PLEASE NOTE: While there are regularly scheduled times for the Sacrament of Reconciliation at St. Gregory the Great, please always feel free to approach one of the priests and ask for the sacrament. If the priest cannot hear your confession at that moment, he will meet with you as soon as he can. For those unable to make it to church, our priests are available to hear confessions at home. The priests want to make themselves as available to you as they can, and celebrating the sacrament of reconciliation is one of the most important things that they do.
By Fr. McClane and the Communications and Marketing Board
There is much overlap among the types of conversations we have in the sacrament of reconciliation, pastoral counseling and spiritual direction. Yet there are also clear distinctions and differences among the three. This short article is an effort to emphasize some of the ways that the three are different so as to clarify the main purpose of each of them.
Penance or Reconciliation
The essence of confession is the sacramental grace that Christ gives to our soul through the ministry of his priest. God has reserved the sacrament of confession to his ordained priests. When we open our hearts to him through sincere repentance and honest confession of our sins within the sacrament of reconciliation, we receive an infusion of grace that forgives our sins, strengthens our spiritual weakness (especially regarding the behaviors that we confessed), and increases the bond of our supernatural friendship with Christ. In the sacrament of reconciliation Jesus searches for us like the Good Shepherd in search of the Lost Sheep. The sacrament also exercises and therefore increases the supernatural virtues of faith, hope, and charity. In confession, God acts on our soul the way a surgeon acts on a patient: directly, profoundly, in ways that we could never reproduce by merely natural efforts.
It’s important to keep in mind that the Reconciliation of a Penitent is not psychotherapy. The purpose of this sacramental encounter is not for the penitent to talk about all of his or her problems and relationships and is not to explore the emotional life of the penitent. We are dealing here more with objective sins. The penitent should simply state their sins in kind and number. “Father, I have done X, Y, and Z”, only giving explanation to the sins so that the priest can understand more clearly what sins were committed. This is important not just so that the sacrament is understood properly, but also because practically speaking, in a large parish such as ours, sometimes there may be 10 people waiting in line behind you.
Pastoral Counseling
A Pastoral counseling session, on the other hand, is a longer conversation in which the counselor listens empathetically to the person. Counselors listen to what is bothering the other person. Counselors allow the other person to explore problems that they can easily retrieve from memory (as opposed to problems of the unconscious, which are more appropriate to psychotherapy). Through careful responses, the counselor helps to clarify what the person is trying to express. They make suggestions (without going into the unconscious), reassure and educate (Eugene Kennedy Sarah C. Charles, M.D. On Becoming a Counselor. New York, NY: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2001. 5-9.)
Health, financial, relationship, family, and vocational crises come with life. A qualified counselor, either priest or lay person, meets with you to help you assess what’s happening and provide perspective, support and guidance. It is important that you seek a counselor who is knowledgeable about Church teachings and open and receptive to the movement of the Holy Spirit. There may also be a referral to other professionals if you are struggling with serious and deep-seated emotional pain and negative patterns of behavior in your life, dealing with depression or mood disorders, anxiety, addictions or other diagnosable conditions, psychotherapy is your best option.
For those in need of pastoral counseling, please discuss with our priests. If necessary, one may be referred to the Diocese of Trenton Counseling Services. Through a joint effort of the Diocese of Trenton and Catholic Charities, licensed professional counselors are available to help parishioners with difficult issues that interfere with day-to-day functioning. This service can be accessed by contacting one of our priests who will provide additional information and a referral. The fee is $90 per session. MORE INFO...
Spiritual Direction
Spiritual direction is a conversation and relationship in which the director helps the directee to discern the action of good and evil spirits in his/her life. It is a “process of formation and guidance, in which a Christian is led and encouraged in his special vocation, so that by faithful correspondence to the graces of the Holy Spirit he may attain to the particular end of his vocation and to union with God” (Thomas Merton, Spiritual Direction and Meditation. Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1960, 12-13). The spiritual director seeks the holiness of the one directed. Similarly to a counselor, a spiritual director seeks to “penetrate beneath the surface of a man’s life, to get behind the façade of conventional gestures and attitudes which he present to the world, and to bring out his inner spiritual freedom, his inmost truth” (Merton, 16), but the director does more than just listen and clarify what the directee is thinking and feeling; he also tells the directee how to react to the various movements in his soul according to Church teaching and how to be more like Jesus Christ.
The spiritual director helps us see more clearly what God is asking of us and how he is acting in our lives. The director also helps us see objectively the quality of our response to God: are we being docile and humble, or are we just tricking ourselves into doing what we feel like? The spiritual director is like the physical therapist that helps us identify the exercises we need to be doing in order to grow spiritually, and then helps us adjust our spiritual program of work in order to keep it effective and on track. Nothing inhibits lay people from becoming excellent spiritual directors. Ordination is not required, just solid training in spiritual theology, ample personal experience in the spiritual life, and the Holy Spirit’s gifts of knowledge (discernment) and counsel. Spiritual direction is about your relationship with God as a baptized person within the Body of Christ. It isn’t crisis counseling, marital therapy, pastoral counseling or psychotherapy. In long-term spiritual direction you form a spiritual friendship with the director in which director and directee/client journey together in their relationship with God.
Please contact our priests for recommendations for a spiritual director. Spiritual direction is also available on request at Francis House of Prayer, located in Allentown, NJ.