3rd Sunday Advent B - Homily 3

Homily 3 - 2011

I want to share a few thoughts today about the sacrament of reconciliation and one of the ways it is celebrated – with one priest, one penitent.  Yet I know in the short time I have to talk about it now, I can barely touch the surface.  I feel that people have so many unhelpful attitudes to it – so many unhelpful memories associated with it, that I am sometimes tempted to wonder if anything helpful can be rediscovered and nurtured.  I believe it can be … but it will require a fair bit of letting go, a fair bit of re-thinking, and a fair bit of changed attitudes, at least for most.

Essentially, like all sacraments, reconciliation is a sacrament primarily for adults.  That nearly all of us first experienced it as children has had the unfortunate effect, for many, of muddying the waters.  Like all sacraments, it is a celebration - a moment of celebration in the midst of all the distracting day-to-day activities that fill our lives.

Believe it or not, the focus of this sacrament is not ourselves and our sins, - not even forgiveness - but God.  We celebrate the consistent, wonderful, certain, never-failing, unconditional love and mercy and forgiveness of God.

The point of telling - of talking about - our sins is not to humiliate us.  Jesus never humiliated anyone, particularly sinners.  Given where we’re at on our journey into the heart of God, we may feel humiliated by our sins, ashamed of them, particularly, any sexual sins, but one of the reasons for celebrating the mercy of God is to wean us away from humiliation, and to let it evaporate in the warmth of God’s love.   Humiliation comes simply from our preoccupation with ourselves.  Despite how it feels, it is an expression of pride: “I have let myself down.”  “I am not perfect.”  Big deal!  If that’s important, we’ve got it wrong.  Mind you, being aware that humiliation and shame are products of our pride, doesn’t make them go away.  But, at least, we can see them in perspective.

Well, what is the point of confessing my sins? A major point of it is to make real, for myself, the wonderful mercy of God: “This me God forgives! Isn’t God great!”  By naming and owning my sin to myself, I bring God’s mercy out of the clouds, out of theory, into reality.  Till then, it’s all theoretical, detached.  And, also, by owning my sin, I enable the love of God to reach down deeply into it and to get on with the business of healing it.

But, isn’t it enough to own it to myself?  Why mention it to another? to the priest? Perhaps, it is enough to own the inescapable and undeniable fact of my sin to myself – but that’s easier said than done.  We’re all  masters of evasion.  We kid ourselves so easily.  Saying it out loud, hearing ourselves saying it, knowing that another is hearing me, helps me to move from half-owning to fully owning.  And, until I fully own my sin to myself, sin still has me “by the throat”.  I am not free.

I might also add that the person and the attitudes of the priest here can be important.   A priest who is not only non-judgmental, but positively understanding and accepting and non-shockable (a priest, in other words, in touch with his own sinfulness) can be very helpful in my coming to own myself, and to open to the warm, gentle mercy of the God who loves me always – and, in the process, to move on from absorption with myself to truly celebrate the mercy of God.

I’ve just scratched the surface.  Keep up the reflection yourselves – and be honest.  Listen to your questions, to your “yes buts”, and do something with them.  Talk them over.  There may be other ways of viewing things.

In the meantime, let’s celebrate the Eucharist with the Christ, who, as he took the bread and cup of wine into his hands, gave thanks and praise to God - to the God who, at that moment, was empowering him to love to the end - the God who sent him to reveal, in that love, his own face and heart.