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Confession - The 3 C's
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to go to Confession and the priest mentioned that Confession can be boiled down into 3 "C"s: Contrition, Confession, and Celebration. I guess I had always thought about contrition and confession as integral parts of this sacrament, but I hadn't ever put much thought into the 3rd part, celebration. I mean, before every confession I try to think about my sins and then feel contrition about them. Obviously, I also do the 2nd part, confession of those sins to the Priest, who is acting in the person of Christ. However, I have always neglected the 3rd "step", celebration. We so easily take for granted things that other people, or in this case God, gives us. Certainly, the sacrament of Reconciliation, where God forgives our sins, is one of these occasions. Christ died on the cross to pay the debt of our sins, as Second Corinthians 5:20-21 says: "be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." Christ's passion and death are the source of His gift of salvation, the greatest gift that God could give, an invitation into His very life. The sacrament of confession is one of the ways that Christ brings to us the graces and gifts He won for us in his Passion, in a word, salvation. And yet we, or at least I, consistantly neglect to put in the necessary time and effort in saying thank you.
What happens, I asked myself, after Jesus forgives someone's sins in the gospels? What is their response?
Matthew 9:2-8: "some people brought to him a paralytic, lying on a bed. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven." And behold, some of the scribes said to themselves, "This man is blaspheming." But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, "Why do you think evil in your hearts? For which is easier, to say, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Rise and walk'? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins"---he then said to the paralytic---"Rise, pick up you bed and go home." And he rose and went home. When the crowds saw it, they were afraid, and they glorified God, who had given such authority to men."
After Jesus forgave the man's sins and miraculously healed him of his paralysis, the crowds "glorified God, who had given such authority to men". After our sins are forgiven in the confessional, when we are healed of our paralysis to sin, do we glorify God, who has given such authority to men?
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