Frequent Confession

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I am a new Catholic. I am having trouble finding churches that have confessions during the week day or after work times. My church has them 15-30 minutes before mass times on Sat and Sun.

I could take up that whole time myself!

Is confession not considered important anymore?
 
Fr. Brian, where on the East Coast?? We need more priests like you!
 
JMD_Equitare said:
Fr. Brian, where on the East Coast?? We need more priests like you!
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The state next to yours 😉

If any of you lived closer, I would gladly tell you where I am at, I just don’t like doing that type of thing on public forums. Also, during Lent, my pastor and I decided we were going to have confessions everyday from 12-1 (the lunch hour) since it was so successful during Advent. However, I am the one who spends more time there given how busy the pastor is and the fact that he speaks Spanish and we are in a very heavily Hispanic parish, and I don’t speak Spanish. Also, people do make appointments or stop by…I will never turn down an opportunity to extend God’s mercy to someone in need neither will my pastor.

God Bless
 
I have been following this, and it has been very helpful to me. Thank you for being a good priest, Father.
 
Hi Guys,
I was very busy in the last couple of days (or weeks ;)) so I did not come to the CAF. I hope I can catch up.

Thanks InLight247. I am approximately in your state about a year ago i.e. I too used to make confession only twice a year. I am now thinking about going more frequently – and I asked this question so that I might be able to have the reasons to convince someone who does not agree with this. Personally I see the logic in doing so.
InLight247 said:
It also gives us a chance to practice humility, receive additional grace in order to avoid sin.
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I wanted to know if it is mentioned anywhere that the Sacrament of Reconciliation provides the graces to avoid sin i.e. something authoritative. (This sounds interesting so I am wondering why I have not heard of it before.) I know that the priest may be able to give us advice regarding how to avoid sin – but it never occurred to me that this sacrament provides special graces for this. (This is different from the forgiveness of sin that the sacrament obviously provides.)
Regards,
O.O.
 
Thanks koinonia girl. I agree with you that the Confession is the most underutilized Sacrament – I too hope that this situation changes.
koinonia_girl said:
The Bible states “even the most righetous man falls 7 times a day”
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I am a cradle Catholic so I am not very familiar with my Bible. Can you show me where I can find this? I never knew that such a thing was in the Bible.
Regards,
O.O.
 
o_o_82 said:
Thanks koinonia girl. I agree with you that the Confession is the most underutilized Sacrament – I too hope that this situation changes.
Code: 
I am a cradle Catholic so I am not very familiar with my Bible. Can you show me where I can find this? I never knew that such a thing was in the Bible.
Regards,
O.O.
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It’s not directly in the Bible, but all the sacraments exist, among other reasons, in order to strengthen us in God’s grace - which necessarily also strengthens us against sin. This applies, of course, most particularly to the sacraments we receive repeatedly - aka Eucharist and Confession.
 
o_o_82:

a righteous man falls seven times is in Porverb 24:16.

The grace we receive in reconciliation was told by my confessor.
I once asked him if I could do my confession without specific sin in mind to confess, My confessor explained that one can do so because one can receive grace from God with this sacrament.
 
Thank you Fr. Brian. When I posted this, I knew that the Church recommends frequent Confession – however generally it is the priests that discourage it. So I guess that you are different.
logos33 said:
……and just because venial sins are washed away by the Eucharist that does not necessarily mean that all of them are washed away, what of those we hold dear and near to our heart, not ready to give up, those that have become a part of us, as it were? We can only be forgiven of those things we admit to, and if we don’t admit to them, then how will they be forgiven? This is why we need a way of speaking them out loud, admitting them, in humility, and asking for pardon and forgiveness.
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Code: 
I agree with what you have said, especially that most of us go through the Penitential rite of the Mass, without even thinking of our venial sins (i.e. we don’t have much time, and somebody is constantly saying or singing something.) Also I did not know that if we do not repent of our sins during the Mass, then these sins would not be forgiven.
Thanks again,
O.O.
 
logos33 said:
I thought you guys might like to hear my homily for today, given our conversation…and, yes, I do still write them out…I like to write…maybe it will change, who knows. God Bless, Fr. Brian
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Thank you Fr. Brian for your homily. It is encouraging to know that there are still orthodox priests around.
Code: 
When you said that you “write” them out – does this mean by hand or on a computer. If you happen to do this on a computer – try to post this somewhere on the web, so that others may also read it, and most importantly people would know that orthodox priests still exist. I think that the best place to do this would be your parish website. 

If you do not write this out, then you can consider recording sermons. I have heard of some priests doing that.
Regards,
O.O.
 
logos33 said:
The state next to yours 😉

If any of you lived closer, I would gladly tell you where I am at, I just don’t like doing that type of thing on public forums. Also, during Lent, my pastor and I decided we were going to have confessions everyday from 12-1 (the lunch hour) since it was so successful during Advent. However, I am the one who spends more time there given how busy the pastor is and the fact that he speaks Spanish and we are in a very heavily Hispanic parish, and I don’t speak Spanish. Also, people do make appointments or stop by…I will never turn down an opportunity to extend God’s mercy to someone in need neither will my pastor.

