The Sacrament of Reconciliation
The second reason why Our lady of Medjugorje takes us to the mountain
of the Cross is to implore us to go to the Sacrament of confession. Confession
is one of the forgotten truths in the Church today. Today confession has
disappeared from the lives and practices of so many Catholic faithful
and this is the sign of the crisis that the Church is undergoing. Our
lady is calling all her children to hasten back in great numbers to this
fountain of grace and divine mercy. It is said that there is no longer
any Eucharistic celebration where sacrilegious communions are not made.
Imagine that! Our Lady is saying that at practically every Mass there
are sacrilegious communions; people receiving Holy Communion when not
in the state of grace.
An incident took place in Medjugorje when Our Lady appeared to visionaries and pilgrims, she allowed all those present who wished to do so to come and touch her. When Our Lady disappeared one of the visionaries was crying and when asked why she said “because people have made Our Lady all dirty. When some of the pilgrims touched her, they soiled her dress”. Our Lady’s response “those who live in sin have dirtied me. Tell the people to go to confession and make amends for their sins”. Our Lady constantly invites people to confession. Being reconciled means accepting Our Lord’s will, as Mary did at the annunciation. When we sin, we refuse His will in order to do our own wilt. But in confession, we say, like Mary, “thy will be done”.
Today many Catholic faithful are unhappy about confession. And it doesn’t seem to have much to do with giving the Sacrament other names, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church does (CCC 423-24), with being able to choose between the traditional confessional and face to face, or with celebrating this Sacrament individually or in common with others (CCC14SO-84). But it stems from the culture of our society today who laugh at anything spiritual or that sin no longer exists.
SIN
The very word ‘sin’ has in recent years dropped from most
people’s vocabulary. In the world today with its general mood of
gloom and doom, one misses any mention of “sin”. It was a
word once in everyone’s mind but is now rarely if ever heard. Does
that mean that no sin is involved in all our present troubles...? Has
no-one committed any sins? Where, indeed, did sin go? What became of it?
What Jesus said about sin in his day is still valid today. Sin has not
changed but our perception of sin has changed. I think in the modern world
there are three reasons why our perception of sin has changed.
1. The first reason why sin has changed is that many former sins have become crimes, so that responsibility for dealing with them has passed from Church to State, from Priest to Policeman.
2. The second reason is that some sins have dissipated or at least into symptoms of sickness, so that in their case, punishment has been replaced by treatment.
3. A third convenient device called ‘collective irresponsibility’ has enabled us to transfer the blame for some of our deviant behavior from ourselves as individuals to society as a whole or to one of its many groupings.
Society is pleading not only for the reinstatement of the word ‘sin’ in our vocabulary, but also for recognition of the reality which the word expresses. Sin cannot be dismissed as merely a cultural taboo or social blunder. It must be taken seriously. We in the Church must be taken to task for soft-peddling and minimizing sin. Sin has a wilful, defiant, or disloyal quality: someone is defied or offended or hurt. To ignore this would be dishonest. To confess it would enable us to do something about it. Moreover, the reinstatement of sin would lead inevitably to the revival or reassertion of personal responsibility.
The emphasis of scripture, however, is on the godless self-centeredness of sin. Every sin is a breach of what Jesus called the ‘first and great commandment’, not just by failing to love God with all our being, but by actively refusing to acknowledge and obey him as our Creator and Lord. We have rejected the position of dependence and made a bid for independence. Worse still, we have dared to proclaim our self — dependence, our autonomy, which is to claim the position occupied by God alone. Sin is not a regrettable lapse from conventional standards; its essence is hostility to God, Romans 8:7, issuing in active rebellion against him.
Once we have seen that every sin we commit is an expression of this spirit of revolt against God, we shall be able to accept David’s confession: ‘Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight’ Psalm 51:4.
HUMAN MORAL RESPONSIBILITY
But is it fair to blame human beings for their misconduct? Are we really
responsible for our actions? Are we not more often victims of other agencies
than free agencies ourselves, and so more sinned against than sinning?
