The ‘other side’ of the confessional is pure grace

In the old days, Father Buddy Noel would have been known as a “late” vocation.

After spending many years as the director of religious education at Holy Name of Jesus Parish in New Orleans, he resumed his seminary studies and was ordained to the priesthood at the age of 51.

A lifetime of prayer and study brought him to the altar on June 2, 2012, to become a priest of the Archdiocese of New Orleans – or, more properly, a priest of Jesus Christ – but now, as Father Noel slipped the stole across his shoulders and walked into the other side of the confessional at The Visitation of Our Lady Church in Marrero for the first time in his life, Father Noel wondered why his heart might be pounding out of his chest.

He had a similar feeling before, as a young boy in Mobile, when he knelt in a darkened confessional and waited, petrified, for the priest to slide open the wood panel so that he could send his sins over the transom.

“I remember how frightening to me the dark box was,” Father Noel recalled. “The only thing I could hear in the confessional before Father opened the screen was my heart thumping.”

Now, he was Father.

“I remember praying to the Lord and asking for strength at that moment,” said Father Noel, now the parochial vicar of Our Lady of the Lake Parish in Mandeville. “I remember saying to myself, ‘This is amazing. I’m actually sitting here in the role of the confessor.’ I said, ‘I’m sitting here, Lord, in your place, so please help me to be a good confessor and always to mirror the compassion of your son.’”

Father Noel has heard hundreds of confessions in the last 21 months, and nothing in the seminary truly could prepare him for the overwhelming power – the grace – of the sacrament to heal.

He loves hearing children’s confessions.

“It’s like being stoned to death with popcorn,” Father Noel said.

Older penitents who have not darkened the doors of a church, much less a confessional, in many years have come to him for the sacrament, dragging boulders instead of microwave popcorn. Father Noel thinks of the strength it took them to carry their sins for a lifetime – and then, finally, to drag them another 30 feet, into the confessional – and drop them at the feet of Jesus.

“When someone comes and they haven’t been there in a long time, I think maybe they’re expecting some sort of additional penance or maybe even to be chastised,” Father Noel said. “What I say is, ‘Welcome, welcome back, no questions asked! You’re home!’ Christ is the one who says that. He’s the one who goes in search of the one lost sheep after leaving the 99 on the hillside.”

A church history buff, Father Noel loves to explain the biblical roots of the sacrament. In Luke 7, Jesus praises the sinful woman who bursts into the dinner hosted by a Pharisee and washes Jesus’ feet with her tears.

“Jesus in his public ministry was all about healing – public healing and inner healing,” Father Noel said. “Jesus said the woman’s sins must have been forgiven her because she had shown such great love. In the 20th chapter of John, Jesus breathes on the apostles and says, ‘If you forgive men’s sins, they are forgiven. If you hold them bound, they are held bound.’”

Father Noel said one of his favorite scriptural passages comes from the fifth chapter of 2 Corinthians, when St. Paul calls Christians to be “ambassadors of reconciliation.” And, in the fifth chapter of James, Christians are called to “confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.”

The common question is, why does the Catholic Church teach that sins must be confessed to a priest? Doesn’t God forgive our sins if we are truly sorry?

“Only God forgives sins, and when you ask God for forgiveness, God forgives your sins,” Father Noel said. “The church has understood from its beginning that as ‘ambassadors of reconciliation,’ any Christian who sins is responsible for undoing the damage they’ve done, and the sacrament gives us the grace to do just that. I’ve always told people in my classes, ‘If you’ve made potholes in the road of life, you have to go patch them; otherwise, people behind you will fall into them. You must go to the sacrament because you still have to participate in that communal dimension of sin.

“The mystery of God’s grace is acting upon us at the moment we feel sorrow for our sins. If we want to listen, the spirit of God pulls us back in the direction of reconciliation with God and with others. The moment we step into the confessional, the grace of God is already acting in our lives – the spirit of God has drawn us there. So, the sacramental aspect is the making present in a physical way of what’s going on inside. It’s something very, very healthy for us to be told – and to hear with our own ears – that we are forgiven.”

Father Noel said he loved what Pope Francis communicated the other day about confession. It was in typically simple language: “God is very forgetful. After we confess our sins, he forgets all about it.”

What would Father Noel tell someone dragging a boulder?

“Give me a call,” he said, laughing. “Have no fear. You’re approaching the God who loves you and the God who is far more interested in having you let go of your sin and to know that it’s OK. Because, he loves you anyway.”

Peter Finney Jr. can be reached at [email protected].