Nine Chief Benefits of the Sacrament of Reconciliation:
By Fr. Wade Menezes
1. Self-knowledge is increased. Self-knowledge is needed to grow in holiness. This means knowing and admitting your virtues so you can advance them in your life, and knowing and admitting your vices so you can uproot them out of your life.
2. Christian humility grows. Humility is the “moral virtue that keeps a person from reaching beyond himself. It is the virtue that restrains the unruly desire for personal greatness and leads people to an orderly love of themselves based on a true appreciation of their position with respect to God and their neighbors.” The very act of making a good examination of conscience (required before even stepping into the confessional) is humbling, and it helps us to grow in self-knowledge.
3. Bad habits are corrected. Little by little, through frequent Confession and honesty with one’s confessor, who will offer advice accordingly, bad habits can be overcome. Frequent, worthy reception of the Sacrament of Confession means frequent graces received from that sacrament for those bad habits.
4. Spiritual neglect is resisted. Let’s say you are struggling to establish the practice of praying the daily Rosary or daily prayers. Your failures to practice these devotions would be examples of “spiritual neglect” that cause your spiritual life to suffer. Regular Confession can help you “get back on track,” and so you begin to carry them out more faithfully on your own.
5. Spiritual tepidity is resisted. Let’s say you do, indeed, carry out such spiritual practices — but only infrequently. In other words, you carry them out in a tepid or lukewarm manner. The graces from frequent Confession can help ignite a renewed spiritual fervor that will help make your daily spiritual life grow stronger and more committed every day.
6. Conscience is purified. Confession of one’s sins brings with it a purification and, importantly, peace of conscience. This is tied to the healing aspect of Confession. Indeed, Confession is one of two “healing” sacraments, along with the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick. Both of these sacraments aid the body-soul reality of the human person.
7. The will is strengthened. Whereas our intellect is what helps us “to know,” our will is what helps us “to choose” (based on properly ordered love as opposed to choosing something based on disordered love). Through the practice of frequent Confession, our wills become strengthened to help us more frequently choose good over evil, virtue over vice, and the beneficial over the malicious.
8. A salutary self-control is achieved. Only you can control you. Frequent Confession makes us simply want to “do better” in all aspects of daily living. It’s the grace of the sacrament that propels us to control our lives better by practicing an ordinate love toward persons, places and things and not an inordinate, or disordered, love toward them.
9. Grace is increased in virtue of the sacrament itself. Every sacrament, when it is received worthily, increases sanctifying grace in the soul. For Eucharist and Confession; the only two sacraments that can be received both repeatedly and frequently, this is especially true. Baptism, while wiping away the Original Sin we inherit from our first parents, also wipes away any personal sins we might have (i.e., any venial or mortal sin). Confession helps rid us of personal sin committed after Baptism.
We should add also that going to Confession too frequently out of scrupulosity is not helpful to the penitent, nor is it the intention of the sacrament. Scrupulosity may be defined as seeing sin where there is no sin at all but rather, say, a simple fault; or, seeing mortal sin when, in reality, it is a venial sin. Indeed, scrupulosity can stunt one’s growth in the spiritual life.
Attending Mass in church versus watching Mass on television
While watching Mass on television or the computer a person can reflect upon the readings, hear the homily, and pray along with the community at that Mass. These are all good and pious things that bring spiritual benefit. However, that benefit is not the same as participating in person in church with your fellow Catholics and especially being able to receive Him in Holy Communion.
Watching Mass on the television or the computer does not satisfy the obligation to attend a Sunday Mass. However, if someone is unable to attend Mass, then there is no obligation to attend Mass. So, watching Mass on the television or the computer for the housebound and those who aren’t well enough or able to get to church is good, but for the healthy and those able to atten Mass it does not suffice.
We have a serious obligation to attend Sunday Mass (or the Saturday antipated Mass) and Holy Days of Obligation. It is an essential part of keeping holy the Sabbath day. To miss it deliberately for no reason is technically a mortal sin. Certainly if a person seldom or never attends Mass, they are really drifting away from God and away from their Catholic Faith. Such a person places their soul in danger.
One is dispensed from the obligation to attend Sunday Mass or a Holy Day of Obligation if:
1.) One is sick and cannot go. Or has an infectious disease which should not be spread, even if physically you might be well enough to get there.
2.) The Church is too far away - an hour’s traveling time is the moralists’ rule of thumb - by whatever means to transport you have available - car, bicycle, on foot, public transport.
3.) One has urgent works of charity to attend to e.g. looking after a seriously ill relative who cannot be left, and you can’t find any substitute to sit in.
4.) You are compelled to work e.g. emergency services, or your boss won’t release you from work and you can’t afford to lose the job.
5.) You are on holiday / traveling and haven’t managed to find a church, or turn up at one and find the Mass times have changed, and cannot get to another. You should check up churches and Mass times in advance when away from home on weekends.
What happens at Mass? The power of Calvary; the sacrifice that takes away sins, heals, and transforms becomes present and available to us. It can be applied to our need. But that’s not all. The cross is incomplete without the Resurrection. You can’t understand what happened on Good Friday apart from what happened two days later on Easter Sunday. The Resurrection, too, is made present every time the Eucharist is celebrated. When we go to Mass, we are mysteriously present at the foot of the cross, watching the Savior give his life for us. And we’re also standing outside the open tomb with the women who greeted the risen Jesus. “This is for you. I give my life to you,” Jesus is saying at every Mass. “Receive my power.”