I go to confession a lot. To put that more accurately, as a priest, I not only hear confessions often but also go to a priest to confess my sins often. For some reason, I have never found it all that difficult.

That is not the case for many Catholics. One person I met recently has not confessed his sin for years because he is worried about what the priest might give him for a penance. (I tried to reassure him that penances are never impossible and, besides, the church asks priests to give penances that are doable.) One woman told me a few years ago that she was too worried that she would cry. (I asked her what was so awful about that. I have cried enough in confession.) Another person once told me that he was embarrassed because he knew his parish priests too well. (I told him that this didn’t seem insurmountable: I’ve gone to confession with Jesuits I live with!)

I accept that confession is hard for many people, but at the heart of these objections about the sacrament of reconciliation may be a misunderstanding of what the sacrament is about. Nothing sums that up better than a line from Peter Fink, S.J., a liturgical theologian who was a longtime professor at what was then the Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Mass. What he told our class completely changed how this cradle Catholic viewed the sacrament.

“Confession,” said Father Fink, “is not about how bad you are, but about how good God is.”

To my Philadelphia-bred Catholic ears, that represented a complete turnaround because, frankly, I thought confession was indeed about how bad you are. Now, we are all, in one way or another, sinful people. I do not mean that we are bad people; rather, we all sin from time to time. (I doubt that either Jesus or Mary is reading these words, so I’m confident in saying this.) Therefore, we all need forgiveness and reconciliation not only with God but with the larger community. Again, it can be a challenge, but it is necessary for the state of our souls.

Admittedly, Catholic theology has focused more on original sin (the only provable doctrine, as the saying goes) instead of what Richard Rohr, O.F.M., likes to call “original blessing.” Nonetheless, it is abundantly true that we sometimes sin, need forgiveness and need to hear that forgiveness from a real, live person. We can surely confess our sins to God privately, but doing it aloud in front of a priest and hearing the words of absolution are, to my mind, essential.

This is not the place for a full treatment of the sacrament of reconciliation. But I was happy that it was the audience question chosen for our conversation with Cardinal Blase Cupich, the archbishop of Chicago, who gives a deep and pastoral answer to the question on this week’s episode of “The Spiritual Life.”

In point of fact, I love going to confession in part because I love how I feel afterward: clean, fresh, reconciled. I just wish everyone could remember Father Fink’s line the next time they resist the sacrament. Don’t forget how good God is.

The Rev. James Martin, S.J., is a Jesuit priest, author, editor at large at America and founder of Outreach.