Cleaning Up and Encountering the Mercy of the Beloved (Precept #2)

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  I’m sure most of us can relate to this scenario at one point in our life: mom and/or dad tell you that company is coming over, and that you need to clean up the common areas of the house (like the bathrooms, kitchen, living room, etc.).  As a kid, the thought came to my mind (and I may have vocalized this once or twice), “Why do we have to clean up?  If they’re such good friends, don’t they want to see the way we usually live, rather than faking it by pretending that our house is always this clean?”  I’m sure many of you have thought that as a child, or have heard a similar line of questioning from the kids who don’t want to clean up.

    The Precept of the Church that I’m focusing on this week is the second: “You shall confess your sins at least once a year.”  In my mind, anyway, this connects back to the Gospel we heard today, about our Lord cleansing the temple.  Christ wants the temple to be a place of prayer, though it had been made into a marketplace, or, to use His words, “‘a den of thieves.’”  But of course, beyond the obvious meaning of the building, we, too, as St. Paul says, are temples of the Holy Spirit, and Christ wants us to be people of prayer, rather than sullied by our sins.
    Confession allows us to “clean the temple,” as it were, by having Christ cleanse us of our sins and restore us to the state of our soul at holy baptism.  It invites Christ in so that all those fallen aspects of our life can be cast out. 
    But, we may say, doesn’t God already know who I am, and how I struggle?  Doesn’t He know my sins?  Why should I go, especially if, despite my best intentions, I may fall back into the same sins over and over again? 
    We clean our temples for God (and our homes for guests) because we want to give our best.  We clean our house for guests because we value their presence, and show that value by cleaning up the areas in which they might be (despite how horrible it is to mop, clean windows, vacuum, etc.).  We clean our temple for God because we value His presence, and want Him to feel “at home” in our souls.  Sin, especially serious sin, is contrary to who God is.  So we clean up so that He knows how much we want Him to be with us, and that we want Him to pray with us in our souls.  But, in this case, it’s really God who does the cleaning, as we cannot eliminate our sins by ourselves. 
    But even deeper than the metaphor of cleaning, confession is a chance to come into the presence of God, and experience His love.  God hates sin, but He does not hate us.  He does not want anything to stand between us and Him, and so He gives us the remedy for the sickness which we take upon ourselves when we choose to disobey Him.  Confession allows God’s mercy to wash over us and heal all those wounds that we inflicted. 
    How can that happen?  First, we must be sorry.  What the Church requires is that we have at least imperfect contrition, or as it was called in seminary, attrition.  This is the knowledge that we have messed up, and the sorrow for doing so, based upon the fact that we know it’s wrong, or we know we shouldn’t want to do the sin, or that we don’t want to go to Hell.  The fact that all that is required is attrition is itself a mercy, as what we should have is perfect contrition, or the sorrow for having sinned, not because of “the loss of heaven and the pains of hell, but most of all because they offend thee, my God, who art all good and deserving of all my love.” 
    Or, to put it in the context of a marital covenant (which God does all the time in the Scriptures), when we sin we cheat on God; we are unfaithful to Him.  Attrition is the sorrow we have because we got caught in adultery.  Contrition, perfect contrition, is the sorrow we have because we know, or have some sense, of how much it hurt our spouse and the damage it did to the marital relationship. 
    Beyond being sorry, even imperfectly, we also need to have a firm amendment not to sin again.  We might wonder why we should go, if we think we’re going to sin again in this particular way.  I often put it this way: we hope that we won’t sin in that way again, even if that seems unlikely.  But, if we would be open to the grace God gives, then we would not want to sin again in that way.  And we should have confidence in God’s mercy, that it can at least start us down the path of not falling into that sin again. 
    We also need to confess actual sins.  The Church requires that we confess all mortal sins in number and kind.  This doesn’t mean you have to give the priest all the gory details.  But it does mean that you are honest.  God is our Divine Physician, but He does’t force His medicine upon us, so if we don’t tell Him the pain, He will not force His healing on us.  So we confess every mortal sin, which is a sin that is gravely wrong, we know it’s bad, but we freely choose it anyway.  Grave sins are the most serious: taking God’s name in vain; skipping Mass without a legitimate reason; killing an innocent person; committing adultery, fornication, or self-gratification; stealing something of significance (which may vary with age and financial means); lying in a serious case (like to a police office or in court), pornography and/or staring at a person for an extended time with lust; etc.  We also have to know that the sin is wrong, and then we have to freely choose to do it.  Addictions can sometimes lessen the freedom that we have to do an action. 
    And, no matter how strongly we do a venial sin, it doesn’t change it to a mortal sin.  We still shouldn’t sin venially, but if the sin is not serious matter, it cannot be mortal.  We do not need to confess all venial sins, as those are forgiven in entirety (even those we forgot) through confession, and through reception of the Eucharist (as long as we don’t have other mortal sins on our soul).  Venial sins which we frequently commit are great types of sins to confess.
    Lastly, we need to intend to do the penance.  Sometimes penances are more than simply prayers or reading Scripture, so you’ll need to do them when you get home.  But as long as you intend to do the penance, you can still receive Holy Communion after confession.  And, if the penance is not something you can do at all, let the priest know when he gives you the penance, rather than having to confess later that you did not do your penance. 
    The Church commands us to confess once per year.  But why not more?  If confession is an encounter with our loving God, who heals us of our wounds, then once per year is the bare minimum, and we should seek to experience that special love of God whenever we need to, and even if we don’t need to, when it’s available.  We’re not to be scrupulous, to think that every sin separates us from sanctifying grace–the grace that allows us to be in right relationship with God.  But we also don’t want to treat confession as something we do only when we need to because we’re in mortal sin. 
    Confession is a cleansing of the temple of our souls, but more than that, it’s a chance to receive the mercy of God.  Don’t miss out on a chance for God to show you this special kind of love.  Regularly ask for that merciful encounter with our compassionate God, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

