Confession Removes the Burden of Sin

At the local ice cream shop Sunday evening, the social center of this small Massachusetts town, a protestant minster asked me (in my cassock and priest hat) whether hearing people's sins in confession was a burden for me. I told him that people's sins never surprise the priest because no one has ever invented any new sins. They are all as old as humanity. And, I said that people need help, I am happy to help, and the grace of Christ is immense to save through the sacrament.

In my twenty-six years of priesthood I have never felt a burden regarding the sins confessed, but very much the opposite, the great relief provided by the removal of people's burdens by the grace of the sacrament, by the washing flow of the most precious Blood of Christ. "Though your sins be scarlet red, I will make you whiter than snow." (Isaiah 1:18)

I would add that Christ's forgiveness of sins, regularly conferred by the ministry of the Catholic priest in the sacrament of Confession removes that burden, the infinite burden of sin. That removal is no burden for the priest. It is a great relief for all. It is the burden of Christ, from the merits of His Cross, perpetuated through the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the entire sacramental dispensation of the Church.

One further point which should be added is that the priest is also a penitent. Priests also go to confession. Priests are beneficiaries of that same sacrament, removing their sins too when they go to confession themselves, and totally removing the burden thereof. (Cf. Hebrews 7:27)

Christ is the Prince of Peace. And that peace of which he is the Prince, he confers on the world primarily through the holy Rites of His Church, from the Blood and Water that flowed from His side on the Cross. Christ is the Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world!