I attended the local catholic grammar school in my neighborhood.  Part of our curriculum involved religious education. There are 7 catholic sacraments.  One of the sacraments is confession, today its called reconciliation.

Confession or reconciliation is where you confess your sins . I am not an expert on confession or the sacraments - my purpose in talking about confession is to relate my experience during my first confession.

I was in first grade when I made my first confession.  My first confession was made prior to what was called “making my first communion”, which is the catholic ritual where during mass one receives the host (body of Christ).  Before “making my first communion” I had to be pure in other words confess my sins and be granted forgiveness

I attended Immaculate Conception School which is associated with the Immaculate Conception Church.  I was six years old when I made my first confession together with all of my classmates. On the appointed day the nuns marched us to the church which was always dark and dank. I never understood why churches were so dark - it was like a funeral parlor.

We all lined up against the church pews waiting our turn to go in the confessional box. The nuns told us we had to not only confess all our sins but we had to give an accounting of how many times we committed each. For example, if your mother yelled at you because you did something wrong you had to confess how many times she yelled at you.

So there I was age six and waiting to confess my sins.  When it was my turn I entered the confessional box which was darker than the church and a window opened and it was my time to talk. “Bless me father (that is what we called all the priests) for I have sinned”.  “This is my first confession and my mother yelled at me 4 times and I was mean to my sister 3 times”.  I went on like this for what seemed an eternity and I finally stopped. The priest then told me to say 5 “Hail Mary’s” and one “Our Father” and off I went, relieved to be out the confession box

I was six years old and scared to death. And yes, as most of you have probably guessed, I did lie to the priest as I had no idea how many times I got yelled at or how many times I may have been mean to my sister.

Every Friday after my first confession we were marched off to church to confess our sins and I had a rule that I would never admit that my sins ever exceeded 5 times. I don’t know why but I must have felt that any sin committed less than 5 times was not that bad.

So much for confession…