IN FOCUS - " WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT ?" | KAIROS GLOBAL | JUNE 2019

Author: Nikhil Jacob

Intro: With a fresh perspective in looking at sin – what it is and what it is not, Nikhil Jacob explores the meaning and depth of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. 

I remember a particular Confession where something the priest said took me aback, and completely changed how I approached confession. Being a young man in today’s Irish Church, I am used to being somewhat of a rarity. Any young person seen kneeling at a grotto or waiting in the confession queue is met with warm, encouraging smiles from the older folk, priests and religious. Walking the aisles of the church, you get used to the proud, beaming faces that eye the young Catholic with hope. It is no surprise then that for most of my confessions, I had grown accustomed to being mollycoddled by the confessor. I often got the feeling that due to my age – my youth, my sin often got downplayed. I sensed that being delighted at even seeing a young man in confession, the confessor would often go easy on me, perhaps wary of scaring a young person off confession. I had become used to a robotic routine where I would walk in, confess, be encouraged and walk out.

But on this one occasion, having listed my sins, I waited as usual for the priest to offer a few words of encouragement so I could hurry off on my way. But that day, instead of hurrying to congratulate me on a good confession or telling me not to worry too much about my sins, the priest asked me a blunt question – “What are you going to do about it?” In all my years of confessing, I had never been asked a question before. Surely, my part ended when I finished confessing my list of sins. It was now the priest’s part to give me absolution and penance and there the play ends. This priest was going off script! His blunt question caught me off guard. “What are you going to do about it?”, he asked me. “It’s fair enough that you feel sorry for your sins, but what is your plan about it going forward?” I opened and closed my mouth like a goldfish because I was stumped. I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t even realise I needed a plan.

What that encounter made me realise was that merely listing my sins is not enough, I must have contrition for my sins in order to partake fully in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. The reason I kept returning to the same habitual sins again and again was partly because I didn’t have contrition. I had forgotten the basics from my childhood about the three things that make a good confession – contrition, confession and penance. I realised that although I was frequenting the confessional regularly, there was no time being given to properly examining the conscience and making the resolution not to sin again. To be honest, I don’t think I really despised my sins, in fact on the contrary, I was quite comfortable in it. And therein lay my problem. The reason I could never break my habitual sins was that I never really believed that I should or could permanently erase them from my life. I didn’t really mean it when I uttered the words, “By thy grace I resolve to amend my life and shall sin no more.” I realised that it wasn’t enough to have a change of heart, I had to have a change of actions. Every time I left the confessional, I needed a plan.

Because, what I noticed sin doing to my life was rather predictable. The longer I stayed from confession, I fell into the same spiral away from God. It would begin with a vague laziness, a lack of interest in prayer. Gradually, irritability would creep into my voice, my patience with others running thin. Over the next few days I would find self-importance crowding my thoughts as concern for others took second place. Integrity at work begins shaking, pride begins stirring in a strong way and if allowed to continue, I would find myself self-obsessed, uninterested in loving others and having zero interest or time for God. And almost always, this is accompanied by a state of self-pity and contempt.

I remember having a ‘wow’ moment when a friend once told me, that taking out all the theological intricacies from it, what sin does simply is to warp our perception of everything. It gives us a false understanding of who we are, who God is and what our relationship with Him is. Locked away in our prison of sinfulness, we find ourselves wallowing in either pride or self-loathing, alternating between “I am everything” and “I am nothing”. Habitual sins knock us back down to our knees and we believe the lie that they can never be overcome. And what confession does is it re-orients our perception to reality, to truth, to God. It holds up the mirror of truth to us, allows us to look into our souls and see things as they really are. No, I am not everything, but no, I am not nothing either. I am a beloved son of God who is weak but has the possibility of great holiness. Yes, this sin is overpowering, but I have a God who is stronger. No, I am not beyond repair, I have value because I have a Father who loves me.

And so I realise the need for having regular confession to keep me oriented to the truth, to goodness, to God. By allowing God to transform us, we come to know “what is good and acceptable and perfect”. The Sacrament allows us to face our failings honestly and to accept responsibility for our actions. It liberates us from sin and releases us into the ocean of God’s mercy. “The whole power of the sacrament of Penance consists in restoring us to God’s grace and joining us with him in an intimate friendship.” (CCC, 1468) Like the earnest father in the parable of the prodigal son who scanned the horizons for his son’s return, the Heavenly Father yearns for our return.

Nikhil Jacob is a part of Jesus Youth Ireland and is a doctor in training. He has a love for all things Catholic and his heroes are JPII, Trent Horn and his own parents. Nikhil lives in Cork, Ireland.