Mathew & Confession
Some thoughts
2 min readSep 21, 2024
Today is the feast of St Mathew. He is called and pardoned. Two acts are intimately related — act of pardon and the call. It is impossible to say which is the first one — in the level of God, God always calls and always pardons. In the level of Mathew, I don’t know which one he accepted first. Probably both were invitations to which he has to slowly grow. It is a good occasion to share some reflections on confession — a sacrament I appreciate a lot in my priestly ministry
- The act of coming to confession to a priest (known or unknown) is an act of immense courage. If it is a strict priest, it requires an extra ounce of courage.
- Whether the person comes and says the sins with full repentance or partial repentance is not much a thing for me to judge. It takes a lot of effort and grace to reach that stage of full repentance. Let me be patient as Jesus himself is more than patient.
- Confession is not a place to add more guilt and shame in the life of the person. There is enough of that (hidden or evident) in the world and in the lives of persons. It is probably a time to invite them to look at them through the eyes of Jesus. Again, in our sinfulness, we will surely say that Jesus looks at me with anger, irritation or dissatisfaction. But then look at Jesus, how he looked at sinners like Mathew, Zacchaeus, Peter (after denying) etc. Yes, allowing and encouraging people to have that experience of the gaze of Jesus is the greatest gift of confession.
- The mercy received through the sacrament starts the slow, painful, time taking work of transformation in the life of a person.
NB : Today is the feast day of my brother; birthday of good friends like Niharika, Anish and Ashwin (good priest too). To them, and all those who came to me for confession and taught me of the beauty of the sacrament, this article is dedicated.
