Spiritual Funk

So earlier this week I was down in the dumps.  I was depressed, blue, melancholy.   It was a big pity party for me.  Everyone and everything was ticking me off.  I even texted my wife and told her I was feeling down.  

By Tuesday things weren't better but it was more than just winter doldrums.  I felt that someTHING was causing me to feel like this.  It wasn't just depression or dryness or anything like that.  It was more of a detached ness or numbness.    I felt like I was suffering from a spiritual attack.  I texted a friend who I can go to in all things spiritual and asked for prayers.  

Come Wednesday night, I was so off the mark that I didn't even take communion when I went to mass.    I texted my friend again and received some good, sound, advice.  I also decided to go to confession.  

So this morning, I woke up early and went to Our Lady of Good Counsel for confession.  It was amazing.  It really was. After I gave my confession, the priest read a couple of Psalms to me and it was like he was looking right into my heart and telling me what I needed to hear.  And it wasn't advice that came from what I had told him during my confession.  It was fascinating.  It was as if he had read the text messages between my friend and I and knew exactly what was going on in my soul.   

People criticize Catholics and ask, "why go to a priest when you can confess right to God?" And a good response is that the priest is acting "in persona Christi" or "in the person of Christ."   Let me tell you what, that may have just been a priest on the other side of that screen, but don't tell me I wasn't confessions my sins to God and definitely don't try to tell me that it wasn't Jesus talking back to me because there is just no other way to explain what the priest told me.

I told myself the last time I went to confession that I needed to go more often.  Every three or four month was too long.  I decided that once a month was good.  Well, I waited over a month and I think I waited too long.  The problem is, at four weeks, I don't feel like I need it. I wonder what I would say.  I've behaved, I've been good.  Maybe all I have to take is some small, veinial sins but maybe that is eight.  I think I need that reset every four weeks. Maybe it's how I'm wired.  I dunno.   But that's what I'm going to try to do.