From the Friars: Bearing Fruit in Our Sacramental Life

As we begin Holy Week we are invited to enter into the Glory of Christ’s Passion. Holy Week should bear fruit within our soul, and within our society, by a greater participation in the Resurrected Life of Jesus Christ. As St. Paul says exhorting the Christian community in Corinth, “If only in this life we have hope in Christ, then we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Cor. 15:19). As Catholics we are called to enter into the Mystery of Christ’s Death with a certain joy in our hope of the Resurrection.

Many people ask me about the Sacrament of Confession. “Father, how can I make a better confession? I confess the same sins every week; it seems to me just a routine and I do not perceive any new fruit.” For the Sacraments to bear fruit in our lives, and our society, we must first recognize that the Sacraments are an encounter with the living God! If you are not experiencing fruit in your Sacramental life, it is because the Word of God “which is living and effective” (Heb. 4:12) is not penetrating the soil of your heart. So many have lost hope in the certain joy that Christ is capable of changing them. They live for Good Friday, sad, forgetting that the Cross is the manifestation of the Power of the Resurrection.

Mary’s certain joy, even at the foot of the Cross, can teach us that a good and fruitful confession is always connected to the Death AND Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. He is alive in the Sacraments and seeks to transform our sadness into joy. Although a firm purpose of amendment is an essential part of the act of contrition, and thus necessary for a valid confession, we often times trust more in our own strength than in the Presence of the Living God. Are you experiencing the transforming power of the Presence of Jesus Christ in the celebration of the Sacraments?

Can you honestly say that this Holy Week will be a source of real change, both personally and as a pilgrim community?

Fr. Francis