Commotion at the Confessional

“Stop judging, that you may not be judged. For as you judge, so will you be judged, and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.” Matthew 7:1-2

It was the week before Easter—spiritual “crunch time.” I arrived at church at 2:30 sharp, expecting a quiet moment to do my “examination of conscience.” Instead, I found a line twelve people deep, everyone “piously” waiting their turn.

Since the church did not have enough chairs for the holy backlog, a complex survival system emerged. Whenever someone exited the confessional, the people would shift down one seat like a slow-motion game of musical chairs. It was rhythmic. It was orderly… that is, until the woman with the walker arrived.

By this time, there were already at least five more people standing behind me. The lady maneuvered her way towards the front of the line, claiming that she needed to sit down. The people that were in the chairs did the Christian thing: they moved, they smiled, and they made room for her. But then, she did the unthinkable. When the door opened, she didn’t scoot. She launched. She bypassed the chronological order and vanished into the confessional.

The atmosphere shifted instantly from pious reflection to a jungle of justice. The whispers started like a slow-motion riot: “It’s one thing to have a walker. It’s another to have no manners,” one man hissed. “I hope she’s confessing that she cut in front of the line,” another one added. “Is that even a medical walker?” asked a woman. “It looks more like a grocery cart.”

The drama escalated when the two “sweet” old ladies my husband had helped find seats decided to go rogue. One took advantage of the confusion and slipped in. The other one turned to the crowd, bewildered: “Did she just go in? It was not her turn.” That was the spark that lit the fuse. Suddenly, we were not a congregation, we were a mob at a Cuban bakery. People began to suggest that we needed a “Take-a-Number” system.

In the middle of the grumbling, a voice of reasoning emerged: “We are in church. We need to be merciful.” The silence that followed was deafening. It was the sound of twelve people realizing we had just committed seven new sins while waiting to get rid of three old ones. I thought of my earlier examination of conscience. I had walked into the building with a few venial sins. Thirty minutes later, and my list was growing faster than the line. I felt like Eve in the Garden of Eden.

A few minutes before 3:30, the priest walked out, looking like he’d just gone ten rounds in a ring. “I have twenty minutes, and then I need to get ready for Mass,” he said. “Be brief.” I turned to the line and joked, “Five sins maximum, everyone.”

Unfortunately, the lady that had just gone in did not get the memo. She stayed in the confessional for a good five minutes. The bickering started to sizzle again. Our mercy had a very short shelf life when faced with a ticking clock.

When it was finally my turn, I tried to be as brief as possible. I confessed my original sins—plus the new ones I acquired while I waited—and stepped out. By the time he was finished, the priest must have been wondering why everyone was guilty of the same three sins: judgment, gossip, and malice toward the elderly.

A few days later at Mass, I saw the woman with the walker again. Watching her move, I realized she wasn’t “cutting.” She was struggling. Every step was an ordeal. If she had asked to go first for health reasons, we all would have said “of course”—but because she didn’t ask, we chose to crucify her character instead.

It was a staggering realization: The mob that shouted “Crucify Him” was not made of monsters; it was made of people exactly like us. All it takes is for one person to start a rally, and we all fall. We went to church to get our souls cleaned, but we left proving exactly why we needed to be there in the first place.

Copyright © 2026 Christy Romero. All rights reserved. If you thought of someone while reading this, bless them by sharing it with them.