"Does going to confession make you feel better?" What I said. What I'll say next time. Hopefully.

My brother and nephew are in town for a couple of days. I have so much fun talking with my brother but every so often such a question arises as it did when we were out having a Tex-Mex family dinner. I had laughingly said that I needed to get to confession over something we'd been mentioning ... then said, "no, not really, though I've got to get there on Tuesday over something else."

Which raised that question from my brother, who is a nondenominational Protestant. Somehow, knowing the way he thinks and what he does for a living (which involves occasional mind manipulation), I always feel I've got to stand up for the Catholic way even if he is just phrasing it as a mild mannered question. Which probably says more about me than anything else.

I answered, "Yes."

Then thought, "well, not always sometimes yes and sometimes no. But this time I am really looking forward to it and so I probably will feel better."

By which time he'd said, "I understand."

I said, "No you don't understand."

He said, "Yes, I understand better than you'd think."

You have to understand that I'd had most of a nice strong margarita by then and anyway am not nearly as good at explaining myself when speaking as I am in writing. Also, I didn't suddenly want to dive into the depths of discussing confession as a sacrament in the middle of a restaurant at a family dinner.

Swirling through my head were thoughts of how to explain confession as a sacrament, feelings versus truth, and that when I go to confession I have thought and prayed about my offenses so that I already have gone to God personally about whatever it is. And the fact that "feeling better" makes it sound like a substitute for therapy, which it is not. The one thing I did know was that I was unequal to that task at that moment.

I let it go.

This, hopefully, has prepared me better for another time. Then I might be collected enough to answer, "Sometimes I feel better and sometimes I feel nothing. But it's not about feelings. It's about the reality of the sacrament of absolution from sin and reconciling myself to God."

If it carried on, we could go into how telling a doctor my symptoms might make me feel better sharing the burden, but it would be the medicine itself which would effect the cure. About how a sacrament is a visible sign of spiritual reality.

I am a poor apologist in person. But there's always next time. Hopefully.