In Season and Out of Season

Father Tom DiLorenzo: The word of God says all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. That is you. That is me. That is us. But we have a redeemer. We have a one, his name is Jesus, who washes away our sin in the power of his blood. Catherine of Siena, as she went to confession, would say, "I'm going under the blood. Under the blood." You see, it is only the blood of Jesus that takes away sins, only the precious blood of the Lamb.

Today, you might be in deep sin. Today, you might be in deep darkness. The only thing you need to do is by grace turn from sin and turn from darkness. Walk to confession. Get it out. Say it the way it is. Get it out so that when you leave the confessional, it is completely gone, completely forgiven.

Oh, thank God that Jesus, in John's Gospel, the 20th chapter, said, "Whose sins you forgive shall be forgiven. Whose sins you retain shall be retained." Thank God for the sacrament of penance or confession. Whose sins you forgive shall be forgiven. Whose sins you retain shall be retained.

So many people have come to me in the last 45 years and repented and told the Lord and the church of their sin. Each one of them who was repentant walked away without sin, filled with the grace of God. Thank God for the gift of confession. Thank God for the gift of penance. It is a wonderful gift.

On the day of the resurrection, he said, "Whose sins you forgive shall be forgiven." I remember when I was ordained, September 15th, many years ago, 1979. After the bishop had laid hands upon my head, someone came to me and said, "I want to go to confession." The first couple of hours after being ordained, I listened and I gave absolution. Whatever the person said, I do not remember.

Whose sins you forgive shall be forgiven. I tell you, when we stopped going to confession, the people who went to psychiatrists rose and rose. Now, I am all for psychiatry, but there are some things a psychiatrist cannot do. They cannot forgive sins. They cannot. They do not have that power. They can listen. They can understand. But they cannot forgive.

Jesus said, "Whose sins you forgive shall be forgiven." The word of God from Hosea 14 says, "Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity. Take words with you and return to the Lord. Say to him, 'Take away all guilt. Accept that which is good and we will offer the fruit of our lips.' Take away our sins."

Jesus said, "Whose sins you forgive shall be forgiven." He was speaking to the apostles. We are the only church, Catholic and Orthodox, that experience the sacrament of penance or confession. Everyone else just goes to Jesus. But let me tell you a secret. If you sinned only against Jesus, you go to Jesus. But my sin has consequences to the people of faith.

I do not only sin against Jesus. I sin against the people of faith because we are a body. When I do sin, I need forgiveness not only from the Lord Jesus but from the body. It is so simple. So I go to confession and the priest gives me absolution, and I am forgiven. The Lord Jesus has me return, and the people of God have me return. That is the way it is. It is a wonderful sacrament.

When the sacrament went down, psychiatry went up. Now, I am all for psychiatry, but the psychiatrist cannot forgive sins. Amen. We were given the power to forgive sins in the name of Jesus. That is what it is all about. We have confession, usually on a Saturday, but I have heard confession in many places. I believe once in a bathroom.

Somebody came to me, knew I was a priest, and started to confess their sins. What did I do? I listened. I asked if they were sorry, and I gave them absolution. Oh, yes. The priest has a great role. Do not give it up to the psychiatrist. The psychiatrist can listen to you. The psychiatrist can heal you. The psychiatrist can even give you some healing. But the psychiatrist cannot forgive sins. We need the priest, the church, Christ himself to forgive our sins.

Guest (Male): The medicine they give you, they can heal the symptoms, but only Jesus can get to the root. Only Jesus can pull out the root of our sins. James says, "Confess our sins to one another." Whatever is in darkness, it grows. But when we bring it to the light, it becomes light. We become transfigured and we become free because God is light and in him there is no darkness.

Any secrets you have within you, that sin will grow and grow and grow. But as soon as you confess them to a priest, at minimum, to someone you know in the church, you will start to receive relief because that darkness will be transfigured into light. The devil will not make you feel shame about that sin anymore.

Before people go into confession, I can see the devil is trying to do anything he can to keep people out of that confessional because he knows once they go in that confessional, they repent for their sins and the priest absolves them. They walk out free as a bird. All the weight of the sin they were carrying, it is off of their shoulders and they walk out free.

How do I know? Not because the catechism taught me. Because of personal experience. When I first came to the Lord, I went to confession every day and just got it off my chest. Every day I walked out more free. Not only was my sin forgiven, but that root cause of why I was sinning received healing by the sacramental grace. Suddenly that sin that had me stuck no longer had a stronghold upon me.

Jesus came to install a kingdom. What is the first word Jesus said in his ministry? Repent! We need to repent and then receive the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is as on earth as it is in heaven. Guess what is not happening in heaven? Depression. Guess what is not happening in heaven? Sickness. Heaven is a very wealthy and abundant place, abundant health, abundant joy, abundant resources. Jesus came to install that kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. But you have to get to the place where it is being installed so you can receive the download. Right, Father?

