A Friar Goes to Confession

Hey, I'm Fr. Mark Mary.
And I'm Fr. Emmanuel.

We are the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal,
and this is Ascension Presents. Father Emmanuel is here with us
and he's going to share a little bit of a story which helps kind of paint the picture
of the difference between how we see ourselves and how God sees us,
so, Fr. Emmanuel.  This is a story that happened to me
when I was a young friar, just really struggling with myself,
struggling with what it meant to be a friar.

Struggling about these
kind of thoughts of perfectionism, and I had to be holy to be a friar,
and not feeling holy and being very discouraged by it. So I was at a youth event, and one of our priests who I have a great affection for  Father Glenn  I saw him, he was hearing confessions, so I got in line,
and I sit down in front of him and did a confession. And then I just look at him,
and he looks at me. In a strong Brooklyn accent he says,
You're a mess, kid.

My head went down,
because I knew I'm a mess. And then he just looked at me
with this big, beautiful smile and he put his hand on my head
and he rubbed my head, and he said,
You're a beautiful mess. And he just simply gave me a penance
and gave me absolution. That experience, to me,
was an experience of how the father sees me, how the father loves me  
the experience of mercy.

I know how I see myself,
and I think we  very often  we know we're a mess. We know how we see ourselves. We don't often know
how the father sees us. That we're beautiful.

Even though life is messy and we struggle
and were weak and we sin. And this is the grace of confession  that we come and we encounter the father's love
in a very tangible way: through the priest. Through this kind of incarnational,
this kind of fleshy way  the way someone looks at us,
the way they speak to us, the way he rubbed my head. The father rubbed my head that day,
as weird as it sounds.

And so I just want to encourage you
if you're feeling this morning that you're a mess, if you're feeling that I can't do this. Run back to the Father
and let him show you youre beautiful. Ask him today,
Father, how do you see me? Father Emmanuel, thank you.
Thank you all again for watching.

If you want to use that Amen button
that looks like this: [gives thumbs up] to give an Amen for God's mercy
and for allowing him to love the mess and knowing that it's a beautiful mess,
go ahead and do that. You can use the comments
to let us know what's going on in your life. Send us your prayer requests, and as always
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[speaking Indistinct Spanish] Well see you again next week.


Bye yall!.