Encouraging your family to go to confession?

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frankyfive

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Hi Everyone,

Ever been in a great conversation about your faith with your family and then the subject of confession comes up and heads get twisted like in the movie 'The Exorcist" 😉
Obviously I am using hyperbole here…but sometimes it just feels that way as the conversation just disintegrates from there.

I could use some advice on ‘How to encourage my family to go to confession’.

Let me give a little background. I was born and raised as some might call a ‘cradle’ or ‘sacramental’ Catholic. I never really took ‘my religion’ seriously when I was younger and eventually just stopped going. Praise God! He kept tugging at my heart and stirred me up to come home this past fall. Everything is new and ALIVE now! I look back and realize that we knew ‘the church’ but we really didn’t know God! So, I find it so important to share that to my family whenever I can. There are a lot of cool and amazing things happening now. Mom is asking me to pick her up and bring her to Mass with me. My sister enrolled her kids into 1st communion and confirmation classes and even Pops has started to come. Thank You Lord!

Maybe I’m being a little selfish but I really feel a need to encourage, even to push confession, especially as Lent is just upon us. In my renewed walk with Christ I am learning and more so, feeling the importance of this sacrament so much in my life right now…yes-I AM A SINNER and the Lord has his work cut out with me 🙂
My heart and mind is just telling me "If they could just get it, understand it…how relieving it would be for them, how ‘revealing’ it would be for them.

But…who am I…they know me and my past. It’s not so easy for me to tell them “Believe me when I say…”

I tip toe around the topic with subtle nudges and have prayed on this too but could use any advice you are willing to share.

I have never been this excited for Lent in my life and I just would like to see my family really experience what this season is about.

Thanks
 
If you push, you’ll push them away.

God calls and we follow. You can’t make others follow.

Religion in your face does more harm than good.

So, its good that you have found Christ and are now in full union with the Church.

Its good that your family members have found their way back as well, but the level of their faith is probably not the same as yours and you need to let go and let God.

I have a friend who after returning to the Church, literally pushed his relatives away from the Church with is misdirected enthusiasm.

Don’t make the same mistake.

Jim
 
frankyfive said:
Hi Everyone,

Ever been in a great conversation about your faith with your family and then the subject of confession comes up and heads get twisted like in the movie 'The Exorcist" 😉
Obviously I am using hyperbole here…but sometimes it just feels that way as the conversation just disintegrates from there.

I could use some advice on ‘How to encourage my family to go to confession’.

Let me give a little background. I was born and raised as some might call a ‘cradle’ or ‘sacramental’ Catholic. I never really took ‘my religion’ seriously when I was younger and eventually just stopped going. Praise God! He kept tugging at my heart and stirred me up to come home this past fall. Everything is new and ALIVE now! I look back and realize that we knew ‘the church’ but we really didn’t know God! So, I find it so important to share that to my family whenever I can. There are a lot of cool and amazing things happening now. Mom is asking me to pick her up and bring her to Mass with me. My sister enrolled her kids into 1st communion and confirmation classes and even Pops has started to come. Thank You Lord!

Maybe I’m being a little selfish but I really feel a need to encourage, even to push confession, especially as Lent is just upon us. In my renewed walk with Christ I am learning and more so, feeling the importance of this sacrament so much in my life right now…yes-I AM A SINNER and the Lord has his work cut out with me 🙂
My heart and mind is just telling me "If they could just get it, understand it…how relieving it would be for them, how ‘revealing’ it would be for them.

But…who am I…they know me and my past. It’s not so easy for me to tell them “Believe me when I say…”

I tip toe around the topic with subtle nudges and have prayed on this too but could use any advice you are willing to share.

I have never been this excited for Lent in my life and I just would like to see my family really experience what this season is about.

Thanks
Click to expand...
I wouldn’t push if I were you, that may backfire. Let them grow slowly and let the Holy Spirit work with them. You keep praying and maybe some time you could say, " I’m going to Confession this afternoon, anybody want to go with me? Then let it drop and if not maybe another time down the road you might just mention your going to Confession. I could tell you amazing stories about my family and using little suggestions. My Dad hadn’t been to confession, or Church for that matter, for over 50 years. He had a Crucifix on his wall above his bed and a banner over it saying, “Let’s get Acquainted.” My Dad was in his 70’s. I used to go clean and cook for him and one day I said, "Dad don’t you think it’s time you really do get acquainted? Not to long after that he called me and said. “I did something today that oughta make you happy.” “What did you do?” I asked. He said “I went to Confession for the first time in over 50 years.!!”. He later died with a priest by his side. God works in Mysterious ways!!! God Bless, Memaw
 
I’m also a revert, and I started going to confession again last spring. I have been astonished by the power in this sacrament!

The best way to encourage your family to go to Confession is to go yourself. 🙂 Though you’re excited, which is awesome!, don’t push it. It will backfire. And really, you don’t want them to just go, right? You want them to go for love of God. Pushing can at best get you the former; example may get you the latter.

If you want to go a step further, and this is a very personal decision, so I’m not saying you *should *do it: I often share with my (non-Catholic) husband that it’s time for me to go to confession and why – and then afterward, I share with him anything the priest said that hit home, what came up in prayer afterward, what my penance is, if I need quiet time to fulfill it and on what schedule, and since my penance is usually about him it generally leads me to apologize to him or perform extra acts of kindness or something.

It’s all 100% voluntary on my part, and I will, rarely, not give him this information. But his access to it, coupled with the subsequent changes in my behavior and our lives together, made him very curious last summer. Also very uneasy. And because of that and some other things, now he’s investigating.

Even if you don’t want to be as explicit as I am with my husband, which is completely okay!, if you have a WOW kind of story you’re comfortable telling, it might be helpful to share it. Not like, “You have to go because this will happen to you!” but more of a, “Oh my gosh, I want to share this amazing thing God did for me! He is so good!” And then let them draw their own conclusions. This will be more natural if, like me and my husband, your relationships with God are a normal topic of conversation in your family. Otherwise, tread extra-carefully. Less is more.

Your post made me happy. Thank you for sharing. I hope this Lent brings you closer to our loving Lord!
 
JimR-OCDS said:
If you push, you’ll push them away.

God calls and we follow. You can’t make others follow.

Religion in your face does more harm than good.

So, its good that you have found Christ and are now in full union with the Church.

Its good that your family members have found their way back as well, but the level of their faith is probably not the same as yours and you need to let go and let God.

I have a friend who after returning to the Church, literally pushed his relatives away from the Church with is misdirected enthusiasm.

Don’t make the same mistake.

Jim
Click to expand...
Amen. Gentleness is such an overlooked quality.
 
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