Question about Confession

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Altargirl

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Hi there,

I was just wondering if anyone here has experienced a priest asking you to pray for them, during confession? Only I went the other day and the priest to whom I confessed (who so happens to be a very close friend of mine) asked me to pray for him (which I do so anyway daily), just before he absolved me. I’ve since talked to other Catholic friends, none of whom have experienced this before, so I was wondering if anyone here had?
 
Sounds like humility to me. I haven’t had this occur during confession but I have had it happen at other times. I don’t see anything wrong with it. 🙂
 
Yes, although usually it has been a visiting priest that requested this.
 
Yes! Our Priests do on occassion ask for prayers. It is a difficult life being a Priest, and every one critisizes their work. satan focuses on such leaders to bring them down, because of the scandal it causes. Historicly the faithful have always prayed for their Priests. It is time to revive that practice. 🙂
 
Yes I have. Once when I went to confession, the priest asked me to “slip in” in Hail Mary for him. It is their way of reaffirming us that they too are human and also struggle with sin just like us. They are not perfect.
 
Yes; I did have a priest ask me to pray for him. He said this after absolution, but at the time I thought it was because of the heart to heart we had during confession. Come to think of it, he may have even been a visiting priest, but I think it was because we had a commonality, both being Catholic men, struggling through our own challenges. Why not pray for each other?

For me, it was a request that I appreciated and admired.
 
I’ve found that Latin Mass priests tend to do this on a regular basis. It must be a traditional custom.
 
I come from miami and have been to confession at every parish within a 20 mile radius of my home. It seems like it is the norm for the priest to ask the penitent to pray for them. I would say they request prayer 60-70% of the time. It is possible that I live in a strange part of town 🙂
 
I have heard that when some priests hear your confession, they don’t just give you a small penance, they assist your soul by doing penance themselves for those sins; I don’t know if this is a universal practise or not, but it may be one reason why they request the kindness of a prayer. 🙂
 
Ad_Orientem said:
I’ve found that Latin Mass priests tend to do this on a regular basis. It must be a traditional custom.
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I’m not quite sure what a “Latin Mass priest” is, (some sot of sub-species, perhaps?), but anyway yes, it is a traditional custom.

It’s kind of related to a form of the “shoubqono” in the Syriac Churches, where the priest begs forgiveness from the faithful, often with simple words. (This is a case where an exact translation is difficult, but it amounts to “pray for me for the Lord’s sake” or “pray for me because of Our Lord” or something similar).
 
Yes, the majority of priests I’ve confessed to do this.

I love to pray for my confessors. The only thing I don’t like about it is the wording is usually “Your sins have been forgiven, go in peace and pray for me, a sinner”, which is very difficult to reply to since ‘go in peace’ makes me opt for ‘Thanks be to God’, but that doesn’t really work as a reply to ‘pray for me, a sinner’ so I end up saying something like “I will, thank you Father” when I would prefer a more formulaic answer. Still, I do like it when they ask - it’s usually the best confessors who do.
 
Altargirl said:
Hi there,

I was just wondering if anyone here has experienced a priest asking you to pray for them, during confession? Only I went the other day and the priest to whom I confessed (who so happens to be a very close friend of mine) asked me to pray for him (which I do so anyway daily), just before he absolved me. I’ve since talked to other Catholic friends, none of whom have experienced this before, so I was wondering if anyone here had?
Click to expand...
In the Anglican confession it is a natural part of the confesssion where the priest asks us to pray for them a sinner too… 👍
 
malphono said:
I’m not quite sure what a “Latin Mass priest” is, (some sot of sub-species, perhaps?)
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It’s shorthand for “a priest whose charism involves celebrating Mass according to the missal of Bl. John XXIII, such as members of the Fraternitas Sacerdotalis Sancti Petri or the Institutum Christi Regis Summi Sacerdotis, who typically receive a formation incorporating many customs widely in use in the Roman rite until the mid to late 1960s.”
 
Ad_Orientem said:
It’s shorthand for “a priest whose charism involves celebrating Mass according to the missal of Bl. John XXIII, such as members of the Fraternitas Sacerdotalis Sancti Petri or the Institutum Christi Regis Summi Sacerdotis, who typically receive a formation incorporating many customs widely in use in the Roman rite until the mid to late 1960s.”
Click to expand...
I see. Thank you for the clarification. At first reading, I thought the term was being used as a pejorative. I’m happy to see that it was not. 🙂
 
Thanks for your answers everyone! It’s certainly interesting to hear other people’s experiences, as I’ve been to confession with 4 different priests since becoming a Catholic 3 years ago, and this being the first time that I had said confession to my close friend who asked me to pray for him. So it seems to be fairly normal, only I wasn’t sure because I had never experienced it or knew anyone who had before now! Thank you to everyone’s clarifications so far, and keep them coming! 🙂
 
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