by Paul O'Reilly, SJ
"The man who lives by the truth comes out into the light, so that it may be plainly seen that what he does is done in God."
When I was a novice, I used to work in a parish where – because they were giving me all the bad jobs - they put me on what we used to call "drinkers' duty". Every morning, about 8 o'clock, about 20-30 men would come up to the church and they would stop in and tell me how much alcohol they had drunk the previous day. And my job was to write it down – not to say "that's good" or "that's bad" – just to write it down as a permanent record. All sorts of people came – from poor homeless drug addicts to rich and successful businessmen. Sometimes, they would come very proudly and say "None! And that's just two pints for the whole week." Other times, one would come very ashamed looking and say "Err... eight cans, brother."
Nobody made them do this – they wanted to do it.
They were all men who know that they had a problem with alcohol. And they also knew what Jesus tells us today:
"everybody who does wrong
hates the light and avoids it,
for fear his actions should be exposed;
but the man who lives by the truth
comes out into the light,
so that it may be plainly seen that what he does is done in God."
And so they wanted – they needed – a pa place they could go and a person they could trust enough to be honest with every day about their drinking. Because they knew that they needed that kind of support to help them control their drinking.
That, of course, is the spirit of confession.
People who are not Catholics often find this difficult to understand. They ask, "Why can't I just confess my sins to God? Why do I have to bother with a priest?"
And the answer of course is that you can – nobody is stopping you. But we all know that human beings are good at fooling themselves. We all need – not just alcoholics, but all of us" we all need a place where we can go and a person whom we can trust and confess before God what we have done and what we have failed to do. And that is because , as Catholics, we are – or at least we want to be - people who live by the Truth. We come out into the light, so that it may be plainly seen that what we do is done in God."
Let us stand and profess our Faith in God who is the Truth and the Life.
Mount Street Jesuit Centre,
114 Mount Street,
London SW1K 3AH.
ENGLAND.
fatbaldnproud@yahoo.co.uk