Once upon a time, there was a boy. He couldn't control his anger, and sometimes, he didn't want to. Instead, he decided he would drive a nail through a wooden fence in his backyard. A few days passed, and before he went out to r another nail through the fence, he realized that the fence was bending and breaking due to so many nails that had been hammered though it.

He tried to cover it up, so he drew a picture, placed it on a frame, and went to hang it on the fence. Sometimes his friends would come over and admire the picture hanging on the fence. However, there came a time when he couldn't even bare to look at the picture because he knew that the fence wouldn't be able to hold it much longer.

The next day, he went out, took down the frame, and decided to pull of the nails with his hands. He pulled and pulled, until, frustrated, he cried out. His father, who was inside his home, looked out and saw his boy struggling with the nails in the wall.

Although he loved him, and would forgive him for driving the nails into the fence, he did nothing about it because when his boy had decied to drive those nails through the wall, he had told his father to not help him unless he asked. So the days passed until the little boy realized that he needed his father. When asked for his help, the father did not hesitate, took a hammer from his toolbox, and pulled each nail out of the fence. When he was done, he hugged his son, told him he loved him, and asked him to not hammer nails into the wall, but to not hesitate to ask if he ever needed his help again.

We, just like the boy, sometimes forget to try to be better, to resist temptation just like he did not resist his anger; and our soul, like the fence full of nails, gets cluttered and weighed down by sin. We sometimes try to cover our sin by acting good and doing service for others, just like the boy tried to hang the picture to cover the nails. However, we can't keep up good appearances as long as we have a dirty conscience. We can't be happy as long as our sin is nailed to our soul. Many then try to clean their own souls by just calling to God asking them to forgive them. God's love and mercy is greater than our sin. It always will be, but if we don't ask Him to physically remove our sins, He won't. Not because He doesn't know the sin is there. Not because He doesn't love us. Not because He wants us to see us suffer, but because with His love, He gave us free will too. God knows. God loves, and he wants us to love Him too, but He won't force Himself upon us.

So how do priests come into the process of Reconciliation? Catholics believe that it is not enough to simply tell God we are sorry. We believe in the sacrament of Confession where we tell our sins to a priest so that he may be able to forgive them in the name of God. So in the story, the priest is the hammer. God takes away our sins, but the priest is the tool by which he chooses to show us we are forgiven. It doesn't matter which hammer the father would have picked just as it doesn't matter which priest you confess your sins to. After all, the priest is just an instrument of God, and it is God Himself who forgives you, and it is the priest who reminds us we are loved.

Is it sometimes terrifying to go into a small room with a priest you may or may not know and tell him everything you have done wrong since your last confession? Yes. Most definitely. Does it make you feel vulnerable and scared that the priest will tell everyone or that he will judge you next time he sees you? Maybe sometimes. But is it totally worth it? YES!

God loves you so much.. so, so much, that He calls people to be priests so we can be closer to Him through the sacraments. God, the all mighty Father, who lives in heaven, gave us every oportunity to be close to Him, to feel loved by Him, and Confession is just one of them. Most likely, the priest is just so glad that you came to ask for God's forgiveness that if you go, he will not remember your sin. C.S. Lewis said, "to love at all is to be vulnerable". So if you think God's love is greater than your sin, which it is, if you think that His mercy is greater than your sin, if you feel like you can't go on any more without Him, but don't know how to let Him know you are still trying, still holding on, still trying to love Him, go to Confession, be vulnerable to His love, and let Him forgive you.