Eccentric is preparing for her First Holy Communion in two weeks. Yesterday was her first confession. In preparing her for her first confession we were talking through the ten commandments and they way they apply to children. Of course that first confession is always a bit nerve-wracking. We always have the children write their sins on a napkin so that they wont forget anything and when they are done they can flush the napkin down the toilet. My analogy with Eccentric was this: Confession is like garbage day. We go all around the house gathering up trash on garbage day so that there won’t be any left. We put it all out for the garbage man and he comes and takes all that stinky, ugly trash away from our house and we never have to see it or smell it again. When we go to confession we gather up all our sins and give them to Jesus through the Alter Christus. He takes away those sins through the Redemption. We never have to have those stinky, ugly sins on our souls again. So we want to make sure that we never leave any sins out because we don’t want to leave any blackness in our souls.
Jesus gave us this beautiful Sacrament of Penance to help relieve our souls of their burden. Not because HE needs to hear our sins, since He already knows them in a deeper and more painful way than we ever will, but because WE need it. Don’t believe me? Turn on talk radio today. So get going to garbage day!!
