As the Eternal Bride of Christ, the Catholic Church never stops working for the salvation of souls.
And on March 5-6, Catholic dioceses around the world will be working for such souls, literally, around the clock.
In the official announcement for the Year of Mercy, the Holy Father called for a “24 Hours for the Lord” and Catholic dioceses around the world are taking up the call by throwing open the confessional doors for an entire day.
Catholic Business Journal spoke with Catholic priests who are making confession a hallmark of their own Year of Mercy. They spoke about this powerful sacrament, why it’s a vital part of the Year of Mercy— and how Catholic business leaders can benefit from that same mercy in the confessional—and in their own lives.
Our Lady of Peace – and Mercy
“The initiative of ‘24 Hours for the Lord,’ to be celebrated on the Friday and Saturday preceding the Fourth Week of Lent, should be implemented in every diocese,” Pope Francis writes in “The Face of Mercy” (Misericordiae Vultus). “Let us place the Sacrament of Reconciliation at the center [of Church life] once more in such a way that it will enable people to touch the grandeur of God’s mercy with their own hands. For every penitent, it will be a source of true interior peace.”
Father Eric Berns, pastor of Our Lady of Peace Parish, Marshfield, WI, has been a priest for almost 20 years for the Diocese of La Crosse, WI. While most people know about the bucket list of things they’d like to do before they die, Father Berns encourages the faithful to bring another sort of bucket with them into the confessional.
“I find that it can be difficult for people to trust that Jesus can be so merciful as to forgive them completely,” he says. “The image that comes to mind, and one that I offer in the confessional, is ‘the bucket.’ Jesus told St. Faustina that His Divine Mercy is a well that a person may approach as often as he likes and draw from it an endless supply. The only thing that can limit the richness and depth of Jesus’ mercy is the size of the bucket that I bring to the well. He taught Faustina that the bucket is the amount of trust I have in Him.”
According to Father Berns, the confessional is a uniquely Catholic way for the faithful to encounter Christ in his full mercy.
“Christians of other faith practices are especially fond of saying, ‘Go straight to Jesus,’” Father Berns says. “But Jesus himself established the ministry of forgiving sins through the Church as his bride. And His bride offers people the joy of knowing concretely that their sins are forgiven.”
For those in despair, Father Berns says, he often adds a light touch of humor to remind souls that God is tenacious in his love for us.
“I ask, ‘Are you truly sorry for your sin?’ Father Berns says. “The answer is something like, ‘Yes, I am, but I don’t deserve His forgiveness.’ Then I say, ‘You’re right, you don’t. And neither do I. But let’s not complain that Jesus is too generous.’”
Merciful guidance
According to Father Mark Moriarty, pastor of St. Agnes Parish, St. Paul, MN, mercy was integral to his discernment to the priesthood. A graduate of Thomas Aquinas College, Santa Paula, CA, he first began to consider the priesthood through the ministrations of the college’s chaplain at the time, the late Father Gerard Steckler, SJ.
“I was impressed with his causal way of inviting us to experience mercy when he invited incoming freshman to have ten minutes of spiritual direction each week,” he says. “This spiritual direction included confession since the bearing of one’s heart often includes the bearing of one’s sins and hopefully the unloading of one’s sins.”
“It wasn’t just a formality but combined true vulnerability with a lifting of the veil of God,” he says. “I thought that was a truly beautiful thing. So that affected me in terms of my interest in being a priest.”
Since being ordained in 1999, Father Moriarty has found the confessional to be a loadstone for mercy, even when that mercy is sometimes hard won—by confessor and penitent alike.
“It is an honor to have people trust that even though a human is involved with something so sacred and divine they continue to want to encounter the mercy of Christ despite the fact that there are fellow sinners involved with it,” he says. “I’m always humbled and even when there are difficult cases that come—it’s not easy sometimes to deal with people who have scruples or several other kinds of situations but the idea that I’m still being used as a vehicle for God’s grace and mercy is astounding.”