Interiorlizing the Rules

 Third Sunday of Lent
    There are many good jokes about those who study the liturgy, who are often called liturgists (of which I am one).  For example: what’s the difference between a vampire and a liturgist?  One is a blood-sucking, dark creature of the night, and the other turns into a bat.  Or what’s the difference between a terrorist and a liturgist?  You can negotiate with a terrorist.
    

What is it about those who love the liturgy that makes these jokes have just the right amount of a ring of truth?  Maybe at times you have felt that I have been immovable or inflexible when you thought I should be.  I think part of the reality is that those who have studied the liturgy understand the rules of the Mass, just like athletes and coaches understand the rules of the game.  If you find a really good athlete (one example that comes to my mind is Peyton Manning), you can see the art in how he or she competes in the sport.  When Peyton Manning was quarterback, it was poetry in motion watching him read the field, pass the ball, and avoid getting sacked.  Over his years of play, and with a good dose of God-given talent, Peyton went from simply thinking about the rules, to implementing the rules in a way that created beauty.  But imagine if Peyton didn’t understand rules on a false start, or an ineligible receiver.  Those games would have been ugly for the teams for which Peyton played.  The game would have been slow and clunky, and Peyton would not have won many, if any, games, and certainly not two Super bowls.  
    So for those who study the Mass and the Sacraments, they have made the rules a part of how they operate at Mass, such that it no longer looks like they are think about the rules, but are more naturally flowing, as is it’s a part of who they are while they’re at Mass.  For those who don’t understand or who have never been trained, it’s just a lot of dos and don’ts.  
    When we hear about Jesus cleansing the temple today (which in John’s Gospel happens towards the beginning, while the other Gospel accounts put it closer to Jesus’ Passion), we might wonder what Jesus’ problem was.  After all, people needed oxen, sheep, and doves for the temple.  They needed to exchange their foreign currency, often with the image of an emperor or king who considered himself a god, with money that did not have graven images and could be used in the temple.  In fact, the word profane comes the Latin words pro and fanum, meaning outside the temple.  To be profane was to be something that could only be used outside the temple, because it was not worthy of God.  
    But Jesus, who, as God, inspired David and Solomon to build the temple, and inspired the plans for the temple which was meant to represent heaven, knew the rules.  He knew how the temple was supposed to go, and what were “penalties.”  And so Jesus cleansed the temple to restore it to what it was meant for: the worship of God according to the pattern of heaven, rather than a marketplace.  
    So, too, for us, we are invited to give our best to God each time we come to Mass.  That can mean dressing a little better for Mass than we do for our weekdays.  It can mean trying to focus more than we usually do when someone is reading to us or speaking to us.  In whatever way we can, we want to give God our best, and enter into His plan and His rules for the Mass because it allows the beauty of the heavenly realm to begin to break-in to our earthly world.
    But it also applies to life in general, the extension of the Mass that we live out day-to-day.    When we hear the Ten Commandments, as we heard them this morning, we may just think of them as a long list of “Thou shalt not.”  But, in fact, while we are told not to do things, the rejection of sin and evil allows us to thrive and to live the life that truly makes us happy.  That may, at times, seem counterintuitive.  After all, it might seem nice to yell out a swear word or take God’s Name in vain when we hit our thumb with a hammer or stub our toe.  Or it might seem better not to have to worry about coming to Mass on Sunday, and just sleep in and do whatever tasks we left after watching sports on Saturday.  Or maybe we don’t want to be tied down to just one spouse; or we think it would make us happier just to take whatever we want, whenever we want, from whomever we want.  And certainly if my spouse asks me if this dish that’s called dinner tastes good, lying would be so much easier!
    But, in fact, that’s like saying that it would be easier to play football if your offensive line could line up however they wanted, and move whenever they wanted.  Or if Peyton could throw to whomever he wanted, rather than having only certain people who can be eligible receivers.  And those are just man-made rules for a man-made game.  The Ten Commandments are God’s rules for the world, which God created, and so He knows exactly how things are to be done to be beautiful and bring happiness.  
    Even the most simple, made-up game by children has rules that allow them to have fun, to find joy, and to allow the game to proceed as it’s intended by its creator.  So, too, with life: there are rules to allow us to participate well, and to win the imperishable crown that awaits those who win at life.  God gives us those rules because He loves us, and He knows how we will truly be happy.  Today let’s recommit ourselves to entering into the rules of life, not simply to do this or not do that, but to allow God’s grace, which truly makes us alive, to operate in us as easily as Peyton Manning plays football.

