Make Confession a once month gift to you

Pittsburgh priest tells family life delegates Confession sets you free

"God forgot your sin and so should you." Fr. Larry Richards

By RAMON GONZALEZ
WCR Staff Writer
Lac Ste. Anne

Confessing your sins to a priest makes you free and you should do it at least once a month, recommends Father Larry Richards.

"After Confession, you should rejoice rather than whining about how sinful you are," the Pittsburgh priest told the annual Catholic Family Life Conference June 30.

"Confession sets you free. And after you confess something, forget about it. As soon as you confess that sin, it is gone forever. God forgot your sin and so should you."

A gifted speaker, preacher and retreat master, Richards was the keynote speaker at the June 29-July 2 family life conference at Lac Ste. Anne. He celebrated Mass and spoke four times over the weekend on issues ranging from Confession, to the Mass, to the role of men in the family. Nearly 2,000 people attended his talks at the Lac Ste. Anne shrine.

Be a saint or go to hell

Richards said a Catholic only has two choices: "to be a saint or to go to hell." He defined a saint as someone who made it to heaven. And those who have a better chance of making it to heaven are those who follow the rules set up by God and his Church.

"There are rules and you either respect them or not," he said, noting that even if 95 per cent of Canadians supported artificial birth control, it is still wrong in the eyes of God and the Church.

Richards is a pastor of an inner city parish, a high school chaplain, a counsellor and an evangelist.

In 2004, the priest founded The Reason for Our Hope Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to spreading the Good News by educating others about Jesus Christ and the Catholic faith through cassette tapes, CDs, DVDs and VHS multimedia products.

Since then, Richards has reproduced dissertations such as The Truth, Confession and The Mass Explained, which have been distributed worldwide. Richards also hosts a nightly radio show called Changed Forever with Father Larry Richards.

If during Confession you admit you were wrong and repent for your sins, that's enough for Richards. "So if you have sinned go to Confession as soon as possible before going to Communion," Richards said, noting if one takes Communion without Confession, one commits sacrilege. He tries to go to Confession at least every two weeks.

"One of the greatest sins of all is not to love God with all our hearts," Richards told his audience. Many people spend hours a day in front of the TV set but have no time to pray to God.

"To miss Mass is a mortal sin because then you are telling God, 'You are not worth my time,'" the priest said. People taking care of children or elderly parents may be exempted from attending Mass every Sunday, but they still must try to attend as often as possible.

"Your No. 1 job is to take care of your parents when they are old," he said. "They gave you the instruments of life even if they were horrible people."

Pro-choice is a sin

It's also a sin to be pro-choice. "You cannot enter the kingdom of God if you are pro-choice," Richards said. "You must repent to go to heaven."

But what gets most people in trouble - actually, in hell - are sins of the flesh, the priest said, noting the number one sin in America is pornography.

"Everybody has temptations but it is when you say yes to those temptations that you sin," the evangelist said. "Sex before marriage, including oral sex, is a sin. Before marriage you can kiss, but that's it." Same sex is wrong because it doesn't lead to life.

Richards called on the men in the audience to be more men than Adam was. Adam didn't pay attention and allowed Eve to succumb to temptation.

"Your role is to be the spiritual leaders of the home," he said.

The evangelist urged the men to be the best examples of Jesus Christ to their wives and children. "God is a father and as such he disciplines us," he said. "When you discipline your children it is not because you hate them, but because you care about them."

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