As for those souls who have been away from confession for a while, Father Moriarty explains mercy in terms that his Upper Midwestern parishioners can understand. It only takes one person, this priest says, to get my car stuck in a ditch on a snowy winter day.
“How many does it take to get out of the ditch?” he asks. “It’s always more than me—it’s someone else. That is the way of life. In this case, this is our opportunity to allow Christ to pull us out of a ditch that might be permanent. We are not beyond God’s mercy.”
Prayer and action
Ordained in 2011 and a Thomas Aquinas College classmate of Father Moriarty, Father Jonathan Perrotta. says that mercy enabled him to say “Yes” to God and turn his life over to his Church.
“While I’m not sure I would have put it this way as I was going through my discernment, it was God’s mercy that opened my eyes and heart to his love, goodness and beauty in new ways,” he says. “It was his mercy that helped recognize his voice and his calling me to the priesthood.”
In his announcement, Pope Francis says that to be good confessors, priests must first be good penitents—a principle that Father Perrotta has followed closely in his own priesthood.
“One of the primary ways that I bring mercy into the confessional is by going regularly to confession myself,” he says.
For priests and laity alike, the desire for forgiveness, Father Perrotta says, is a human need and a divine gift, and the two are well met in the confessional.
“From a human stand point, there is overwhelming evidence that we have a need to confess, to speak to another our sins, even when we don’t go away knowing we have been forgiven,” he says.
“At the same time, to have the knowledge that all my sins are forgiven, that if I make a good confession, if I don’t willingly, knowingly in that moment, hold back what I believe to be serious sin, then I go forth knowing all of my sins have been completely destroyed, the sin and the guilt are no longer there. In fact, those moments are moments now in my life where God and his mercy are present.”
The works of mercy all faithful are called to, Father Perrotta says, have their foundation in prayer.
“St. Francis de Sales, counseling the laity [in his seminal Introduction to the Devout Life], says pray for half an hour a day, unless you are busy, then pray for an hour,” Father Perrotta says. “It as an illusion that we do anything good apart from God, and daily prayer is essential to grow in knowing God and following his voice and will.”
The business of mercy
Each of these priests also had some words of wisdom for business leaders – counsel to take forward through the second half of Lent.
According to Father Moriarty, a running scorecard of sins is not as important as maintaining a firm grasp of the rules in the first place.
“An examination of conscience is very important,” he says. “We always have to admit the fact that we’re not just ‘okay.’ We have things we need to change and then take serious the words of the Our Father. ‘Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. That is a very hard saying, and you need to offer forgiveness to others even if they are unwilling to accept it.’
While making a healthy profit is important, Father Berns says that Catholic business leaders also ought to leave enough room in their profit margin for humility.
“Show the greatest respect to the underdog,” he says. “The humility of the janitor who empties the waste baskets is more pleasing to God than the savvy and success of the one with the degrees. Know that Jesus prefers the ones He calls ‘the least of my brethren.’ How we treat people that are lower on the totem pole will come back to us in this life and in the next.”
As a part of financial success, Catholic business leaders no doubt research and learn all there is to know about the business world. That same passion, Father Perrotta insists, ought to motivate Catholic business leaders to know more about the Church’s social teachings.
“Our Catholic faith is about reality, not some escape from it,” he says. “Work is a part of being human; work is a part of how we grow in grace. Yet we have to strive to understand its proper role and approach it accordingly, because we know there are great pressures to use work in destructive, unjust, inhuman ways. So make the effort. Use those business tools you’ve learned to bring God’s mercy into your business.”
Mercy now!
The Catholic Church has always had an open-door policy when it comes to forgiveness— and the “24 Hours for the Lord”—shows that the Church means it! Let us know what you’re doing for the Year of Mercy in the Comments section (you must register first to prevent spam), or on our FaceBook page.
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Joseph O’Brien is a Catholic Business Journal correspondent and resides in Wisconsin. He may be reached at jobrien@cathlolicbusinessjournal.biz