Reconciliation: Adults

  • Times for Confession 
  • About the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation

Times for Confession

Confessions are heard on Saturdays 11am-12pm and 5-5.45pm at St Joseph’s Church; and on Saturdays 5.30pm–5.45pm and Sundays from 9.30–9.45am at St Swithun’s – or on request.

About the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation

“In him, we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28)

Through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, we are reminded of the special call we received when we were baptised.

We are called to be peacemakers. To try over and over again to live as Jesus showed us. It is not the burden of guilt, but the burden of responsibility.

During the Sacrament of Reconciliation, God confesses his love for us and we confess our need for God.

The peace that Jesus Christ offers us is the peace we are called to in our baptism. We are called to wholeness, harmony and integrity in the Body of Christ. This is an ongoing journey of conversion or change and reconciliation. We need the gift of the Sacrament of Reconciliation in our lives to help us renew our baptismal call to bring us back into the right relationship with God, ourselves and others.

The Sacrament of Penance represents God’s gift of boundless mercy. Not only does it free us from our sins, but it also challenges us to have the same kind of compassion and forgiveness for those who sin against us. We are liberated to be forgivers. We obtain new insight into the words of the Prayer of St Francis: “It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.”

Jesus entrusted the ministry of reconciliation to the Church. The Sacrament of Penance is God’s gift to us, so that any sin committed after Baptism can be forgiven. In confession, we have the opportunity to repent and recover the grace of friendship with God. It is a holy moment, in which we place ourselves in God’s presence and honestly acknowledge our sins.

With absolution, we are reconciled with God and the Church. The Sacrament helps us stay close to the truth that we cannot live without God.

While all the sacraments bring us an experience of the mercy that comes from Christ’s dying and rising, it is the Sacrament of Reconciliation that is the unique Sacrament of mercy.