Reconciliation

I used to love Confession. It is terrifying, when you begin, to tell to this priest - this man - an accounting of your misdeeds and shortcomings. But I've always found that once I've gotten started, it is so comforting to be able to lay bare all of the things I hate most about myself and find that I am still forgiven. I've never had a priest withhold absolution.


During my "perfect Catholic girl" days, I would go to Confession sometimes twice a month and never less frequently than once every six weeks. Often I would sense that a burden was being lifted through this Sacrament.


But now, December was the last time I had been to this Sacrament. It's March, the season of Lent, and the usual push to confess is being meted out to all Catholics.


See, I have been feeling unsure if I should go to Confession or not. I know that the Church teaches that homosexuality is "intrinsically disordered" and I know that the Church teaches that it is a grave sin to act on homosexual inclinations.


Yet here I am, having just begun to accept that one day I will probably act on my own homosexual inclinations. After all, I've never really experienced heterosexual inclinations, and like it or not - deny it, accept it, ignore or embrace it - I am still sexual in my nature. I am so very tired of denying and trying to ignore my nature.


I've been questioning for a lot longer than I've let on, if this long painful road I've just stepped off of was really what God wanted for me. I've started to wonder, if maybe the reason that the Church can't find an effective way to fix me is because I'm not broken to begin with.


But with such a revelation, there is not only new hope for life, for future happiness, for love. There is also the shattering of my faith as I have known it. There is a need to accept that, should such a creature exist, I cannot be the perfect Catholic.

I did go to Confession on Wednesday. But I felt no lifting of my burdens this time, no breath of relief as Father prayed the words of absolution over me. Because in reality, the problem that I am experiencing has nothing to do with a need for reconciliation with my Church or with God.


The real need that I have is for my sexuality and my spirituality to become  reconciled within my own heart. This is the reconciliation, the absolution, that I am most desiring this Lent: the Sacrament of self-acceptance.