I moved to Kirksville five months ago. I have unpacked only half of the boxes I brought with me. Most of the unpacked boxes contain books, but other boxes have some clothes, tools,  gadgets and materials that I might need for cooking or my other hobbies. I have the essentials out and ready to use, but as the seasons change, so do my needs change. Somewhere in the spare bedroom is a box with all my winter coats and heavy sweaters. And I most likely will have to move all the other boxes to get to that one box.
If there ever were a metaphor for why we need Advent, a cluttered house is one of the best. It is very Scriptural. This Sunday John tells us to prepare for a journey:  make the crooked ways straight and the valleys and hills into a flat plain. Remove all the obstacles for Christ’s entrance. The greatest obstacle to an encounter with Christ is our sin.
This year we celebrate a communal penance service, this Sunday, December 5 at 2:00 PM at the Newman Center. Several priests from the area deanery will help hear confessions. I also will be offering the Sacrament of Reconciliation more frequently throughout the week during Advent in addition to the normal time each Saturday from 4:30 PM on. I’ll hear confessions from 4:15 PM to 5:15 PM on Tuesdays of Advent. I will hear confessions on Fridays during Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament  from 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM. As always, I am happy to hear confessions after Masses if you wish. Also, if you would like to make an appointment for confessions throughout the week during the day, you can call the parish office or email me and we can set up a time. To help prepare to celebrate the Sacrament, here are ten points about Reconciliation that are important to consider:

1.      Encounter:   The Sacrament of Reconciliation goes beyond the mere recitation of sins (the confession aspect), it is an encounter with Christ to heal the relationship. While certainly rooted in the sinful acts we specify, it is a way to restore right relationship with God, which sin has hurt, through the grace of the Sacrament.
2.       It is a communal ritual of the Church, even if only between the penitent and confessor. This is an essential point of the sacrament. Reconciliation isn’t just about me telling God privately I am sorry and asking forgiveness. As a Sacrament, Reconciliation is done in the context of community. Again, sin harms relationships and as such needs a communal dimension to restore right relationship with God, Self, and Others. I think this is a crucial point that is needed which makes it particularly Catholic. It certainly is opposed to the modern understanding of the human person as merely individual, bereft of social identity and context.
3.       Everybody lies. That’s my quote from the TV show House. The human person’s penchant for self-deceit is massive. Denial is a very human strategy. It is necessary for discovering truth, to say what is true and what is false, but we can get blinded to our own sins. That’s why we call it Confession. It has a forensic quality to it. We are called to bear true witness against ourselves. It really keeps the 9th commandment here. The Cain and Abel story is classic for this, although David, Uriah and Bathsheba also illustrates deception and sin very well.
4.       Reflection on Scripture should be part of the process. Whether the call of Jonah and Joel in the Old Testament to repent from sin, or John the Baptist and Christ in the New Testament, preaching the Word of God, the Gospel, sheds light on our sinfulness. Coming into God’s presence, we are humbled. We find the truth of our nature, our divine calling, but also how we fall short of that calling. Conversion is an essential and necessary part of responding to the Gospel.  Repent and believe the Good News. The individual confession might not always have a verse proclaimed, but it presumes the call of Scripture. That is why communal penance services have a Liturgy of the Word.
5.       How long it has been since last confession:  It is significant that this is required. Again, it helps address self-deception, but also in a positive way reinforces that we are on a journey and the way of the pilgrim is part of the process. Conversion takes time, even though there are moments like Paul’s conversion. He did spend quite some time recovering and getting to know Christ and the community. It also reminds us that the sacrament of reconciliation needs to be part of a life-plan. It’s mandated once a year. We should do it more often. I liken it to regular checkups. We have them for medical issues, why not for spiritual? Conversion presumes that time is sacred and this seemingly minor point gives witness to time as the way to holiness.
6.       Speaking the truth:  The catechism says that we need to confess the number and kind of sin. In this case, sin is defined as an action or an omission. Examinations of conscience often focus on overt behaviors, and there are long lists of sins and the appropriate penances that should accompany them, depending on the gravity of the sin, the circumstances of the action, and the person who commits them. This reminds us that sin is an affront to God’s justice. Sin puts things out of balance. I think that the penitent should identify actions and be very honest about certain things that were done. We should not only say, “I have been angry” with my spouse, we should say “by losing my temper and yelling at him or her.” We also should identify the occasions of sins, the tendencies that we have. This gives occasion to talk about the vices:  habitual dispositions to certain sinful actions. 
7.       Contrition:  this is an essential part of the sacrament. In as much as we are honest about our sins, a somewhat intellectual challenge, we also must foster a feeling of sadness and sorrow about our sins. Not enough to say it, we have to mean it, that we regret and feel shame, guilt, revulsion, sadness, or whatever is appropriate for the sins we mention. That is a particular challenge and requires prayer and true self-awareness.  So we say the act of contrition to express our sorrow. In this way the whole human person of thought, feeling, and action is included in the penitent’s confession.
8.       Satisfaction or penance:  On one hand this is a very simple concept. We do something wrong, we should strive to make up for what we did wrong. But care has to be taken. God doesn’t reward us with forgiveness after we have paid the debt. Christ has already done that for us. Then why do we need to do anything?  Here is the tricky but essential Catholic notion of sin, sacrament, and grace. I believe it also makes the Incarnation real. Our actions have consequences in this real world. The relationship between us and God has been restored in Christ, but there is still something out of balance. The temporal effects of our sin remain. In some ways it is like restitution. It does no good to say you are sorry and ask forgiveness for stealing a million dollars from your neighbors, and then keep the money and enjoy the new sports car you bought with it while they get evicted and are now homeless. Simply put, God’s mercy offers forgiveness, but God’s justice requires some type of penance to make up for the temporal effects of our sin. What is amazing is that acts of charity and devotion do, by God’s grace, assist in making up for sin.
9.       Absolution:  This is the prayer of forgiveness. It is the essential matter of the sacrament, the prayer and extended hands over the penitent in blessing. It is interesting that we use absolve and not forgive. There is something different at work here. It reminds us that sin shackles us and binds us to evil. We need to be set free by God. We can’t do this on our own. The priest is the minister of the sacrament, but it is Christ who frees the penitent. People miss this distinction. This is why we go to a priest for confession. One is to keep us honest. The other is recognizing that we can’t be free from sin on our own initiative. We need God. The priest is the sacramental minister who stands in the person of Christ. This allows the penitent to hear from Christ himself the words of absolution.
10.   Prayer of Thanksgiving: this hasn’t quite gotten into the routine. The priest should say, “Give thanks to the Lord for he is good” and the penitent should say, “For his mercy endures forever.” In any case, we should take some time after confession to thank God. The story of the Samaritan leper who returned to Christ to give thanks is one of the great stories of gratitude. This man was freed from a devastating illness that had taken control of him and deprived him of community. This is the kind of gratitude we need to cultivate every time we celebrate the sacrament.