Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
The Sacrament of Penance, aka Confession, is one of my favorite sacraments to celebrate, both as a priest and as a penitent. Not because I like hearing all the juicy details of your life. Lord knows other priests have heard mine. I love giving and receiving the mercy of God. As a priest, a person’s confession is never about what they have done. Yes, they have to be sorry; and sometimes I try to get them to truly make the changes that will help them not commit those sins in the future. But the sacrament is about God’s mercy, and restoring that person to sanctifying grace, that is, the grace that makes us the saints that God called us to be in baptism. When a person comes into the confessional, he or she may be in serious danger of going to hell because of mortal sin. When that same person leaves, he or she is once more on the track to being a saint.
I think one of the difficulties in confessing our sins is that it can be embarrassing. Some sins are embarrassing to confess, or even just to say. Sometimes it’s the embarrassment of knowing that we did something we knew was wrong. But when we confess our sins, when we admit that we have done wrong, we are not alone. David, the best king Israel ever had, the image of what the Messiah would be like, was an adulterer and a murderer. He got Bathsheba pregnant when she was married to Uriah, tried to have Uriah have relations with his wife so that he would think it was his, and then had Uriah killed when his planned deception did not work. In today’s first reading, we get part of that story, where God chastises David for doing what was wrong. But notice that, as soon as David said, “‘I have sinned against the Lord’”, God responds immediately through his prophet Nathan, “‘The Lord on his part has forgiven your sin: you shall not die.’” As soon as we admit that we are in need of God’s mercy, which is itself made possible by God’s grace, God rushes in to forgive us, and to keep us from death and hell.
It’s hard admitting that we’re wrong. We love to justify ourselves as much as possible, and rationalize what we do when we sin. Or, in some cases, we do not refer to sins as sinful; we ignore how they are contrary to God’s plan for our happiness. We know by faith, that our chances of getting into heaven if we die in the state of mortal sin are not good. God never forces His love upon us, and we can freely choose to reject Him in our actions. Yet we also know of God’s mercy, that is waiting to be showered upon us. Pope Francis has especially encouraged us to seek God’s mercy in this Jubilee Year of Mercy. He invites us to experience personally what Psalm 32 said today: “I acknowledged my sin to you,/ my guilt I covered not./ I said, ‘I confess my faults to the Lord,’/ and you took away the guilt of my sin.//”
In his Papal Bull starting the Jubilee Year of Mercy, Pope Francis wrote, “Let us place the Sacrament of Reconciliation at the centre [sic] once more in such a way that it will enable people to touch the grandeur of God’s mercy with their own hands. For every penitent, it will be a source of true interior peace.” The Lord wants to shower his mercy upon us, but we must first admit that we are the ones who need mercy. In the Sacrament of Penance, we admit that we are a sinner, and the Lord looks upon us with love and forgiveness. Or, we recognize, as Pope Francis said in an interview, that, “‘I am a sinner whom the Lord has looked upon.”
So we should not fear the Sacrament of Penance. Even if it’s been 5 or 10 or 20 or 40 years since your last confession, I invite you to experience the ordinary way that God gives His mercy to us. Don’t worry if you don’t remember your act of contrition; I’ll help you through it. Or, if you don’t want to go to me, Fr. Shaun is always available, or you can go to one of the surrounding parishes in Lenawee County. But don’t miss out on the chance to receive God’s mercy!
