If you’re a new Catholic, or one who’s returned to the Church after time away, and you’ve recently gone to Confession, you probably noticed something intriguing: almost no matter what one confesses, more often than not, the priest will assign the penitent some combination of Our Fathers and Hail Marys to pray after receiving the sacrament.
But why those prayers specifically? Kenny Burchard, a former Pentecostal pastor who became Catholic, shares how he has come to think of those two specific prayers and their unique relationship to what’s going on in the sacrament of Confession.