An Amazing Gift

Well, my first part week of school is now done, and I'm not really sure what to think about this semester. I really didn't go in with a lot of eagerness, like last semester. I wasn't dreading it... the holidays were plenty long enough, and there were a couple days once the retreat was over and the other seminarians had all gone back to classes when it occurred to me that I really needed some sort of purpose to my daily life.

I've got it now, I guess... in the form of two English courses, three Philosophy courses, and a night course in Art History. It's an overload of courses (five is the normal limit), but this is the semester to do it, since these are all courses I can more than reasonably expect to do well in, and the Art History, which was added last, is known as an easy course (the complementary course which I took last year was).

There's not really much to say yet about school. I'm still getting used to the seismic shift in my class times which has seen all my classes gravitate towards the end of the afternoon. My earliest class is 12:05 pm (Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays) or 1:55 pm (Tuesdays and Thursdays). And, of course, any semester means changes in who you hang out with between classes, and where.

Tonight, though, my interest isn't really in school. Actually, it isn't really there at all. In part, my interest is on the "Musician's Spirituality" post I wrote a couple months ago. I didn't get a lot of comments, but the few I did were quite positive, and I shared it with my spiritual director, who was quite intrigued, and suggested I continue my train of thought and see what else comes up, so I'll probably delve down that mineshaft again soon. Tonight, though, I've a different topic in mind.

Last night, after a long evening of looking eagerly at the plans for the new seminary and enjoying some deep conversations on various topics, I got involved in a long discussion with the Rector and a couple of the other seminarians that went on for a very long time (well after midnight... though it probably wasn't much before that we started) on the topic of the Seal of the Confessional.

For those who don't know, the Seal of the Confessional is the term which refers to the utter secrecy surrounding the Sacrament of Penance (also known as Reconciliation or Confession), and can also be invoked outside the sacrament, such as in spiritual direction. Concerns about accidentally letting something slip as a priest has probably worried every serious seminarian ever, though real experiences suggest it isn't such a huge issue once you're ordained, and breaches are extremely rare--and sometimes apochryphal.

Anyway, the discussion started out with "what if" scenarios, and was generally about how the Seal of the Confessional works, how you keep it, whether you could get around it, how far extended, and so forth. It was an educating conversation, certainly, but my chief interest and reflective thought was about the remarkable privilege it is to be a priest, and to hear confessions.

Think of it! A priest is given the opportunity not only to observe people at their weakest, most broken, most unshielded--at their most trusting. Quite beyond simple observation, a priest is EXPLICITLY trusted with that. Sometimes the trust is routine, people go in with a "get in, get absolved, go home" mentality, but the very complacency of the routine should be awe-inspiring. A priest is ROUTINELY trusted with information that could shatter people's lives if used.

(Aside: of course, if a priest ever broke the Seal, good luck getting trusted like that again... but still...)

Going beyond the routine, every priest will have one or two or many times when it won't be the ordinary, but extraordinary, when he will be able to witness and help in a pivotal moment of change in someone's life, those confessions of the sort where someone hasn't been in twenty years or thirty years... or longer. And in these situations, where more often the trust must already be correspondingly greater to match the extent of the sins confessed, the penitent probably isn't someone the priest knows very well at all.

Protestants find the idea of Confession to be rather abhorrent. Why confess to a man when you can talk straight to God? Now, there's a whole theological discussion regarding that, and obviously I'm solidly in the Catholic camp, but even someone who has a completely different religious perspective has to admit that it must be utterly humbling and awe-inspiring to hear Confessions. It is an amazing, wildly crazy gift, the sort of gift that only someone as deeply in love as God is would ever give.

And He has--and I don't really just mean the chance to be a priest and hear Confessions, but also the opportunity, for anyone in the Church, to go TO Confession. And this, I know, is truly a divine gift. While it is certainly possible for God, in His infinite power, to forgive someone after they just confess their sins in the silence of their heart... but doesn't that seem like LESS of a gift than Confession? Indeed, I am convinced that it would be less of a gift. Forgiveness without the sacrament would never yield the same opportunities for improvement and the same graces for strengthening, or the same beautiful glimpse into the wild love of the Divine.