Dr. John Bergsma

He was a complete stranger.

And within seconds, I was bearing my soul to this other man and he was reaching out to me in love and being my spiritual father.

and absolving my sins, obviously, but also giving me pastoral counsel that was laser focused on what I needed most because I had been able to, within seconds, get right to the spiritual issues that I was battling with.

because we have this custom, this form, this institution, this right within the Catholic faith.

And within minutes, I was parting from this man that was a complete stranger to me.

And yet in that moment of intimacy within the Sacrament of Reconciliation, so quickly we got right to the heart of what I needed to do, what I needed to change, how I needed to interact with God, was able to bare my soul,

We didn't have to spend months developing an accountability relationship or anything like this.

And I went away thinking, wow, this is one of the beauties of the sacrament of reconciliation.

It gives us a form and a practice and a custom to carry out the confessing of sins to one another.

that is so pastorally effective.

And yeah, just from a perspective of pastoral utility, it's a brilliant practice.

Yeah.

The presbytery.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The elders.

And the elders doesn't just mean old people because we find out, for example, that Timothy is appointed as an elder, even though he's young.

So the elders was actually an office.

And sometimes, you know, in the New Testament,

frequently episkopos, from which we get bishop, is in that early stage, the presbyteroi and the episkopoi were virtually synonymous.