Father Tom DiLorenzo: Right. I have heard it so many times. "I am not going to another man and confess my sins." You proud, arrogant person! The word of God says, "Go confess your sins one to another." In John, the 20th chapter, "Whose sins you forgive shall be forgiven." I tell you, I know we are just very proud. I do not want other people to know me. Listen, I want to tell the darkness in my soul because when I tell the darkness in my soul, the light of the Holy Spirit comes and replaces it.

I tell you, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. That is you. I know so many people who say, "Oh, I do not sin." Do you know what the Bible says to those people? If you say you do not sin, you make God a liar. I do sin and I need mercy. I need forgiveness. I need repentance. That sacrament is a wonderful sacrament.

Whose sins you forgive shall be forgiven. People have come to me and said, "I have been away from the sacrament for 34 years." Welcome home. God has something wonderful for you today. Welcome home. No one will point a finger at you because if I point a finger at you, I have got three fingers pointing back at me. No, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Me too.

I have sinned. I need forgiveness. Jesus said no one who comes to me will I ever reject. With all your sins. But I am so ashamed. Let me tell you one thing. I have heard it all. You want to know what? I have done it all because the Bible says if I break one of the commandments, I have broken all of them because it is a whole thing. I have done it all because if I have broken one of the commandments, I have broken all of the commandments.

The only thing I have for people who come to confession is welcome. It is mercy. It is the forgiveness from the blood of Jesus, crucified for that person. I love Jesus crucified. I love him. That blood that cleanses us from all sin. As I said, Catherine of Siena said, "I am going under the blood." We do not preach the blood enough. That is real. We as Catholics do not preach the power of the blood enough. Oh, well, people think it is a little ew. No, no. It is wonderful. Wonderful.

The blood of Jesus, my salvation. The blood of Jesus, my reconciliation. The precious blood of the Lamb. We need to preach the blood. We as Catholics who have the blood on the altar because we drink the blood of the Lamb at Mass, we do not preach the power of the blood. Oh, I love that song. I learned it many, many years ago at the cenacle from people who were not Catholic. It was an old man named John, and John had a friend that was 18, and they were a duo, an old man and an 18-year-old.

They taught me this. "There is power, power, wonder-working power in the blood of the Lamb. There is power, power, wonder-working power in the precious blood of the Lamb." Oh, yes. They were not Catholic, but they taught me that song. I remember Sister Miriam, who was an evangelist. One day John and the young man invited her to go to Boston and witness. Miriam had witnessed to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people, but nothing outside of a convent or a church.

Now she is in the middle of town telling people to repent in the name of Jesus. She felt a little awkward, but she did it anyway. Repent in the name of Jesus. That is the word of God today. Repent. Turn away. I went to confession once and the priest said to me, "You should have known better." I turned right back to him and said, "That is the reason why I am here. I did not know better. I need mercy."

What an awful thing to tell a penitent. The only thing we tell the penitent is God has called you here to get rid of that sin. He took it on the cross and he wants you to be free from that sin. That is real. People do not go to confession anymore. "Oh no, I am not going to confess my sin to another man." Well, you know what? Tell Jesus he made a mistake because he said to 12 men, "Whose sins you forgive shall be forgiven." He made a mistake. Tell him. Just tell him. Be forthright. Tell Jesus, "You made a mistake, Lord Jesus, when you gave us that sacrament." He said, "Oh no, no mistake. It is the heart of the Father to forgive sins through the blood of the Lamb."

Guest (Male): The kingdom starts with repentance. If we do not have a repentant heart, we cannot receive the fullness of what God wants to give us. The Lord does not see as we see. He sees the heart. The more contrite, the more open our heart is, the more we can receive the kingdom. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. O God, you will not despise.

When if God wants to move into your life, we need to realize that we are nothing and God is everything, that Jesus Christ came because we are broken down sinners. But through Christ, we have the righteousness of God. But we want to walk in total humility, docility, and obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Built into the sacrament of confession is the grace of humility because even if I do not want to be humble, it takes humility to confess my sins to another sinner. Guess what does not want to do that? My flesh. My pride wants to say, "I am going right to Jesus. It is none of their business." But when I go into the confessional, it broke me down so that I could be nothing and Jesus could be everything.

When Jesus set up the sacraments, the Eucharist, the confessional, he understood what he was doing and it is not so much good for Jesus as it is for us. Just like fasting. Jesus does not need me to fast, but I need to fast so that my flesh can be taken down, so that I can connect to heaven and disconnect from the earth.

