Scouting An Enemy Territory

The day before the Confirmation Mass, my confreres and myself will have an opportunity to scout an enemy territory, looking into an abyss and facing the Evil One in the bottle ground of souls of our confirmants who will come this morning for the confessions...


I have invited several priests to come over and help with this holy and noble service, administering the Sacrament of Divine Mercy to poor souls who need healing and renovation. I am not sure how many in fact will come to assist me with hearing the confessions of our people, I hope that at least four or five of us will manage to win the battle with the Legion who gained ground in the souls of our people. But the battle is ours to win and the outcome of this morning war is predictable and obvious. It is the Lord of Mercy who will be declared a undisputed and undefeated champion, the winner of all wars, as long as we, his followers allow Him to do so...

To hear confessions of more than 300 hundred confirmants, their sponsors and other parishioners is not an easy task. It is one of those jobs that come in the priesthood package that priests fear most and resent most... Yet it is one of the most important tasks we have been entrusted by the Lord Himself when he entered that closed space in the Upper Room on the evening of His Resurrection and gave His apostles the power to absolve sins and the power to withhold the graces as well...

In my twenty plus years of priesthood I have noticed and experienced myself that we, priests, consider the Sacrament of Reconciliation as one of the most difficult duties there is... I have seen many times how priests avoid going to the confessional to hear confession, how they reluctantly agree to give a helping hand in confessions, how they look for ways to justify their sacramental laziness by giving nice theological or pastoral theories on God's love and mercy and the little need to be of service to people seeking for help and reconciliation with God... Some of them, I hear, go the easy way and celebrate communal penitential services without individual confessions, especially in Christmas and Easter times when numbers of people needing confessions is big...

Worse still is when we do not practice what we preach and we rarely or never go to confessions ourselves. I hope priests of this kind aren't that many! It would be a disaster to neglect regular confessions to ensure we live and dispense holy mysteries in the state of sanctifying grace... I hope we are ok with confessions and make sure we confess on regular basis, at least once a month if not more frequently...

So, as I prepare to celebrate the morning Mass in house chapel for my sisters (as it has become a Friday custom), I hope and pray to the Lord of Mercy to enlighten my confreres and urge them to come over to Kiabakari this morning and be ready to join ranks with me to go the harm's way and scout the enemy territory... and while holding high the flag of Christ the King and Victor - to face the enemy with full arsenal of sacramental weapons and to unleash the hell onto hell's armies and teach them a lesson they won't forget!