Learning to Love – an exploration of the conversation with Christ in Sacramental Consultation

​Resurrection: Learning to Love – an exploration of the conversation with Christ in Sacramental Consultation by Rev. Michaël Merle

Report by John-Peter Gernaat

The word used in German for Sacramental Consultation gives us the word that in other contexts is ‘confession’. The difficulty with this word in English is that it is intimately tied to the idea of admitting guilt.

The word ‘confession’ appears in the Act of Consecration of the Human Being. We hear about ‘confession’ and about ‘faith’ in the Transubstantiation. We hear“… to those who confess him”, addressing Christ. Later we hear that the Body of Christ will bear the “new confession” on the cross. We hear that living in us is the “new confession” and the “new faith”. Confession is about the ability to make a true declaration; to be able to say what one knows to be true.

We heard proclaimed in the Gospel on 9 June 2024 that our relationship to the Father is now in the power of the Spirit and in awareness of the Truth. If one is aware of the truth, one can confess it. Thus, a confession can be entirely positive. When we confess something, we are confessing to the truth on two levels. Firstly, on the level that we face, as we understand it; and, secondly, on a higher reality, where there is a true picture, even when it has not yet been fully realised. We see the situation as it is and as it should be.

This insight was brought to us in the Gospel Reading where Jesus speaks with Nicodemus. Jesus says: “Unless you are born again from the heights, you cannot see the Kingdom of God”. If one is born only in the material experience of life one will see the situation only such as it is. One will not realise the potential of being able to lift the reality into a comprehensive, fuller picture of reality. What we see manifesting is always a less than perfect picture of what could be. The potential to transform it is the reason for a sacrament. In the space of a sacrament the reality, such as it is, can be transformed into the reality, such as it should be; as it actually truly is, although it has not yet been realised as such yet.

We could therefore call our Sacramental Consultation the Sacrament of Confession. In the Catholic Church this sacrament has other names as well, of which one is the Act of Reconciliation. One wishes to reconcile something in one’s own life. It could be a reconciliation to the Divine, another person or oneself. It is not so important if one has missed the mark (and so not shared in the reward), what is important is to recognise the situation in the context of one’s whole life and to recognise that one is taking steps. It is important to recognise that one is not static. We know that life is about falling short and missing the mark. This is not the core of what one is confessing. It we think that one sacrament will put everything right again or that we need to cleanse ourselves of “all that is wrong with me”, we have missed the point. Thus, we opted in the translation from German to English to use the world ‘Consultation’ and not ‘Confession’.

The sacrament is a consultation with oneself, with the priest there as a witness. The priest is the server of the sacrament. The person stands facing the altar. It is a sacrament of consultation with yourself and with the Divine growing in you. The priest stands as witness. The priest speaks the words.

There are seven phrases in this sacrament. This means that the sacrament has something to do with a span of time and with a rhythm. In this presentation Michaël considered the most basic rhythm which is the rhythm of a week. He considered each of the sentences in relation to the quality of the days of the week: the quality of Moon and Mars and Mercury and Jupiter and Venus and Saturn and Sun. This is a rhythm and a connection that humanity has carried for centuries. Our measurement of time has remained unchanged since the earliest civilisations and has not been changed by the metric system, because it is fundamental to our experience.

This in important in this context because the Sacrament of Consultation has something to do with time. It is a moment of reflection in the timespan of a life. In this reflection one can sense where things have been, where they are and where they are going. In the sacrament there is a different experience of time. In a sacrament one is in the moment of time and not in the passing of time. It is Kairos and not Chonos.

This sacrament is possible after Confirmation and we can connect with it before the Act of Consecration of Man. Before Confirmation the child hears the very essence of the Sacrament of Consultation in the Sunday Service. The Sunday Service begins by placing where the child is in context and begins with ‘we’: “We now lift up …” This establishes the community in which child is and their relationship to the Spirit. They are told that they experience the Spirit in life and in work. Thereafter they are told of the Christ and the relationship to the Being of the Christ. Then, the priest addresses the children and tells them something to which the response from the children is to pray. Everything in this is in the Sacrament of Confession. “We learn that we may understand the world, we learn so that we may work in the world. The love of human beings, one to another, enlivens all the work of the human being. Without love human life becomes desolate and empty.” We learn from the Book of Daniel that if one desecrates the heart of the temple the experience is desolation and emptiness. The temple is the self. We desecrate the heart of the temple when we fail to love. “Christ is the teacher of the love of the human being.”

All of this is in the Sacramental Consultation. The two outstanding words are ‘learn’ and ‘love’. This is the focus of this sacrament. It is not a focus on what has been, but on what can become.

The words of the Sacrament of Consultation cannot be repeated here.

Monday is the day of the Moon, and a quality of the Moon is to reflect the light of the Sun. In reflecting we can learn something and we can learn to offer something. We can learn to be like the Moon and reflect something of who we are to the Divine.

Tuesday is the day of Mars. The quality is the power of discovering our own will, which like all soul capacities is a gift of God.

Wednesday is the day of Mercury. Mercury has a quality of movement which can bring about healing. The flow of movement heals.

Through the first three days and statements we establish where we are and through the next four days and statements, we establish the future. In each of the next four sentences the word ‘love’ appears. Thursday is the day of Jupiter which has the quality of making something completely apparent.

Friday is the day of Venus, and the greatest quality of Venus is to express love. “No greater love has a human being than to give their live in service to other human beings.” This implies working at it every day.

Saturday is the day of Saturn, and we are reminded that we are beings connected to this creative concept that is human, whether in a current incarnation or currently excarnated. We are one community of beings becoming human. We understand that love connects us all.

Sunday is the day of the Sun, to resurrection and to culmination.

In the sermon, Michaël brought the idea that we each understand, that we are a king; we connect with our own ‘I’-forces. What is important is that we realise that this is the reality for every other human being. We are each king over ourseslves, and only over ourselves. We share the kingly throne and become co-workers, equal to each other, on the throne of the earthly kingdom. We share this throne with everyone else simultaneously. We come to a sense of ourselves at hand of a sense of the other. Without a sense of the other we cannot gain a full sense of ourselves. It is in a sense of being connected to others that we gain a connection to ourselves.

This is at the heart of the Sacrament of Consultation, that we connect to ourselves and also connect to others. No one experiences life without it being in connection with other people.

There is great power in using the Sacrament of Consultation and using it regularly; hearing the words of the sacrament as one faces the altar, and faces oneself, and faces God.