There are many, many, many graces that the Lord has given to us. You see, the devil knew he could never erase Jesus, but what he could do is erase his church, erase the authority of the church, erase the Eucharist, erase the power of the Blessed Mother, erase confession, and just take all these avenues of grace away. So soon it is just me and my Bible, no community, no church, no authority, just doing what I think I can do.

I have got my own Pope. Father does say, "What we hate, we become." So instead of having a Pope, we all become our own Pope. You see, every church, it either has an altar or a stage. Every church, it has a stage or an altar. I love praise and worship. I am a sucker for it. But it is a sacrifice or a performance.

God uses the stage where we sing and we worship and the preacher preaches, but the altar where the sacrifice of Calvary is recreated and Jesus becomes body, blood, soul, and divinity on that altar, that is the perfect sacrifice to the Father. That is how the Father asks us to worship. Tonight, we are going to have our glory service, our glory night, but the singers are not going to be on the altar because our attention is going to be on the tabernacle and the crucifix of the risen Lord Jesus Christ.

Father Tom DiLorenzo: Hallelujah! Where would I be without the sacrament of penance? Where would I be? I tell you, I have gone to confession so many times. Once the priest said, "Are you here again?" Oh, yes, I am here again! I am back. They told me, like Anthony, you are forgiven from every sin from first grade till now. Stop. I am like, you can't keep me out of the booth. Because every time I walked out, there was just such freedom and I was filled with such light. It was the greatest gift that God could give me.

How could I stay away? I know it kind of plunges on our pride. We are all proud, I tell you. We are all proud. "Not me, I am humble." You are so humble that you are proud. You keep bragging about how humble you are. You know, that is why we need Jesus. That is why we need the sacrament. That is why, on the night that he was raised from the dead, he said, "Whose sins you forgive shall be forgiven. Whose sins you retain shall be retained."

He did not say, "You can go to God yourself." He did not say that. He said to the apostles, the 12, "Whose sins you forgive shall be forgiven." I know if you go to God yourself, you are forgiven, but it is not as great as when you go to another person who has the authority from Christ and the church to forgive sins.

Let me tell you about so many times I have been to confession. I go and I say, "It has been three weeks since my last confession and these are my sins," and I tell them all out. Then he says, "Pray an act of contrition." So I start to pray, "O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee." Boom! He closes the door. I have to claim and continue the act of contrition without seeing the priest. He is not a very good confessor. He should be waiting for me to finish, and he should be saying to me at the end, "Your sins are forgiven. Your sins are not retained."

Guest (Male): Not only are your sins forgiven, but your soul is healed. I do a lot of deliverance and inner healing ministry, but the greatest deliverance or inner healing that a person could receive is the confessional. The exorcists say from experience, confession is a hundred times more powerful than an exorcism. You know why? Because when you confess your sins, the demons that rode in on those sins lose all their legal rights that they had upon that person.

In the confessional, people weep and they cry and they are delivered and they are healed because Jesus set it up this way. We do not need to read a hundred books on inner healings. We need to confess our sins, confess the anger, the pain, and the Lord removes that darkness with his sacramental light. Hallelujah! If you do not believe me, get in there.

Father Tom DiLorenzo: Get in there. And you know what, when we were kids, on a Saturday, we would go to the movies. We would see 10 cartoons. After the cartoons, we walked to Sacred Heart Church and went to confession. That was what we did. You know what, we confessed our sins and we were forgiven. We were taught keep on going to confession. You will receive a holy gift from God, the gift of grace. And we did that.

No more. Many times, the confessor is waiting for the penitent and nobody comes because people say, "I do not sin." And when you say, "I do not sin," you make God a liar. So God, he has a perfect way of doing things, a perfect way. Going to the priest and confessing our sins, that is the perfect way that Jesus installed when he told the apostles, who were the first priests, "Whose sins you retain are retained, whose sins you forgive are forgiven." And the Lord has less perfect ways because God is so much grace that he can work through everything.

Guest (Male): Do I know that when the priest consecrates the host, it becomes the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ at Mass? 100%, I know that for a fact. Do I know that Jesus can work through another means when at a service they give out the grape juice and the cracker? Jesus can work through that. But there is a system, a kingdom that Jesus installed, and there is a perfect way to operate in the kingdom.

Father Tom DiLorenzo: You see, it is not complicated. We do not need to do hours and hours of unbound this and this ministry and deliverance. Jesus said just go and open your heart and confess your sins. Confess your pain. Confess it to the Lord and I will take away all the darkness and fill it with the light. It is a great, great gift, and it is a gift that the Lord wants you to be able to receive. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But the Christ says you have been forgiven by the blood I shed on the cross. God bless you.