering, of subsuming suffering in God, just as passion and mourning are subsumed in God... Penthos consists in mourning for the loss of God's presence; it makes for sorrow at His absence and thirst for Him...

Man is in a state of bereavement, and the Church Fathers and liturgical hymnology speak of Adam sitting opposite paradise in mourning over his bereavement and estrangement from God. The Makarian Homilies say that man must "weep his way back" to paradise.

But tears -- a concomitant and a culmination of repentance -- are also a turning point in homecoming, a pledge of return, and a firstfruit of its joy. The longing for return from exile is also an anticipation of the glory to come. Tears demonstrate the frontier between the present and the future.

The tradition of the Christian East gives special prominence to the "gift of tears."... Tears are primarily "up to God," and only derivatively "up to us."

There is a thirteenth-century French tale "Le chevalier au Barizel" according to which the knight was supposed to fill up a barrel with water; he travels all over the world to do this, but the water always passes through the barrel. Seeing that his efforts achieve nothing, he weeps, and one teardrop is sufficient to fill the barrel...

"God walks in front of us"

Through the forgiveness of sins in confession, the past is no longer an intolerable burden but rather an encouragement for what lies ahead.

Life acquires an attitude of expectation, not of despondency; and confession becomes the way out of the impasse caused by sin.

In this respect, repentance is also an eschatological act, realizing in our very midst, here and now, the promises of the age to come.

Looking backwards would seem to imply the fate of Lot's wife (Genesis 19.26); "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God" (Luke 9.62).

God Himself is revealed before us and walks in front of us. "One thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead" (Philippians 3.13).

Sursa: www.InsideTheVatican.com

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