Fasil: setelah semua anggota sharing, ajak mereka untuk vote penyakit mana yang paling parah dari yang sudah diceritakan barusan. Moral of the story: orang sakit butuh diobati karena tidak semua bisa sembuh dengan sendirinya. Dari video hari ini, kita akan membahas bentuk lain dari penyakit yaitu kecenderungan kita untuk berbuat dosa. Untungnya kita punya Yesus yang bisa mengobati penyakit ini asalkan kita mau rajin datang ke tempat prakteknya, yaitu ruang pengakuan dosa di gereja.

Fasil: The Catechism teaches: “When St. Peter confessed that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, Jesus declared to him that this revelation did not come ‘from flesh and blood’, but from ‘my Father who is in heaven’. Faith is a gift of God, a supernatural virtue infused by him” [CCC 153]. God gives us the grace to trust that He is alive and can heal us if it be His will. This man cooperated with the grace of God and grew in his faith despite the difficult circumstances of his life. It would have been easy to reject God and think of Him as unjust and unloving. Like the hemorrhaging woman who in faith reached out to touch Jesus’ garment and was healed [Mark 5:25-34], we approach the sacraments with the same faith in Jesus.

Fasil: One of the most powerful prayers in the universe is “God, please bring some good out of this bad situation.” God will answer that prayer because that is what God does—brings good out of the bad—and only He is able to do that. God is concerned with our ultimate good: eternal salvation. So if being physically healed will most assist our ultimate good, God will heal. However, if not being physically healed will most assist our ultimate good, then God will not heal. Spiritual healing is another matter. Every time we receive grace and are forgiven of our sin, we are spiritually healed. Sin wounds and grace heals, because grace is God’s own life within us.

Fasil: Jesus wants an intimate relationship with us. Having experienced great suffering and death, Jesus wants to be especially close to us in our time of suffering and death. The Anointing of the Sick unites the person to Jesus in His passion, strengthens and gives them peace, forgives their sins, and prepares them for passing over to eternal life [CCC 1532]. In the end, the sacrament works to achieve the deepest desire of our hearts— intimacy with Jesus.

Fasil: Jesus promised that He would remain with us: “And lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age” [Matthew 28:20]. Jesus ministers to us through His priests, and the priest acts in the person of Christ [in persona Christi]. The priest speaks for Jesus in the sacrament of Penance. St. John Vianney writes: “What is a priest? A man who holds the place of God—a man who is invested with all the powers of God… When the priest remits sins, he does not say, ‘God pardons you’; he says, ‘I absolve you.’ At the Consecration, he does not say, ‘This is the Body of Our Lord;’ he says, ‘This is My Body.’”

Fasil: Father Waltz says he thinks more of people when they courageously and sorrowfully confess their sins because they care more about what God thinks than what he thinks. True humility is to cooperate with a gift of the Holy Spirit, fear of the Lord, and with a contrite heart go to Confession. Fear of the Lord is the desire to never be separated from God and it corresponds with the virtue of hope. We can have hope because we know that God desires for us to never be separated from Him! This is the great gift of the Sacrament of Penance—our desire meets the Lord’s desire and reconciliation takes place.

Fasil: In Luke 18:35-43 we read about the blind man who cried out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” While it was obvious what the man needed, Jesus still asked him: “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man replied: “Lord, let me receive my sight.” Similarly, in the Sacrament of Penance we ask Jesus for His mercy and we can imagine Him asking us: “What do you want me to do for you?” This is why a good examination of conscience is necessary. Jesus is asking us to be specific with the sins we want to be forgiven of. Of course He knows what those sins are, but it is very important for us to name them so that we may be set free from them. In this sense, Jesus is the Divine Psychologist. He knows the deep need we have to unload the things that burden us, which is why He says: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” [Matthew 11:28].

Fasil: Pope St. John Paul II said: “It would be an illusion to seek after holiness, according to the vocation one has received from God, without partaking frequently of this sacrament of conversion and reconciliation. Those who go to Confession frequently, and do so with the desire to make progress, will notice the strides that they make in their spiritual lives” [Pope John Paul II, 3-27-04, address to participants in a Conference of the Apostolic Penitentiary in Rome]. The Sacrament of Penance not only forgives you of your sins but gives a special grace to avoid sin in the future and grow in virtue. The Catechism teaches that Penance gives “an increase of spiritual strength for the Christian battle” [CCC 1496]. Also, going to Confession frequently helps you to become more aware of sins that were not evident to you in the past. In other words, your friendship with Jesus becomes so strong that you become more sensitive to everything that threatens that friendship.