Christmas Penitential Service
Catholic churches all around the world organise penitential services before major feast days. The intent is that the Sacrament of Reconciliation is an essential part of our preparation to celebrate Christmas.
Confession is invariably the most daunting of all sacraments that Catholics are expected to receive on a regular basis. It requires humility and courage to acknowledge one’s shortcomings before a stranger (or even worse, a priest who knows you) . The penitent is asked to examine their own conscience and to be brutally honest about their actions (or lack of). My subconcious kept telling me that attending the penitential service was an unnecessary chore - why, I had already confessed during Easter. Surely that was enough?
Yesterday, Father Van Giang preached that treating confession as a formula reduces it to a meaningless rite. We were taught how to announce our sins and to recite the Act of Contrition, but that wasn’t all. It was not sufficient to make a short list of our sins and to speak of them in general terms (for example, “I was rude”). A proper confession is an act of sincerity and openness.
I’ve found it useful to be as open as possible - sharing specific details and why I felt it was wrong. It required much more effort to overcome the urge to only skim lightly over my errors and hope for a quick absolution. It was a journey into the emotion of guilt and to understand to roots of why I chose to act according to my faith and to learn from my failures.
Ghandi wrote in his autobiography
A clean confession, combined with a promise never to commit the sin again, when offered before one who has the right to receive it, is the purest type of repentance.
His remark has remained with me because I’ve always felt that the principle behind confession was all about self-honesty and that transcended religious boundaries. Even for unbelievers, psychotherapy itself is a form of confession.
The downside to this is that confessions are normally a very time consuming affair. Even with extra priests in attendance it can take several hours to hear the sins of thousands of the faithful. In previous years, one could expect to queue for hours. It was not uncommon to see people rushing to be the first to confess, then to leave the church after that. At the end of the service, only half the congregation remained.
At Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, tonight’s service was organised a little differently. First, they had THREE services - one in the morning and two at night, to help reduce the number participants in each service. Next, all confessions were done standing up - looks like someone found out about Stand Up Meetings - people are less likely to ramble when they are standing. And finally, the doors were locked during the service to discourage people from abandoning the session after their confession. The last is a little controversial - it smacked a little of enforced discipline. But it worked - this was a much better service than any I’ve attended in the past. The penintential service was over in 1 hour 15 minutes.
Oh, and I found out that walking from OLPS to Aquarius takes a total of 42 minutes. There were only two major roads to cross and much of the path took me through quiet HDB estates and Bedok Town Park - a really nice walk.