Dominicans are known - reasonably enough - for their preaching. However, as I've passed through various parishes and ministries staffed by our province, it's been made clear to me that we're generally appreciated as good and merciful confessors as well. This makes perfect sense. Founded to preach for the salvation of souls, our order performs some of its most significant "preaching" in what is called the "internal forum" - that place of the individual's heart that God alone perfectly sees, and into which a penitent introduces a priest in order to manifest contrition for sin and seek the forgiveness of God. Hence, a priest who has entered a person's internal forum through the Sacrament of Penance is under the strictest obligation by natural and Church law to preserve what he has learned through the Confession "under the seal." And in that forum, he must tread truthfully and mercifully. Consequently, as one well known Friar of happy memory was famous for advising young priests, "Be nice in the confessional! ... Or I'll hit you!"

Fr. Paul J. Keller, O.P., who is assigned to the priory of St. Gertrude in Cincinnati, OH, has recently published a wonderful book titled, 101 Questions and Answers on the Sacraments of Healing: Penance and Anointing of the Sick (Paulist Press, 2010).

Fr. Keller has taught at Providence College and the Franciscan University of Steubenville, and is presently Professor of Theology at the Athenaeum of Ohio (Cincinnati's seminary). In the book, Fr. Keller addresses sundry theoretical and practical questions concerning the Church's two sacraments of healing. He poses and answers such questions as the following: Aren't all the sacraments healing? What if I am not sure whether I have committed a mortal sin? What evidence do we have of Christians making use of penance in the centuries after the time of the New Testament? How does one prepare for Confession? Isn't it burdensome for the priest to know and keep secret the sins of others? What is an "indulgence?"

As the title makes clear, the Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick is also treated in depth. Like Penance, Anointing is what the Church calls a sacrament "of healing." In introducing these two Sacraments, the Catechism refers to the event in today's Gospel passage: "The Lord Jesus Christ, physician of our souls and bodies, who forgave the sins of the paralytic and restored him to bodily health, has willed that His Church continue, in the power of the Holy Spirit, His work of healing and salvation, even among her own members" (CCC 1421). There is an intimate connection between Confession and Anointing. Many of our newly ordained priests have the opportunity to serve at St. Catherine of Siena in New York, where their newly invested sacred power is deployed regularly and poignantly against the sicknesses of the spirit and body. From the oiled hands that they receive at their ordination to oiling the hands of the sick they serve, the priest recognizes the deeply mysterious privilege of his ministry of sacrifice and forgiveness.

Fr. Keller's book is not just for the priest. It would make a perfect and easy-to-use reference book for every home, handy for difficult situations and emergencies as well.

"When the crowds saw [Jesus' healing of the paralytic] they were struck with awe and glorified God, who had given such authority to men" (Matt 9.13).