HP5 - Prayer and Confession - The Heart of Prayer with Fr. Éamonn Bourke

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HP5 – Prayer and Confession – The Heart of Prayer with Fr. Éamonn Bourke

Fr. Éamonn Bourke and Kris McGregor explore the why, how, and what of “prayer”. In this episode, they explore the sacrament of confession in conjunction with prayer. They discuss how confession can affect and even strengthen our prayer life.

Here is an excerpt from their conversation:

Fr. Éamonn Bourke:

We’re living in a world of temptation. We’re living in a world of distraction. We’re living in a world that doesn’t want to delay gratification and wants everything today and now. And we want our own way and we want things to go the way we want them to go. And our plans to unfold the way we want them to go. So we’re bogged down at times in our own sinfulness. And especially when our sin, maybe, has accumulated from lack of confession. Particularly because confession, probably universally, has lessened and especially attendance has. So, if people haven’t been going to confession regularly and the sin mounts opened their life, they can actually feel themselves to be in a state of being unloved and unlovable. Like, “how could God love me now, after all that I’ve done? And why would God be interested in me because of my sinful life?”

And “you know, I’ve done too much damage to my spiritual life that I’ve blown it almost with the Lord“, you know? So, it’s even coming into the recognition that look, nobody, is finished with God’s love. God is love. God can’t stop loving us. That’s just the bottom line. And, especially as we are his children and He sees our pain, He’s actually moved with more compassion than we can imagine. I’m not saying that the greater the sin, the greater compassion, because God has always equally compassionate of all His children, but it means that He definitely does see the extent of our pain and He doesn’t reject us or draw back from us. If anything, He just wants to enter into the mystery of our pain and to heal it and to remove it from our soul, so that we can be free again.

Father Éamonn Bourke is a priest of the Archdiocese of Dublin, Ireland, and served as Vocations Director for the diocese, as well as Pastor in a number of its parishes. Trained as a spiritual director in the contemplative style, he now serves as Chaplain to University College, Dublin, the largest University in Ireland.