Catechist: Frequent Confession and Holy Communion keep people on the path to Christ

The misconceptions around the Sacrament of Reconciliation and the fear people have toward it — it breaks my heart. It makes me so sad that people are afraid to be vulnerable about their sins before God.”

Mary Madelyn Mertes, assistant director of catechetical formation for the Jefferson City diocese

No one said it would be easy.

“Confession is hard. It’s not supposed to be easy,” stated Mary Madelyn Mertes, assistant director of catechetical formation for the Jefferson City diocese.

“It’s natural and normal that we’re not comfortable going and owning up to everything that we’ve done,” she said. “But it’s also good and healthy and holy to be able to stand before God and his priests and take responsibility for our actions and apologize and try to do better.

“So, that fear should not deter us,” she said. “Because what we find on the other side of that fear is so much more than we could ever experience this side of heaven.”

Miss Mertes is author of a master’s thesis titled “And My Soul Shall Be Healed: Reconciliation and the Eucharistic Revival.”

The Eucharistic Revival is a three-year initiative called for by the U.S. Catholic Bishops to renew understanding and belief in and increased reverence for the person of Christ fully present — Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity — in the Eucharist.

In her thesis, Miss Mertes adamantly asserted that frequent reception of both the Sacrament of Reconciliation and Holy Communion are essential for coming to know God more fully and growing in deeper relationship with him.

“Reconciliation helps us receive the Eucharist with open hearts and respond more freely to what we receive,” she wrote. “As the Church breathes new life into her Eucharistic culture, she must also vivify her culture of reconciliation, and in doing so, bring deeper renewal to the whole Body of Christ.”

Reconciliation and the Eucharist, as the two sacraments that Catholics should receive regularly, play a special role in the journey to eternal life.

“Both are important in God’s work to conform our hearts to his (heart) and to build up the Body of Christ,” Miss Mertes wrote. “Both flow from and point us back to the same, one heavenly liturgy.”

The goal is to be constantly transformed into an ever-clearer image of Christ.

“The more we surrender ourselves to the Lord, the more room he has to transform our hearts,” Miss Mertes wrote. “... If we want a Church filled with people who are striving for God and deeply desire to be transformed by him, we must be a Church that celebrates reconciliation.”

Anyone who is aware of having committed a grave sin needs to go to Confession and have their sins absolved before receiving Holy Communion.

Frequent Confession, even in the absence of grave or mortal sin, is helpful in developing a clearer vision of God and becoming closer to him.

“The Eucharist and Reconciliation notably form each person in their relationship with God through regular, repeated reception,” she wrote. “... There is no better way to prepare to receive the Eucharist with a radically open heart than reconciliation.”

These 40 days

Miss Mertes noted that Lent is an important time for the whole Church to focus on preparing for the renewal of Baptismal promises at Easter.

“It is incredibly common for Ash Wednesday to be one of the busiest — if not the busiest — days in a parish,” she observed. “People flock to Catholic churches at the beginning of Lent to receive a visible symbol of their sinful nature.”

That impulse, she wrote, shows that Catholics, even those who are not predisposed to receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation, “do maintain a sense of the sacred in admitting our guilt and reconciling and do have an attraction to the experience.”

“There is a movement toward Reconciliation, but we don’t see those same crowds in line for the sacrament,” she noted.

What’s missing among many is a true understanding of who God actually is and what sin actually does.

“To receive the gift of God’s love and mercy, we must first believe that we need the gift; we must learn to be open to the gift,” Miss Mertes stated.

“When we don’t understand love as the foundation of God’s plan, it becomes tempting to see the moral guidance of the Church as ethical impositions,” she wrote. “If one never learns to see God as a loving Father, a good shepherd, or a merciful redeemer, then they can’t feel the true pain of the wounded relationship that sin causes.”

A person who isn’t aware that sin wounds one’s own relationship with God, self and others has a hard time understanding why the Son of God would take on human flesh in order to free humanity from slavery to sin.

