Confession and the Pool of Siloam

Yesterday I went for confession...

Okay - quick primer. Confession is one of the seven sacraments. Sacraments in the Catholic church are outward signs  (symbolic, physical, action and rites) instituted by Jesus that God uses to give Grace to the partaker. Grace is a share in God's life. In confession we receive pardon for sins (sins are acts against love of God, self or neighbor) and the grace to stay true to our intention of not sinning again.

Of course we do sin again and again and confession and the Eucharist are the two sacraments that a Catholic receives over and over again (anointing of the sick too once in a while if repeatedly sick to the  point of death)

Anyway this article is not a catechisis - I wish it were. It was about me going for confession.

So I went to Holy Family Basilica and I was so impressed by the number of us different ages different sexes all lining up. There were only two priests available which is good considering some parts of the world have to make do with visiting priests. So each priest had two confessionals and there was a queue to each.

So being the Nairobians we are - we are all queued up in front of the two confessionals and it was interesting to see queue dynamics at a confessional. So someone would discretely take out their mobile phone glance at (I assume the time), crane his neck or step out of line to check out the other queue and switch to the queue that seemed to be moving faster. I had my phone out all the time (I promise I was not checking out the time - I had my confession on phone on an app called Laudate so I kept going over it over and over again)

I was also guilty of switching to the other half of our queue only to find some of the faithful lined up there had decided to queue while sited - d**n oh boy another sin I just cursed... of course having moved you could not move back and a single look at the eyes of the person who took your place tells you clearly you might invoke another sin from him if you go back to your original place.

Anyway the whole episode reminded me of the gospel story of the Jesus curing the blind beggar at the pool of Siloam. So the beggar waited for his chance to jump in the pool when the angel touched the water but someone always beat him to it. Anyway Jesus came and healed the man who had been ill for 38 years John 5:1-17.

So here we all stand at today's pool of confession all anxious to jump in - maybe for the therapeutic effect of sharing your commissions and omissions in confidence - maybe for the chance to start again ... but most of all because when Jesus asks "Do you want to be well?" the answer we give is YES.