Reconciliation during the Season of Advent

The Grace of Confession during Advent.

I have been struck over and over again by the mysterious power in that Sacrament. I had just been ordained a priest the day before, and on that June Sunday I was preoccupied in preparing for something I had never done before: the solo-celebration of my First Mass. At that inconvenient time, the Grace of Repentance struck someone who was there for the Mass.

He approached me privately for Confession, with people milling about inside and outside the University Chapel, with people everywhere. His serious eyes (I knew those eyes) brooked no delay. How to do this, without calling attention to him, to save him any embarrassment? We moved as far from the people as we could get, and stumbled there upon a broom closet, somehow left open. In a few snatched minutes, unknown to most, it became a Holy Place of Grace. I could not count the times I have been approached in busy airports all over the world. The black suit and the collar make it inevitable, I guess. “Are you a priest,” they will ask. “A Catholic priest?” “Could I go to Confession?” Again, we search for places far from others, and there, in the guise of a quiet conversation … all the world would see it as such … the Confession takes place. Over and over again, and only the tight squeeze of my hand in goodbye will betray the emotion and the relief he experienced in that brief sacramental encounter.

The oddest was a kind of Oriental Kabuku moment, I guess: that dance-drama brought to perfection by the Japanese. I knew a number of Korean students at the University over the years, and I was scheduled to have brunch with a small group of them after Sunday morning Mass. A day or so before, one of them asked me if it would be possible to hear the Confession of a Chinese student at the restaurant. He was not sure she would even come, but would it be possible, if she did? That would not be the most appropriate place, I told him, but yes, it would be possible. The morning came, the brunch passed without incident, and also without the Chinese woman, as it happened. But, then, she appeared at the very end, a quiet, shy, young girl, who knew hardly any English, I then discovered. It was important to her, evidently, or she would not have been there.

The crowd had thinned a bit by then, so the two of us moved to a far table, for what would appear as only a quiet talk, and there she confessed devoutly in Chinese, barely above a whisper, with eyes tearing over. She stood, she looked at me, she bowed, and left as quickly as she came. There is an urgency to the Grace of Repentance. When it finds you, the need to confess is strong. A woman touched by grace feels this. The man touched by grace feels this. They don’t care where they are. They don’t care who is watching. They must respond to the Grace. For them, it cannot be delayed. This is not the normal time: it does not matter.

This is not the normal way: it does not. matter. God has called: it must be now. The splinter of sin cannot remain in the soul. It is foul there, it is festering there. The call was there, repentance has welled up in the soul. They must give expression to the sorrow, they must ask for forgiveness. They must hear the words of absolution and healing. HERE, it must be done, this dance-drama, this Sacrament of Whispers. NOW, it must be done. May the Lord touch you in this Advent season: may you know the urgent need to find your place … to speak what is lodged in your soul, to hear what heals your wound.