“Receiving Jesus in the Eucharist is a demonstration that one wants to live like Christ,” Miss Mertes noted.

Yet, “this side of heaven, none of us are perfect, and all need to confess that we fall short. In doing so, we open ourselves to God’s mercy.”

Miss Mertes pointed out that Reconciliation should be an experience of restoration and growth.

“When one approaches the sacrament out of love, not obligation, they are being proactive in their relationship with Christ,” she said.

Not only is Reconciliation needed to heal an individual’s relationship with God that’s been wounded by sin, but also that sin’s effects of on the entire Church.

“Sin is never strictly individual,” said Miss Mertes. “The wounds of our sins wound the people around us.”

Reconciliation has powerful potential to strengthen the bonds of the Body of Christ by transforming people’s hearts and giving them the grace to see the reality of community into which God is constantly inviting people.

“Reconciliation helps us to address the social effects of our sin as well as the ways it wounds us individually,” Miss Mertes wrote. “The sacrament not only restores our relationship with God but also our relationship and communion with the whole Body of Christ.”

Healing the body

People come to Mass to receive Christ in the Eucharist and experience an incredible level of closeness and intimacy with him.

“We receive God in the Eucharist so that we can become like him, so that we can go out into the world from Mass and change the world and be a little bit of Christ to everyone we encounter,” said Miss Mertes.

She said the Sacrament of Reconciliation is important for sustaining the Eucharistic Revival because it not only restores individual people to a state of grace but also heals wounds in the entire community.

“My sin doesn’t just hurt my relationship with Jesus,” she noted. “I’m part of the Body of Christ, and when I’m wounded through my sin, the whole Body of Christ is wounded.

“Our sins hurt us and hurt our place in it,” she said. “That’s why when we confess our sins, we do it through the ministry of the Church.

“Our actions offend God and they affect the Body of Christ, so God works through that body to bring us back into the community,” she said. “He restores our relationship with us individually and restores the relationship with the Body of Christ.

“So, when I go to Confession and put myself before the mercy of the Lord and receive forgiveness through the ministry of the Church, the grace I receive, the whole Body of Christ receives.”

Love beyond measure

While Miss Mertes was selecting a topic for her thesis, someone advised her to address a subject “that you’re so passionate about that you don’t want to shut up about it.”

Why is she so passionate about Reconciliation and the Eucharist?

“The misconceptions around the Sacrament of Reconciliation and the fear people have toward it — it breaks my heart,” she said in an interview. “It makes me so sad that people are afraid to be vulnerable about their sins before God.”

She likened this to the distinction between children who have a healthy fear of getting in trouble, versus being afraid of their parents.

“I think a lot of people fear our Father,” she said. “We don’t believe that God will be merciful, or we are afraid that we don’t deserve mercy, or we don’t trust.”

There are also people who don’t understand how much they need God’s mercy.

“Whether you’re on the side of being so afraid or ashamed of this that ‘I can’t ask for forgiveness,’ or ‘I don’t think I need any forgiveness at all’ — both are missing the point,” she said.

Miss Mertes’s approach to faith, to her work, to catechesis and evangelization centers on “the truth that our faith is not about complying with a narrow set of doctrines and dogmas, but is about entering into a personal relationship with a God who loves us more than we can possibly fathom.”

That love is not conditional on people behaving well or doing enough.

“We don’t earn salvation,” said Miss Mertes. “We don’t deserve it. We RECEIVE it.”

Only because of that love does God offer mandates and imperatives that lead to a healthy relationship with him and with others and a life well lived.

“And the reason for doing those things is not to earn our way to heaven,” Miss Mertes stated. “The reason of doing those things is that it shapes us to become people who desire heaven — people who know who God is and come to share in his vision for the world, his desire, his plan.”

All human beings are created to receive God, to be cherished by him and to be in right relationship with him.

“Whether we believe that or not, in the depths of our soul, there is a part of us that cries out to be seen and known and unconditionally loved and accepted,” she asserted.

“And if we can’t receive that from God, we will kill ourselves trying to receive it from something else.”