A whole gamut of scapegoats is ready at hand — our genes, our chemistry
(a temporary hormonal imbalance), our inherited temper and temperament,
our parents’ failures during our early childhood, our upbringing,
our educational and social environment. Together these seem to constitute
an infallible alibi.
TEMPTATION
Another scapegoat used by many Christians for falling into sin is temptation.
Temptation has been around since the beginning of time and it is still
being used as an excuse for doing evil. It should not be seen as a sign
of weakness. But it should be seen in a positive light as simply providing
a choice between good and evil. Every time you choose to do good instead
of sin, you are growing in the character of Christ. Temptation should
be seen as character building; Honesty is built by defeating the temptation
to be dishonest. Humility grows when you refuse to be prideful. Temptation
always begins in the mind, not in circumstances. It only becomes a sin
when you give in to it. The battle for sin is won or lost in the mind.
God says that it begins within us. Mark 7:21-23 [story of young man in
confession]
From the Bible we learn that temptation follows four steps:
1. DESIRE: Satan identifies a desire inside of you. It maybe a sinful desire or a desire for revenge or control.
2. DOUBT: Satan tries to get you to doubt what God has said about sin. Is it really wrong?
3. DECEPTION: Satan is the father of lies. Satan offers his lie to replace what God has already said in his word. It’s only a little sin.... There is no such a thing as a little sin just as there is no such a thing as a little Cross.
4. DISOBEDIENCE: Every parent knows that delayed obedience is really disobedience. Often we try to offer God partial obedience. We pick and choose the commands we obey. See God speaking on this issue in Deuteronomy30: We divide the commandments into categories we think are unreasonable, difficult, expensive or unpopular. Partial obedience is disobedience. Jesus says, ‘If you love me, you will obey my commandments.” John 14:15
JESUS DEFEATS TEMPTATION
At the beginning of his ministry Jesus was tempted in the desert, and
by using Scripture he
shows us how to resist temptation. From this experience of Jesus we can
see that there are five things we need to be careful about when resisting
temptation:
1. Don’t argue with the Devil — he’s better at it than
you
2. Use the Word of God as a weapon.
3. Don’t put yourself into positions that you know you are weak.
4.
You don’t defeat temptation by fighting the feeling of it. The more
you fight a feeling the more it consumes and controls you — like
puffing petrol on a fire.
5. Don’t repress it, confess it. Don’t conceal it, reveal
it. Holding your hurt only intensifies it. The reason we hide our faults
is pride. Whatever you can’t talk about is already out of control
in your life: finances, marriage, children, habits, sexuality etc. Will
power and personal resolutions are not enough.
TRANSPARENCY
In coming to the Sacrament of Reconciliation we need to come with an open
heart, we need to be transparent with God. It has to be a conscious decision
from you and we need to keep the following steps in our mind:
1. I must be completely honest about my faults and my feelings —
not perfect but honest. Your true feelings — not what you think
you ought to say.
2. I must choose to obey God in faith - Jesus made it clear that obedience is a condition of intimacy with God. True friendship is active — simple acts of obedience —
3. I must choose to value what God values. Care about things he cares about — to love sinners, the rejected, the abandoned — your neighbor.
4. I must desire reconciliation — more than anything else — Share your struggles - glory in weakness.
EXAMINATION OF CONSCIENCE
One big stumbling block to going to confession is the way we examine our
conscience. Very often we don’t seem to be able to find anything
worth confessing; or we come up with the same old faults time after time.
The root of the problem is that we think we have to examine our conscience
on our own instead of with the help of Our Lord Jesus and His Holy Spirit.
We don’t really know ourselves very well. We all have blind spots.
We are all forgetful. But Our Lord Jesus knows each one of us through
and through. He loves us as we are: not as we could be or as we might
be some day, but as we are now.
If we try to examine our conscience on our own, we run the risk of seeing things only from our own point of view. We misjudge our faults and weaknesses and even ignore some of them altogether. We can also get sick and tired of seeing the same old bad habits still there after all our good resolutions, and there is a strong temptation just to give up. Or we can go to the other extreme. Because we’re only skimming the surface, we can kid ourselves that we’re not really too bad after all. So we become complacent and rather pleased with ourselves.
