“May theskdjhfh of hope fill you with all joy and peace in your faith, so that in the power of the Holy Spirit you may be rich in hope.” – Romans 15:13
As many of you may know, I’ve been counting how many confessions I’ve ever heard. In my 17 years as a priest I’ve had the great privilege of hearing a little more than 57, 300 confessions. Not bad you might say. Well here is something to consider: I heard over 4,100 confessions last year and was on pace to surpass that total this year until the whole coronavirus mess hit. Just a couple of days ago I compared this year’s totals with last year’s: I’m 773 confessions behind last year. Let that sink in for a second. I’m three quarters of a thousand confessions behind last year. And that’s just me! What if you were to add up the deficits from the rest of the priests in our Archdiocese or around the world? Yes, confessions have been available in many parishes, but how many people have come? There are different ways to see how much of an impact and in some cases, how devastating the pandemic has been, and we are used to hearing about the major impacts in the news: impacts on those who became sick, impacts on the economy, on people’s morale and attitude, but what about the spiritual impact on people, especially on us Catholics? For despite the fact that we are more and more under persecution, I mean come on now, which church is going to be burned next, us Catholics are the soul of this world, and if we crash and fall the world will fall with us. And when it comes to morality, we’re pretty much the only ones left preaching an objective truth and there are a bunch of us who have stopped doing even that. So yes, people are concerned about catching the virus, and people have some good reasons for not coming to Mass at times, but when it comes to confession, despite our health concerns, how concerned are we about our eternal soul? There are some interesting words from the song “Love Runs Out” from the group OneRepublic:
There's a maniac out in front of me
Got an angel on my shoulder, and Mestopheles But mama raised me good, mama raised me right Mama said, "Do what you want, say prayers at night"
And I'm saying them 'cause I'm so devout 'Til the love runs out, 'til the love runs out.
For pretty much all of us it sure does seem that there is a “maniac out in front of me” for we live in such insane times, and for many of us we have that battle between good and evil, between doing God’s will or ours, like we do have an angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. But many of us were raised right and we do say our prayers at night. But why, as the song mentions would we be “so devout ‘til the love runs out”? The love runs out because grace runs out. When you are struggling with anger and frustration and then explode on your loved ones, when you are driving like a maniac because someone upset you because they were driving too slow, when you complain about anything and everything and then at night wonder why you feel so terrible and out of sync, it's because you've run out of grace. How can we be people of chairty, when we have either mortal sin on our souls or a pile of venial sins blocking the light and the blessings from our Heavenly Father? And that’s one of the great reasons why we as a Church have confessions—we can only go so far on our own. Some of you are in great need of going to confession. For many of you who don’t want to admit it, your lives are a mess because you are carrying great burdens on your soul. Go and be set free! For us priests many of us have made our confessionals as safe as possible. Ours here at the Newman Center is well ventilated, there are three layers of HEPA filter over the screen, there’s more than a six feet space if you want to go face to face, there’s even a very powerful air purifier in there. And of course, you wear your masks. Now are there still risks? Have you driven in Albuquerque? There’s always risks! But stop playing around with risking damage, perhaps eternal damage, for we don’t know the day that God is going to call us back home, to your souls. Don’t let the love run out, be restored to the fullness of grace. And then us Catholics can go back to doing what we are best at: making this world through the power of our Lord Jesus a better place and preparing souls for the world to come.