By JOE SIXPACK
Megan went to the doctor’s office to get a new prescription for her mother’s medicine. “It did your mother good, then?” asked the doctor. “Here’s a new prescription, but make sure your mother has it after meals.”
But Megan objected, “No, Doctor, Mom isn’t any better.”
“Too bad,” replied the doctor. “I wonder if I ought to change the prescription.”
“She said it didn’t make her cough any better, though she rubbed it on her chest day and night.”
“Rubbed it on?” exclaimed the doctor. “No wonder she isn’t any better. Didn’t she read the label? It says: ‘One tablespoonful in water to be taken three times daily.’ No medicine is going to cure people if they don’t use it properly.”
The same holds true of the sacraments. Grace is absolutely necessary for the salvation of your soul. Actual graces are necessary to be able to make choices that please God, and we all receive those graces every waking moment of the day. But it is sanctifying grace that heals the sin-wounded soul and makes us pleasing to God.
The Most Holy Eucharist is the greatest of the sacraments, and It gives us an increase of sanctifying grace each time we receive Jesus in Holy Communion. However, if the soul is in a state of mortal sin — having committed any grave offense against God’s laws through thought, word, deed, or failing to do something known to be right — then when Communion is received the additional mortal sin of sacrilege is committed.
Jesus left His Church with two sacraments of reconciliation — those sacraments that reconcile man to God for sins committed after Baptism. They are the Anointing of the Sick (formerly called Extreme Unction) and Penance (a/k/a Confession and Reconciliation).
The Anointing of the Sick still requires Confession prior to receiving it, but that isn’t possible if the person receiving the anointing is unconscious. The Anointing of the Sick will cleanse the soul of one who is unconscious, provided that person has at least imperfect contrition. But if the sick person regains consciousness he is obligated to make a good Confession as soon as possible.
It is the Sacrament of Penance that is the ordinary means of removing sin from the soul. Like the mother in the story, if the medicine isn’t taken properly, or if it isn’t taken at all, the soul won’t get any better. If you want your soul to get better and pleasing to God, you must take your medicine (recourse to Confession) often and properly.
The medicine God gives as a cure for the soul is Confession, and the label on the bottle is written by His Church. The label says: “To be taken at least once a month with a deliberate recalling of the patient’s sins. For better health, should be taken once a week.”
These days there seems to be all sorts of “cures” for what ails us. Modern “medicine” even tries to cure what we used to call the effects of sin. There are medicines for every sort of mental and emotional disorder, and there is no end of therapeutic treatments for everything from PTSD to ADD. Modern medicine, which has the credibility of science (even when it’s junk science), has worked very hard, whether consciously or unconsciously, to make Christ’s remedies irrelevant. I’m not saying they are not necessarily good. Fact is, most of them work pretty well for relieving anxiety. What I am saying, just like the vast majority of modern medicine, only the symptom is being treated rather than the cause.
Pay attention sometime to the commercials for prescription drugs on television. They have all sorts of drugs that treat the symptoms of every conceivable disease and condition. The problem is, those drugs have side effects, so the drug companies often come up with new drugs to treat the side effects — the new symptoms — and they may have their own set of bad side effects. It seems there is no one actually treating the cause that produces the symptoms.
I’ve worked to evangelize more than a few people who had problems such as schizophrenia, borderline personality, substance abuse disorders, depression, anxiety, bi-polar, and other disorders. All these people were on medications for their problems, but it became clear pretty fast that the drugs merely treated the symptoms and weren’t capable of treating the actual problem. In some cases, the problem is actually a chemical imbalance in the brain, but oftentimes the symptoms are caused by much deeper spiritual problems.
Among the converts I’ve known over the years who suffer from these disorders and problems, it’s been amazing to me how the problems have eventually gone away through the use of frequent (i.e., weekly) Confession.
Many in the mental health profession say the good effects of Confession to a priest are at best a placebo or at worst superstition. Such thought demonstrates a great pride, arrogance, and atheistic attitude on the part of those professionals. Fact is, what Freud, Skinner, Maslow, Rogers, Pavlov, and other pioneers in the mental health profession tried to secularize, Jesus set up as a sacrament with divine healing powers 2,000 years ago.
Just think about it. In my lifetime alone there have been scores of mental health disorders that have come into being that used to never exist, and millions of people have been diagnosed with them. Those disorders have developed in direct proportion to the decline of Western culture and the de-Christianization of society. I’m not saying the mental health profession doesn’t have its place. It most certainly does! But often the best cure (rather than treating symptoms) is to have recourse to the confessional.
When a priest receives the Sacrament of Holy Orders, he receives special sacramental graces that help him to carry out the purpose of the sacrament. Those graces of state go to the very nature of the priesthood. One of those graces allows the priest to become a spiritual doctor for the soul. When a penitent learns to form a right conscience and daily examines his conscience to see how he has failed God throughout the day, then goes to Confession with regularity and frequency to the same priest, over time the priest gets to know the soul of the penitent the way you get to know your spouse or best friend.
The priest, though, gets to know the deepest, most inner part of the penitent in ways you can never know your spouse or best friend. This can result in an actual cure for the penitent of the cause of problems, not just the symptoms.
We all have problems. Problems are the effects of original sin, and we’ll never escape them in this life, but if the effects are left without “treatment” from the “medicine” Jesus gave us (the sacraments), then those effects develop into major problems.
The ultimate cure for much of what ails us mentally is a weekly good Confession to the same priest every time. And it doesn’t have to be the priest in your parish. I don’t recommend “priest shopping,” but you need to be comfortable with whomever it is to whom you unburden your soul. The important thing is to go to Confession weekly to the same priest, let him get to know your soul, then listen to and obey the wisdom of his counsel before he gives you absolution.
If you have a question or comment you can reach out to me through the “Ask Joe” page of JoeSixpackAnswers.com, or you can email me at Joe@CantankerousCatholic.com.
Hey, how would you like to see things like this article every week in your parish bulletin as an insert? You or your pastor can learn more about how to do that by emailing me at Joe@CantankerousCatholic.com.
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