Surely, then, it’s common sense always to examine our conscience in Our Lord’s presence and under his direction (CCC1454). The examination of conscience means allowing God to show us the truth about ourselves
I suggest four reflections for you to consider:
1. When was the last time I made an examination of conscience?
2. Does examination of conscience bore me, disturb me, or leave me happy?
3. What things would I rather not have on my conscience? What is weighing
on me, defiling me, oppressing me, making me what I do not want to be?
4. What would I have liked to be? How would I have liked to behave in
the situations which are weighing on me?
There are things, more or less serious, which each of us would rather not have done: ways of acting, responding, when we have failed to live up to the image we have of ourselves. In fact I can only repent of something which I myself have done. I did it and I don’t approve of it. To be able to do this is a sign of freedom of action, a sign of human moral maturity. There is cause for doubt if a person is always accusing others and justifying himself in everything. If in our confessions we always come round to accusing others and excusing ourselves, we show we have not taken even the first step towards Christian repentance. We don’t feel like admitting that the fault is always ours. More often repentance is blocked because we are not convinced that what we have done should not have been done. Maybe tradition and doctrine say we are wrong but secretly we feel that it is not so. In this case, repentance becomes difficult, superficial or artificial.
There is a passage in the Gospel of Luke which can give you a deeper experience of the sorrow for sin. It is the episode where Peter denies Jesus three times: “and immediately, while he was still speaking, the cock crowed. And the Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said to him, “Before the cock crows today, you will deny me three times.” And he went out and “wept bitterly” (Luke 22:54-62) Why did Peter burst out into tears? Up to that point he had a hazy knowledge of having done wrong, of having dishonored himself by betraying a friend. But it is only when Jesus meets him and looks at him, that Peter bursts into tears. At that moment he knows only one thing: I have denied this man, and he is going to die for me!
The revelation of guilt comes to a Christian when he meets Christ in his word and in himself.
CHRISTIAN JOY
Confessing ones sins should leave one feeling at peace with God and yourself
and filled with a deep joy that only can be received in confession. Scripture
shows joy as the fundamental Christian experience corresponding to a clean
heart. It is a heart without reproach because it has been made welcome
and completely restored by the loving Father.
~Create in me a clean heart, 0 God. Give me back the joy of being saved.” It is God’s saving joy which welcomes me, helps me and saves me.
It is the joy the adulterous woman spoke about in the Gospel of John (8:2-1 1). Some believe that this passage seems a passage condoning wrong-doing. And yet those who read it in that sense did not understand the creative pardon of God, the renewing power of His Spirit in the heart of a person. They did not understand God’s ability to make a new person, not as a result of human good will only but mainly through the creative power of the Spirit and the forgiving word of Christ. Christ never took sin lightly. He forgive the woman but did not condemn her but said “Sin no more
THE PENANCE
When I, as minister of the Sacrament, consider the “PENANCE”,
I begin to feel a little uneasy. For a priest it is perhaps one of the
most difficult moments. The priest asks himself: What penance is really
appropriate to the path this penitent is following? How can I in such
a short space of time single out the penance which will be the fruit of
a specific conversion for this person? What would be really useful for
expressing this particular life’s journey? You see, the confessor
often escapes from this difficulty by suggesting one or other of the set
prayers. To find a satisfactory answer we need to go back to the Scriptures
to a passage that shows a penitential encounter between Zacchaeus and
Jesus. Lukel9:1-1O. In this meeting, Zacchaeus carries out a series of
successive exterior and interior acts, some of which are the prelude,
others the consequence, of Christ’s word of forgiveness.
‘1. The outward action is that Zacchaeus welcomes Jesus joyfully
2. The inward action is that Zacchaeus decides to give to the poor half of what he has, and to make reparation in an extraordinary measure for the wrong done. Zacchaeus says: “Lord I now give the half of my goods to the poor and if I have defrauded anyone I restore it fourfold.” It is the penitent, social, civic and community effect of the way he has been following. It is the “fruit of repentance” flowing from his reconciliation.
JOY AND RESOLUTION
However, there are still two things to underline in this journey of Zacchaeus.
