Reconciliation

So I find myself in the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults; a process to join the Roman Catholic Church. Yet the one thing that terrifies me is coming up on the eighth of next year; the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

It terrifies me to the extreme, even though it should not. It is the very forgiving act of mercy given unto us by Christ, yet, I find myself downcast at the very thought of it all. To speak aloud my sins, to give voice to the darkness that I hide so blatantly from the world...it will be, near the Easter Vigil, one of the hardest things I've done in my life!

I project this image of the good Christian young man, as one who while not without sin, never engages in anything of great depth. We all have our masks, and as a friend who is a son of a pastor and shares a number of my more esoteric interests says, "Sometimes the good kids have the most evil ideas of all". I don't know about outright evil, but I do know about sin, my sins in particular.

I am a sinner, I admit it, for we all are. What have I done that is so great? Nothing that this man has not heard before in some form in over nineteen years of being a priest and hearing confessions, yet I'm still so nervous. I'm more nervous to say words like "porn" and "Self gratification" than some sins that truly would seem worse unto me, such as, "leading others in Apostasy".

I can go through so many things, for my sins are not the stuff of physical action as omission and pride. Oh how good friends I am with the sin of pride. Anyhow I have come to the end of my ramble, and look forward in glee and fear to the coming of the next class when we discuss this Sacrament in great detail.