God Bless
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Dear Fr. Brian,
I guess you have already admitted here that you are a Catholic Priest, so at least you could mention that in your profile. (i.e. put your profession in your profile as a Catholic Priest). Most of the folks in the CAF are Catholics – and I think many of them would respect things coming from a priest.
Thanks for your posts.
O.O.
 
Thanks InLight247 for pointing this out.
InLight247 said:
o_o_82:

a righteous man falls seven times is in Porverb 24:16.
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Code: 
Actually after asking this question, I noticed that Fr. Brian mentioned this same thing in his homily in post #73. So I realized that it was from Proverbs. (I am catching up with the past weeks – so I go through the posts in the order that they are posted.)

I had a look at Porverb 24:16 – but it does not say that a just man falls “every day” that  **koinonia girl**  mentioned here:
koinonia_girl said:
The Bible states “even the most righetous man falls 7 times a day”
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There is a huge difference between saying that the just man falls 7 times, and saying that he falls 7 times a day. koinonia girl used the latter to explain why the Pope and the saints need frequent confession – which does not seem appropriate.
InLight247 said:
The grace we receive in reconciliation was told by my confessor.
I once asked him if I could do my confession without specific sin in mind to confess, My confessor explained that one can do so because one can receive grace from God with this sacrament.
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This is very strange. In fact when I find the time I would start another thread on this topic.
Thanks again,
O.O.
 
Hey guys, sorry I have not been posting much, but, as you can imagine, we are in our “busy” season.

Anyway, I am glad to hear about so many people taking advantage of the sacrament. I never tire of telling people the great graces that can be obtained and I am sure by now this congregation is getting tired of me constantly talking about it 🙂

To answer o_o specifically, when I say I write them out it does indeed mean I write them out on the computer. We don’t have a parish website (yet) so we will have to wait on me posting them there…although there were a few that people really liked and wanted me to put in the bulletin (more meditations than anything else). Also, I belong to another website (phatmass) and I post most of my Sunday homilies and all of the homilies I preached as a deacon over there…so I do post them.

As to the profile I did not even think about it…

God Bless

Fr. Brian
 
o_o_82 said:
This is very strange. In fact when I find the time I would start another thread on this topic.
O.O.
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O.O.
Let me clarify what I said earlier.
My confessor did not say one is encouraged to walk into the confession with no sin in mind. The discussion was during my spiritual direction. My SD is also my confessor. I was discussing an incident with him. He said there is no sin on my part at all. Since I was questioning the case we were discussing, I asked him if I still could make a confession. He said yes,
by doing so I can get grace from the Sacrament. SD then said to let God decide if there is sin or no sin. That is the background of my previous posting. He never said plainly that one with nothing to confess is encouraged to do confession. I was posting in a hurry and did not take time to put into the details.

My SD actually suggested to do confession no more than once a month. Again, he may say that specifically to me, the one he directed spiritually.
 
logos33 said:
To answer o_o specifically, when I say I write them out it does indeed mean I write them out on the computer. We don’t have a parish website (yet) so we will have to wait on me posting them there…although there were a few that people really liked and wanted me to put in the bulletin (more meditations than anything else). Also, I belong to another website (phatmass) and I post most of my Sunday homilies and all of the homilies I preached as a deacon over there…so I do post them.

As to the profile I did not even think about it…

God Bless

Fr. Brian
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Dear Fr. Brain,
So you are back. Yes, I know that this is a busy season – especially in the confessional. (I tried to go for confession today – and there were too many people ahead of me so the priest told me to come next week.)

I heard about “Phatmass” only after the post of johnpaul2_fan in Post #33 & 34 of this thread. Anyway if you are already in another forum then that is good. All I wanted is that you stand out to the people – even if I don’t see you.
Regards,
O.O.
 
InLight247 said:
O.O.
Let me clarify what I said earlier.
My confessor did not say one is encouraged to walk into the confession with no sin in mind. The discussion was during my spiritual direction. My SD is also my confessor. I was discussing an incident with him. He said there is no sin on my part at all. Since I was questioning the case we were discussing, I asked him if I still could make a confession. He said yes,
by doing so I can get grace from the Sacrament. SD then said to let God decide if there is sin or no sin. That is the background of my previous posting. He never said plainly that one with nothing to confess is encouraged to do confession. I was posting in a hurry and did not take time to put into the details.

My SD actually suggested to do confession no more than once a month. Again, he may say that specifically to me, the one he directed spiritually.
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Thanks InLight247 for clarifying this. I thought from your previous post that this was a new fashion in the Catholic Church – to go to the confessional “without specific sin in mind to confess”.
Code: 
From this post it is clear that you did have something specific in mind - but you were not sure if it was a sin at all. This is totally different, and I don’t have a problem with this.
Thanks for the clarification.
O.O.
 
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