That’s how they get ya’. Anything you want to do in life, you’ve gotta fill out a form. They’ve got forms for everything. You fill it out, it goes upstairs, and then they make you fill out a new form, just to confirm it was you that filled out the first form. And if ever you want to stop filling out forms, well, there’s about five different forms for that.
— Psycho Sam in Hunt for the Wilderpeople
Bureaucracy seems to surround us on all sides. Are you looking to renovate your house? You’ll need a building permit. Is it time to renew your driver’s license? Don’t forget to take two official proofs of residency. You got a new job? Congratulations! Enjoy a full week of online training modules.
Jumping through administrative hoops can be unpleasant, but these processes are often necessary. That’s because it is good that municipalities regulate construction projects, that the DMV makes people prove their identity, and that companies proactively train new employees. Plus, it turns out that there is often a proportion between something’s importance and the amount of red tape it involves. You can walk into a hardware store and pay cash for a lawnmower, but buying a house will inevitably require some paperwork.
With all this in mind, consider the Sacrament of Penance. Is going to confession more or less arduous than we might expect it to be?
Given that by approaching this sacrament we receive pardon for our sins and are reconciled with God and the Church (CCC 1422), I propose that our procedure for going to confession is astonishingly undemanding. Think about it: any Catholic who has fallen into serious sin after baptism—whether a mass murderer or just someone who hasn’t been to Mass in 30 years—can come to a church on Saturday afternoon, kneel before a priest, and, if he honestly confesses his misdeeds with true sorrow, the priest will absolve him, and he will be totally forgiven.
By that confession and through the bloody Passion of our Lord, such a man is restored to the innocence he had on the day of his baptism. As Chesterton says in his Autobiography, “in that dim corner, and in that brief ritual, God has really remade him in His own image. . . . He may be grey and gouty; but he is only five minutes old.” One confession is the difference between a saint and a sinner—between heaven and hell—and it usually takes a matter of minutes.
Of course, sometimes we would prefer a month of afternoons in traffic court or a hundred passport applications over a visit to the confessional. Being honest with ourselves about our sins is no small task, let alone exposing our souls as they really are to someone else. Still, as the Fathers of the Council of Trent put it, “the difficulty of such a confession and the shame of disclosing the sins might indeed appear a burdensome matter, if it were not lightened by so many and so great advantages and consolations, which are most certainly bestowed by absolution upon all who approach this sacrament worthily.”
So let us give thanks that God’s ways are higher than our ways—and that his ways involve less paperwork than ours do. For his mercy endures forever.
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Photo by Nick Castelli on Unsplash
