Remember St. Jean Vianney who spent most of his day in the confessional:
My children, we cannot comprehend the goodness of God towards us in instituting this great Sacrament of Penance. If we had had a favour to ask of Our Lord, we should never have thought of asking Him that. But He foresaw our frailty and our inconstancy in well-doing, and His love induced Him to do what we should not have dared to ask. If one said to those poor lost souls that have been so long in Hell, "We are going to place a priest at the gate of Hell: all those who wish to confess have only to go out, " do you think, my children, that a single one would remain? The most guilty would not be afraid of telling their sins, nor even of telling them before all the world. Oh, how soon Hell would be a desert, and how Heaven would be peopled! Well, we have the time and the means, which those poor lost souls have not. And I am quite sure that those wretched ones say in Hell, "O accursed priest! if I had never known you, I should not be so guilty!" (Read more from this great saint here.)Padre Pio was also a prisoner of the confessional:
"God runs after the most stubborn souls. They cost him too much to abandon them."
"It is a tremendous responsibility to sit in the tribunal of the confessional." (Read more here.)Thank God for "The light is on for you" initiative. Every Wednesday evening at every church in the Diocese of Arlington and Washington, D.C. a priest waits to hear confessions.
