Your Ugly, Gray, Drab, Monotonous Sins

The following meditation is from the beginning of the autobiography of Dorothy Day. Such a woman! She was a convert and she had had a most interesting life and was involved with communists and rabble-rousers and artists and writers and free thinkers of all sorts and kinds. And she had a special love for the poor and downtrodden. And she was drawn to the Catholic faith. She began to go to Mass long before she entered the Church. It took a while to come to that decision as she was living with a man she loved and then they had a child. To enter the Church would mean giving up that man who was not the marrying kind. She had her baby baptized and then her own longing to be in the Mystical Body of Christ grew so strong that she knew any sacrifice was worth belonging. And so she became a Catholic. And she loved the faith and the Mass and the devotions such as the rosary and benediction and the saints. She was a daily communicant. She would go on to do many things as Christ's servant.

I found this description of confession interesting. I have noticed in the old churches that have not been gutted that there are a number of confessionals. Once they were well used. Once weekly confession was common and families would come, one and all, to the church on a Saturday for the sacrament. I know myself of the old fashioned kind with the little sliding door. And then there are the heavy curtains that I have also encountered and they seem sound proof. I have gone to confession in a number of settings from the priest sitting on a chair in the middle of a room with a single chair facing him, about knee to knee, to the quiet 'boxes' of a cathedral to the room with the sliding glass door at Notre Dame in Paris where the priest could hear confessions in four languages and that good man read my soul. And I am grateful for the sacrament that cleanses my soul regularly (and it needs it) and has also peeled layers upon layers of grime that accumulated over the 19 years I did not think I needed confession. And even my scars of past guilts have been healed. Thanks be to God for this great mercy for us sinners.

 

 Ave Maria!

JosephMary

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And from Dorothy Day:  CONFESSION

WHEN you go to confession on a Saturday night, you go into a warm, dimly lit vastness, with the smell of wax and incense in the air, the smell of burning candles, and if it is a hot summer night there is the sound of a great electric fan, and the noise of the streets coming in to emphasize the stillness. There is another sound too, besides that of the quiet movements of the people from pew to confession to altar rail; there is the sliding of the shutters of the little window between you and the priest in his "box." Some confessionals are large and roomy-plenty of space for the knees, and breathing space in the thick darkness that seems to pulse with your own heart. In some poor churches, many of the ledges are narrow and worn, so your knees almost slip off the kneeling bench, and your feet protrude outside the curtain which shields you from the others who are waiting. Some churches have netting, or screens, between you and priest and you can see the outline of his face inclined toward you, quiet, impersonal, patient. Some have a piece of material covering the screen, so you can see nothing. Some priests leave their lights on in their boxes so they can read their breviaries between confessions. The light does not bother you if that piece of material is there so you cannot see or be seen, but if it is only a grating so that he can see your face, it is embarrassing and you do not go back to that priest again.

Going to confession is hard–hard when you have sins to confess and hard when you haven't, and you rack your brain for even the beginnings of sins against charity, chastity, sins of detraction, sloth or gluttony. You do not want to make too much of your constant imperfections and venial sins, but you want to drag them out to the light of day as the first step in getting rid of them. The just man falls seven times daily. "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned," is the way you begin. "I made my last confession a week ago, and since then. . ." Properly, one should say the Confiteor, but the priest has no time for that, what with the long lines of penitents on a Saturday night, so you are supposed to say it outside the confessional as you kneel in a pew, or as you stand in line with others. "I have sinned. These are my sins." That is all you are sup­posed to tell; not the sins of others, or your own virtues, but only your ugly, gray, drab, monotonous sins.

( from The Long Lonliness)

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