1. First of all the joy with which he accompanies his action, a joy which makes him extraordinarily — we might almost say recklessly — generous is beyond all calculation. He has been transformed by friendship and reconciliation with Jesus and so what is important to him is to let the abounding joy of it ring round him, as a sign of his conversion. The first fruit of the penitential encounter is joy, welling up in us, which makes us do with ease things that we would not have been prepared to do before hearing the word of Jesus.
2. The second point to underline in Zacchaeus’ journey is that he himself suggests to Jesus the “penance” he wants to do and Jesus approves it. Zacchaeus suggests something uncharacteristic of a greedy, scheming, covetous person like himself. He knew how to pick on his weak points and to base his renewal on this. For him the ‘fruit of repentance” is generosity to the poor, prompt reparation for the wrong he has done to others (not long prayer formulas, not pilgrimages, not external acts which are not suitable in this case). It is his own personal and exactly right for him. Jesus gives his approval and says: “Today salvation has come to this house.”
Perhaps it is the penitent who can help the confessor. I can ask this sister or brother who has come to me: what penance do you think would be useful to you? What good work or prayer or reparation corresponds to this point on your journey?
I would now like to propose two questions for you to reflect on quietly.
1. Does the joy of Zacchaeus go with me in the Sacrament of Reconciliation? If it is not ordinary with me to experience joy in confession, why not? I am speaking of a deep—seated joy, not something superficial.
2. The second question calls for a longer silent refection. If I had to suggest to the priest a penance suitable for me at this point in my life, what would I say? This is a demanding question because it brings home to us not only failings and sins but also negative tendencies and the need to sort out what I can strike at the root of what is wrong in me. We are looking for acts of penance which are a fruit worthy of personal conversion. If I am aware, for example, that my sins and failings spring from selfishness, there will come to mind as a fitting penance an act of real generosity which will actually cost me a lot. If I find that some of my sins come from sloth, a penance will emerge that is a victory over laziness, greediness, lack of energy, and everything which makes my life idle, listless and boring. If I agree that my failings derive from antipathy, not accepting a particular person, then there will surface a gesture of attentiveness for that person, something simple but which really involves me.
READINGS John: 8 Luke 19: 1-10 James4: 7-9 Luke22: 54-62
EXAMINATION OF CONSCIENCE
My relationship with everyone:
Ask yourself and the Lord in his presence (CCC1928-42)
Do I despise any group of people? If so, why?
Do I discriminate against any group or individual because of race, religion, nationality, politics, age, profession, gender, any other reason?
Do I consider any group or individual inferior to me? If so, why?
When someone has needed me, have I refused to help? If so, why?
If so, what else do I do for Christian unity? If I do little or nothing, why?
My relationship with God’s other creatures
Have I spoiled any part of creation? If so, why? (CCC 2415).
Confess the answers and the examples.
Have I abused animals by cruelty or neglect? (CCC2416-1 8).
Have I been wasteful?
Am I too fond of money? Of material things? (CCC 2551-57)
Do I act as though everything I have is mine to do what I like? If so, why? Confess the attitude and the examples.
Am I open—handed and generous? Or tight fisted and mean? If the latter, why? Confess the answer and the examples.
Do I drive responsibly and with consideration for others?lf not why? (CCC 2290). Confess the answer and examples.
Do I make positive contributions to the community? If not, why? (CCC 223543, 2255-56)
Do I take my vocation seriously and live up to my responsibilities? If not, why? (CCC2427-28, 1604)
My relationship with myself:
Do I feel angry often?(CCC 2259, 2262, 2302.)
If so is it because I expect everything and everyone to march my beat?
Am I acting as though I were God?
Am I seeking to know God’s will so that I may consent and cooperate? If not, why?
Am I unwilling or afraid to say “Yes to God? If so, why?
Do I prefer my own plans?
Do I cherish and care for my body as the gift of God? If not why? (CCC 364-65)
Have I been greedy, lustful, or lazy? If so, why? (CCC 1866).
Do I live by the pleasure principle: I want what I want when
I want it” in any area of my life?