Confession: A Sacrament of Healing

Do you need healing?

I have found the Sacrament of Reconciliation to be foremost a Sacrament of Healing. It's not just confessing your sins to a priest. It is a path to wholeness and new life.

I think some people think I'm crazy, scrupulous or massively sinful for going to confession as often as I do. I don't think I'm any of those things, but I know I need healing, and I know this Sacrament provides that to me. If I could make it more often, I would, because I desire that grace, purity and peace I feel from it as often as I can get it.

Not only does it feed me with the grace to overcome sin little by little, but over time, it is healing me. There's something profoundly healing about baring your soul's deepest wounds time and time again. You come to new insights through your examination of conscience and through the Holy Spirit speaking through the priest. Your penances become small steps to becoming whole.

What I've found every time I confess those wounds is that there is a profound ache for more of God inside of me. When I feed it with the world, I generally sin. Sin, at least for me, looks mostly like feeding and nursing my wounds with something other than God. 

There are also profound hurts inside of those wounds that make them hard to overcome with anything but God's help. It illuminates my dependence on God. 

So if you are in need of healing, take a new look at the Sacrament of Reconciliation. It's a way forward to overcome your deepest wounds. It's your path to wholeness. It will illuminate what you need, and who God wants to be for you, and what is holding you back from being the person God made you to be.