I baked a birthday cake for the Blessed Mother today. My daughter will be excited when she gets home from school.While it baked, I shredded mail. About a year's worth of mail. I don't like this job at all. But as I sat there and fed the machine one little piece of paper after another, I remembered another shredding experience.
It was my first confession. I was 40. I was baptized at 13. That meant I had 27 years of yuckiness to bring to the confessional. I worried that I wouldn't be able to remember it all. So, I spent a significant amount of time writing it down before I got behind the wheel and drove to church. I took my notes into the confessional with me. Don't get the idea that this made the Sacrament clinical. Oh, no. It was very emotional. There were things on that list I didn't even want to remember, let alone bring it out, name it, and claim it as my own dark sin.
Somehow, I made it through the Sacrament. I think it took about an hour. After the Sacrament had ended and I was as clean and white as a bride on her wedding day, Father led me into the parish office. He turned to me and took the list from my hands. Then, he walked over to the shredding machine in the back room and shredded those final reminders of sin. When the shredding had ended, his hands went slip-slap. And he smiled at me.
All gone. All done. All over.
And so, when I sit and shred at home, picking up one credit card offer after another, I remember back to that summer day in 2005. And I am thankful all over again that those words of absolution are real and efficacious and come directly from the Mercy Seat of God.