Immersed in the Mass

Third Sunday of Lent

German World Cup Athlete

If I were to try to explain the rules of soccer to someone who didn’t play, soccer would likely sound like one of the most boring and complicated sports in the world.  It would sound something like: the point of the game is to get the ball into the opponent’s goal; but you have to use your feet to get the ball there; or you can use your head; if you use your hands it’s a penalty, unless you’re a goalie within the goal box, or unless  you’re throwing the ball in from out of bounds; but if you throw the ball in then both feet have to be on the ground and the ball has to go completely over your heard; but if the ball goes out on the goal line but not in the net, if it was last touched by the offense it’s a goal kick, which means that the ball is placed on the ground and kicked; if it was last touched by the defense it’s a corner kick, which means that the ball is placed on the ground at the corner flag.  And I won’t even get into the offsides rules that confuse so many people!

It sounds like a lot of rules that may or may not make sense.  But when you see a professional athlete play soccer, see how all the rules work together to allow two teams to try to win, and see how the rules allow play to continue without favoring one side or another, the beauty of soccer comes through.  The rules of the system allow the activity to continue in a way that beauty is conveyed.  How often do we speak about the way an athlete plays as poetry in motion!

Jesus, in the Gospel, is crying foul (or blowing His whistle for a penalty) with the merchants and moneychangers in the temple.  It’s easy to gloss over why Jesus gets so upset.  We can quickly jump to conclusions about why Jesus throws out the moneychangers and merchants.  After all, why would there be a mini-bank in the temple?  And the merchants were selling oxen and sheep and doves, and those things smell, are messy, and, if they’ve eaten recently, tend to leave little presents that need to be cleaned up.  But the moneychangers were helping Jews from across the world exchange their money so they could pay the temple tax in the accepted shekels.  They were like super ushers who would exchange money for you for the collection.  And the merchants were really just religious goods salesmen, as those animals were only used for one thing: sacrifice.  And yet Jesus casts them out!  Why?  Because they were not allowing the beauty of the temple and of temple worship to shine through.

We have a lot of rules when it comes to Mass: don’t eat or drink anything besides water and medicine 1 hour before you receive Holy Communion; stand at this time, sit at this time, kneel at this time; the priest and deacon have certain words that they need to say, and can rarely ad lib; all vessels must be made of precious metal which hold the Body or Blood of Jesus; not every song that we like can be sung; and the list goes on.  These rules are meant to communicate the beauty which the Mass is meant to show, namely, the truth of Jesus’ perfect sacrifice on the cross and our participation in the Paschal Mystery.  The less we know about the reasons for the rules, the more they seem capricious or willy-nilly, just like the rules of soccer seem strange to those who are not immersed in the beauty of the game.  But, when we familiarize ourselves with what the Mass is supposed to be, the worship of rational beings to God, joined to the perfect worship of Jesus on the altar of the cross, it’s like watching professional athletes play World Cup soccer: the rules don’t seem as clunky, and, in fact, they allow each individual to use their talents in a more profound way.  

I invite you, if you don’t understand what goes on in the Mass, to read, attend adult faith formation sessions, and learn more about what occurs when the Mass is celebrated.  The more we do, the more we will see the beauty of the Mass as facilitated by the rules, rather than just a bunch of rules that don’t let us do what we want to in the Mass.