Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time
There is a kind of parable told about a man whose house was in the path of a flood. The waters were starting to cover the roads, and a patrol car came by to take him to safety. “No thanks,” he said, “God will save me!” The water kept rising, until it was up to his porch. A rescue boat came by to take him to safety. “No thanks,” he said, “God will save me!” The waters kept rising, until it was up to his roof. A helicopter hovered over his house and offered to take him to safety. “No thanks,” he said, “God will save me!” The waters kept rising, and the man drowned. Standing before the judgment seat of God, the man asked the Almighty why He didn’t do anything to save him. God said, “I sent you the patrol car, the rescue boat, and the helicopter to save you. You didn’t want my help.”
God is merciful. We hear it again and again in our readings. Our first reading mentions the mercy of God after Moses pleads for the people. The verses of our responsorial psalm is the prayer King David wrote after he realized he had sinned greatly by committing adultery with Bathsheba and then having her husband, Uriah, killed in battle. St. Paul recounts in our second reading how God treated him mercifully, even though he was a blasphemer and arrogant. And in our Gospel, Jesus speaks about how the mercy of God goes out, seeking the lost to return him to wholeness, in three parables of His own.
God is merciful. But do we accept how He sends His mercy? God’s mercy was shown in a most perfect way in the Incarnation. Jesus revealed the mercy of God. And yet, we rejected Him. The very people God had chosen to be His own; the people who had the prophets, telling the people about the savior God would send them; the people who knew God’s revelation from Genesis to Malachi; many could not accept God’s merciful presence in the Incarnation because it was not the way they wanted to receive God’s mercy. And so Mercy Incarnate took upon Himself the justice that should have been meted out to us because of our sins. As Isaiah prophesied about Jesus: “He was spurned and avoided by men, a man of suffering, knowing pain, Like one from whom you turn your face, spurned, and we held him in no esteem. […] We thought of him as stricken, struck down by God and afflicted.”
The Church has discerned two ways in which a person may be sorry: perfect and imperfect contrition. Perfect contrition is when sorrow for sin “arises from a love by which God is loved above all else.” That is, we recognize how our sins have offended our God and our relationship with Him, not because of any effects it may have on us, but simply because it is contrary to who God is, and “breaks the heart” of the Beloved. Imperfect contrition is when sorrow for sin is “born of the consideration of sin’s ugliness or the fear of eternal damnation and the other penalties threatening the sinner.” In other words, imperfect contrition is more so the sorrow that comes from knowing that we will, eventually, get caught, and have to pay the price for our sins. As I reflect on my life I would like to hope that I am moving towards perfect contrition when I sin, but I am often at least partially sorry simply because I don’t want to suffer the consequences of my sins.
In the Sacrament of Penance, God transforms our imperfect contrition into perfect contrition so that we might be forgiven. But through the Sacrament of Penance, God also reconciles us with the Church and with each other, which is why confession to a priest is necessary. Standing alone in our home or in the woods, we can certainly ask God for forgiveness. But each sin, no matter how private or personal, also affects the other members of the Body of Christ, to whom we are connected by Baptism. So we also need to ask forgiveness from them, and the priest is authorized by God to act in the name of the entire Body, including the head (Jesus Christ, who, as God, is the only one who can forgive sins) and the other members.
This way of receiving God’s mercy is not as popular now as it has been. But do we seek this ordinary way of being forgiven by God? Or do we reject it like some of the Chosen People rejected the Incarnation? God is seeking us out through the Sacrament of Penance. He is looking for us while we are still a long way out, so that He can run to us and restore us to our status and sons and daughters in the Son of God. But are we like the man in the parable at the beginning of the homily today: convinced God will save us, but not open to the way that He wants to do so? If it’s been a while since you’ve been to confession: do not be afraid. The confession of your sins is merely the means by which God conveys His mercy. Let God save you in the way He has chosen.
