What does a trip to the Sacrament of Penance hold in store? Let me tell what I have seen and heard.
One time, I was in church keeping company with the Lord during an hour of Eucharistic Adoration. I was alone except for one other person — a priest in the confessional patiently waiting for someone to come. Two women came in, one in her fifties and one in her twenties. Without my noticing it, the younger woman silently slipped into the confessional. The older woman sat down in a pew some good distance away from the whisperings inside. After a bit of time, I do not know how long, the young woman virtually exploded out of the confessional. The noise of it forced me to turn my head and look. The younger woman was running toward the older woman as the latter waited there — now with arms open wide. The younger woman audibly burst into tears as she collapsed into those arms. They both sat there and cried for a while. I have never again seen tears of joy last so long as I did that day. I do not know what it was all about. But it must have felt as though a thousand years worth of sin, and guilt, and pain of had been simply wiped away.
Another time, I was helping out at a Catholic men's conference. The crowd of men numbered in the thousands. Throughout the morning, speakers were giving one powerful talk after another. At the midday break, about fifty priests were on hand to hear confessions. Due to the limits of the facilities, the confessions would have to be face-to-face and open air — no screens between penitent and priest, no walls between one confession and another three feet away. Now, men are not easily moved to lose face without a good reason. But here the men bravely lined up nonetheless. I ushered one man after another to an available priest. After awhile, I wondered when the line of penitents would ever end. When it was over, I think I easily saw a thousand men go to confession that day. I thought about it later. That was a thousand men able to raise their heads anew, a thousand men able to begin again without carrying around the shame of their past failings as a husband or father, and therefore a thousand families with a lot less baggage to deal with. How would the world change if every Catholic man did the same?
I know a young man in his twenties who was raised a Presbyterian. Growing up, of course, he never went to confession. That Catholic practice always seemed alien and strange to him. It certainly did not seem necessary or something that Jesus wanted from him. For other reasons, though, he began to make his way toward the Catholic Church. As he did so, he never looked forward to going to confession. Unfortunately, I had to move away from him several months before he began RCIA. I did not see him again for almost two years. When I did see him again, he had been a Catholic for almost a year. He was now going to the sacrament of Penance regularly. I asked him whether that sacrament had made a difference in his life and his Christian walk. He could barely contain his joy and conviction as he said, "I do not know how I ever lived without it." Because of the sacrament, everything in his relationship with Christ was different now. Everything. He groped for words to explain it — like a man who had met the living God.
It would be easy to multiply true stories like these. The point is that the sacrament of Penance has a higher kind of power to it. It has a most profound and mysterious power to heal us, convert us, change our lives, and make all things new. And it does so even when we do not feel it. It may sound crazy that meeting with a priest and telling him one's sins could have such an impact on one's life. But then again, those of us who hold and keep the Catholic faith know that going to confession is no mere meeting with a priest. This is a meeting with the Lord.
