Let's talk about confession. Why you need it. Jack! Here's why you need confession, Jack!
And Jill, and Jane, and Jimmy. Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz and this is Ascension Presents. So one of the things I love to do as a Catholic priest is I love hearing confessions.
Not because I like the dirt on people. You know, I don't hardly remember anything I hear in confession. It's this thing I call divine amnesia.
The thing I love about confession is it's always a place of victory. It's always a place where people are returning to Jesus. It's really remarkable.
But one of the things I've noticed sometimes is that when someone comes back to confession, if they've been gone for a long time, say, you know, Father, it's been 30 years since my last confession. 50 years since my last confession. Okay, and what do you need to confess?
Well, you know, I was a little bit short with my wife or I kind of, you know, I was a little bit hard on my kids or something like this. All right, that's it. Okay, after 30 years, that just, all right, okay.
I say, okay, let's pause. Let's go back. And I ask the question, almost always ask the question in everyone's confession. Has God been number one in your life? Have you put other things ahead of God?
And oftentimes the response is, I don't know, well, I try to be a good person. Like, okay, that's great. That's wonderful. But that wasn't the question. The question wasn't, hey, do you try to be a good person?
Because when we compare ourselves to that, I mean, the reality is this. We always think like, well, I'm not as bad as I could be. But the truth is, you're also probably not as good as you should be. So like, that's not even a thing. You're comparing your goodness to like, people you know.
Our goodness is compared to God himself. So, let's go back. I try to be a good person. Okay, that wasn't the question.
The question was, is God the center of your life? Because if anything other than God is the center of your life, that's the first thing. That's the first thing that we need to confess every single time we go to confession. And the older we get, the more stuff there is that competes for the first place in our hearts.
So when it comes to going to confession, Not like a kid because that's maybe the last time you went to confession, but going to confession like an adult. What we first have to do is we have to realize that one of the number one sins we probably have is that we don't put God in the center, we put him on the sidelines. Moving on. One of the other things we need to do if we want to go to confession like an adult is we need to understand what sin is. Someone says, you know, have you, have you, you know, what do you need to confess for your sins?
Well, I don't know. I don't really hurt anybody. All right, that's great, but that's not what sin is.
I'd like to define sin like this. I mean, the Bible has a lot of different ways to describe sin. Very, very helpful. All of them. But here's how I like to describe sin.
Sin is basically, it's not like I'm angrily defiant against God. It doesn't necessarily involve hurting someone else. It doesn't necessarily—it's never just a mistake or an accident. Sin is this.
God, I know what you want me to do. I don't care. I want to do what I want to do. That's what sin is. God, I know what you want.
I want what I want. God, I know what you want me to do, but I'm gonna do what I want to do. It's knowing what God wants and freely choosing to do something else. And so in light of that, to be able to go back and say, okay, yeah, when I was in second grade, the thing I knew God wanted me to do was obey my parents, wanted me to be nice to my siblings, wanted me not to cheat at school, and those kind of things. But now here you are at 25, now you're here at 55. Okay, what does God want for your life?
You say, I have no idea even where to start. Well, Thankfully, the Church gives us cheat sheets. See, here's where you can start. Here's four places that you can start to be able to make an examination of conscience like an adult.
But here's my invitation for you. Your cheat sheets should be appropriate to your age and to your state in life. It doesn't do a lot of good to have a cheat sheet, like an examination of conscience, that's made for second graders. Or a confession cheat sheet made for single people when you're a married person or for married people when you're a single person. Actually, there's a fantastic Examination of conscience for priests, that just blows me away.
It goes so deep. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is incredible. That's helpful.
So, first thing, find a good examination of conscience. Number two, there's this prayer called the Litany of Humility by Cardinal Mary Duval. And it's this prayer that, you know, basically it says, Lord, from the desire of being loved, deliver me in Jesus.
From the desire of being extolled, deliver me, Jesus. You go through all these things like, I desire being loved more than I love— Desire to love. A desire to be extolled more than a desire to honor someone else. To go through this litany of humility and realize, there are some wounds in me. There are some areas in my life where I said, God, I know what you want.
I want what I want. A third opportunity for a cheat sheet is, go to Jesus' own words. The Beatitudes. In the Beatitudes, Jesus says, Blessed are the meek, they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are the merciful, they'll be shown mercy.
Do I live in a meek way? Do I show mercy? Do I— Work and strive after peace.
These are areas where I can look at my life and say, am I doing it or am I not? And the fourth exam—examination of consciousness, fourth cheat sheet, is actually called a consciousness examen. Now, Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, which is the order that the Pope Francis belongs to, is—he came up with this thing called the consciousness examen.
Here's what it is. It's not the same thing as an examination of conscience. Here's the steps. Go into prayer. You ask the Holy Spirit to help you because sometimes we don't know what we need to confess.
Number two, you go— over your day, your actual day, that day. This is usually at the end of the day, right? Go over your day and walk through in your memory what happened. For all the areas in your life that day where you said yes to God, where his grace was there, his invitation was there, and you said yes.
Go through that day and say, thank you God for this. Thank you for this. Thank you for this.
Get the end of the day. Thank you Lord. And then start again. Go back to the beginning.
What were those times of your day where God was offering his grace and you said no? What were those times of your day? where God, we were very clear that God said, I want you to do this, but you said, I want to do what I want to do.
To go through those moments of your day and at the end of that, say, God, I'm sorry. Please forgive me. And lay that at the feet of Jesus.
Because realize, it's not just about sin. It's about living out of a relationship with God. That's why the first thing I need to ask myself is this, is God at the center of my life or is he in the sidelines of my life? The degree to which you are living from the relationship with God is the active part of your life. God, I noticed you were here.
Thank you. God, I knew you were here and you were inviting me to do something and I didn't do it. I'm sorry. I promise you, if you take any one of these cheat sheets and begin living them, begin walking through them, begin practicing them, knowing that God needs to be at the center and not at the sidelines, I promise you, if you do this, you'll begin learning how to make confession, to go to confession like an adult.
Actually, Learning how to go to confession like a saint. And that's what God wants you to be. From all of us here at Ascension Presents, my name is Father Mike.
God bless.