The Sacrament of Reconciliation

i like to know it as "Reconciliation" rather than "Confession". i guess "confession" is an admittance that wrong has been done - yes, accurately so - but "reconciliation" suggests a rekindled love with the one we are confessing to, God himself. "Reconciliation" comes from the language of the heart, and points to an act of being reunited with one we love. isn't that nice?

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A famous convert, John Henry Cardinal Newman, who knew what it was to be deprived of sacramental confession and then who experienced its benefits, once wrote:

"How many are the souls, in distress, anxiety or loneliness, whose one need is to find a being to whom they can pour out their feelings unheard by the world? Tell them out they must; they cannot tell them out to those whom they see every hour. They want to tell them and not to tell them; and they want to tell them out, yet be as if they be not told; they wish to tell them to one who is strong enough to bear them, yet not too strong to despise them; they wish to tell them to one who can at once advise and can sympathise with them; they wish to relieve themselves of a load, to gain a solace, to receive the assurance that there is one who thinks of them, and one to whom in thought they can recur, to whom they can betake themselves, if necessary, from time to time, while they are in world" ("The Present Position of Catholics," pg 351).

And later he added the phrase in a sermon: "Happy all Catholics, if they knew their happiness!"