The Need for Confession

Recently I was informed that at a pilgrimage site in Ireland, a Priest was heard to say that there was no need to confess one's sins when going to confession...no just go for a chat and get a blessing, he said.  It is very sad to hear that a Priest actually said this in a place where people go for penance and prayer.  It was also a lost opportunity for many if they did what he had said. 

Confession is a beautiful and very necessary Sacrament that restores us to Christ and rebuilds and breathes new life into a soul that is dead in sin.  It restores us to grace, refreshes and cleanses us again and brings healing to our souls and also to the whole body of Christ.    For someone to say we don't need to confess our sins when we go to Confession is an absolute lie, it is false and leads many down a dangerous path.  What is the Sacrament of Confession for but to confess our sins and be sorry for them ?  May the Lord have mercy on us and let us pray for our Priests. 

Here below is what our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI said on a reflection of the Gospel of Mark in 2009.  Sin is what puts distance between the believer and God, and it's the sacrament of confession that brings the two back together, says Benedict XVI.

The Pope said this in a Gospel reflection on Mark's account of the healed leper, which he delivered before praying the midday Angelus with those gathered in St. Peter's Square. 

In the Gospel account, recalls the Pontiff, the leper "gets on his knees and says: 'If you wish, you can make me clean!' Jesus, moved, stretches out his hand, touches him and says: 'I do wish it. Be made clean!'"

"According to the ancient Jewish law," the Holy Father explained, "leprosy was not only considered a sickness but the gravest form of 'impurity.'"  He continued: "Leprosy thus constituted a kind of religious and civil death, and its healing was a kind of resurrection. We might see in leprosy a symbol of sin, which is the true impurity of heart, distancing us from God. "It is not, in effect, physical malady that distances us from him, as the ancient norms supposed, but sin, the spiritual and moral evil."

Benedict XVI reflected: "The sins we commit distance us from God, and, if they are not humbly confessed, trusting in the divine mercy, they will finally bring about the death of the soul. This miracle thus has powerful symbolic value.  "In the Sacrament of Penance Christ crucified and risen, through his ministers, purifies us with his infinite mercy, restores us to communion with the heavenly Father and our brothers, and makes a gift of his love, joy and peace to us."

"Dear brothers and sisters," he concluded, "let us invoke the Virgin Mary, whom God preserved from every stain of sin, that she help us to avoid sin and to have frequent recourse to the sacrament of confession, the sacrament of forgiveness, whose value and importance for our Christian life needs to be rediscovered today."

And From the Diary of St. Faustina, Jesus said
 

Come with faith to the feet of My representative...I myself am waiting there for you. I am only hidden by the priest... I Myself act in your soul... Make your confession before Me. The person of the priest is, for Me, only a screen. Never analyse what sort of a priest it is that I am making use of; open your soul in confession as you would to Me, and I will fill it with My light...

Were a soul like a decaying corpse, so that from a human standpoint, there would be no hope of restoration and everything would already be lost, it is not so with God. The miracle of Divine Mercy restores that soul in full... From this fount of mercy souls draw graces solely with the vessel of trust. If their trust is great, there is no limit to My generosity.