confession
The antidote for our hypocrisy is to accept our poverty.
The Lord said to him, “Although you cleanse the outside of the cup and the dish, inside you are filled with plunder and evil. You fools” (Lk 11:39).
Jesus’ harshest critiques were for acts of hypocrisy. He did so to show, in no uncertain terms, how dangerous this was, especially for religious leaders. These men were entrusted with the care of God’s people. They may have observed the proper rituals, spoke, and dressed to match the part but this all meant nothing if their hearts were hardened such that they were closed to the love and will of God. This situation was more perilous when they themselves became obstacles and stumbling blocks to those who sought God. Jesus indicting them as fools meant that they were bereft of the wisdom of God they projected to have.
In the depths of our very being, we seek and yearn for the transcendent, the infinite. We are spiritual seekers. We seek God while at the same time we experience suffering, injustice, and hypocrisy at the hands of the very ones who are our leaders in both the religious and political sphere. This is why Jesus convicted those who abused their positions because he knew the significant damage that they could inflict.
No one is perfect, our leaders nor ourselves. We all fall short of the glory of God, even those of us who seek and aspire to live by the Gospel. If we put anyone up on a pedestal, they, sooner or later, are going to fall, and the higher up they go, the greater the fall. God is to hold priority of place. We are to seek God first. God is to be our foundation, the light shining on the hill, our guide, and source.
One way we can sidestep the trap of hubris is by resisting the urge to project all is well and good, that we are fine when we are not. None of us are super men or women. If we think we can go it alone, on our own power and persistence, we will fall sooner or later. A hyper sense of self-reliance means we seek God and each other less for help and support.
When we turn to Jesus to reveal our weakness and our sin, we can experience his transformative and healing power in our lives. To be vulnerable, to allow Jesus to shine his light into our inner darkness takes courage, but when we open all of our lives to him, we will identify and be able to release our own “plunder and evil”. The Holy Spirit can also help us to trust one another with our weaknesses, faults, and shortcomings.
We are healthier and stronger when we accept our own spiritual poverty, where we need help, and reach out to ask for assistance. We are better when we entrust ourselves to Jesus and a core group of people we trust, firmly ground ourselves in the love of God and one another. We grow stronger when we support the unique gifts of each other while at the same time hold each other accountable. Isolated and in the darkness, our sin festers and grows. When brought into the light, sin starves and withers away.
Jesus challenges us to resist projecting an image of perfection when all is not well on the inside. When willing to reveal our weaknesses, sins, suffering, and pain, we can receive help, heal, and let go of carrying the weight of seeking an internal perfectionism. Healed and transformed from being the center of the universe, which we never were or never can be, we can let go of having to project an image of perfection. We can instead be free to be ourselves as God calls us to be and radiate his love as we receive his love. Instead of driving people to the nearest exit, we can begin to welcome people back home to be forgiven, healed, loved, and transformed.
Photo: Not a cloud in the sky. Would that we can say, no sin on our soul! We can get closer by seeking the cleansing healing from sin when we are willing to confess regularly and often.
Jesus, reveal to us our sins so that we can confess them and be free!
It is much easier to find fault in others, and in some cases, the act of doing so has become entertainment in the private as well as the public sector. Gossip has a seductive allure and can be consuming. Judging others is also a way to justify and or project our own inappropriate behavior onto others. We may even place ourselves in a false sense of exalted pride. Have we ever, not just stated, but, thought or prayed something along the same lines as the Pharisee in today’s Gospel? “O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity — greedy, dishonest, adulterous — or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income…” (Lk 18:11-12).
To pray any part of this prayer stunts the growth in our spiritual life because we are focused on ourselves instead of emptying ourselves before God. Anytime we rationalize, cover over, deny, or completely ignore our sinful behavior we create and support habits of selfishness. Left unchecked, we can become enslaved to them. Lent is a time for healing and transformation. To be able to heal from sinful attitudes and actions that have become habits, we first must be able to acknowledge and identify them.
Over time, reading more and more lives of the saints, I have come to understand that their recognition and their confession of their sinfulness was not just pious platitudes, but true presentations that they were growing closer in their relationship with Jesus. A simple example can help express where they are coming from.
When we drive our car while it is dark we don’t give much thought to the cleanliness of our windshield because we can see fine. Yet as the headlights from an oncoming car illuminate our windshield we can see how dirty in actuality it is. This can be evident in our spiritual life as well. The more we remain in our own darkness of denial or lack of slowing down to examine, we feel we are fine, all is right with the world. The closer we grow in our relationship with Jesus though, the more his light shines in our darkness, and reveals to us our sin.
Jesus invites us to resist the prayer of the Pharisee who prays comparing himself to someone else, who refuses to acknowledge his own sinful actions and instead emphasizes that we are to follow the honest humility of the tax collector, who did “not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed, ‘O God, be merciful to me a sinner’” (Lk 18:13). Now, Jesus is not saying this is the only way we pray. We have the opportunity to worship and praise the Lord joyfully, we can seek his help in praying for others through intercessory prayer or for ourselves in petitionary prayer, we can also sit in quiet meditation during adoration or out among God’s wonder of creation. Each prayer has its time and place and each type of experience of prayer helps us to grow and deepen our relationship with Jesus and each other. The key to our prayer is a lifting up of our heart and mind to God.
True humility is brought about by being willing to see who we are from God’s eyes. If we are to set a standard to live up to and if we are to compare ourselves to anyone, let it be Jesus. A daily examination of conscience is a healthy practice and discipline. When we invite Jesus to shine his light of love into the darkness of our fear and anxiety, we will see our sins. Jesus does not do so to shame and condemn us, but so that we can experience our sorrow and confess them so that we can experience God’s forgiveness, love, and mercy. Denying or refusing to look at our sins separates ourselves from God and each other.
One prayer I have found helpful over the last few years is the Jesus Prayer. It is very simple. Sit in a comfortable space, take a few deep inhalations and exhalations, then as you take the next breath in recite, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God,” and then as you breathe out say, “Have mercy on me a sinner.” You are breathing in the light of Christ and you are breathing out the darkness of your sin.
Traditional prayer ropes exist from the Eastern Orthodox tradition. They are made of wool, usually black, and have ten decades of ten beads. The bottom can also have a fringe representing the mercy of God wiping away our tears of sorrow. If you have neither a rosary or a prayer rope, you have your fingers. Start with a set of ten Jesus Prayer recitations each day so to embrace the light of Jesus that he may dispel the darkness of your sins, identify and confess them, and experience God’s love and forgiveness so that you may experience freedom from them!
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Photo: Praying the Jesus Prayer can free us from the gates of sin that enslave us.
“Put out into the deep!”
In the first reading, Isaiah speaks, “Woe is me, I am doomed! For I am a man of unclean lips, living among a people of unclean lips, yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts” (Isaiah 6:5)! And then in the Gospel after the miraculous catch of fish, Simon says to Jesus, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man” (Luke 5:8). Isaiah in his vision and Simon through the super abundant catch of fish both recognize that they are in the presence of God and in that presence they also wisely recognize and confess their sinfulness.
Both men clearly fall short of the glory of God and God meets them both, not with condemnation, but with an invitation. Isaiah is met by the seraphim who places an ember on his lips to purify his mouth and Jesus says to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men” (Luke 5:10). God did not ask either of them nor does he ask us if we are worthy. He asked Isaiah and Peter, are you willing to follow me? And both were willing to do so and be sent.
When we enter the sanctuary where Jesus is present in the consecrated hosts in the tabernacle, do we allow ourselves to experience the awe that we are entering a sacred space, a place set apart that is holy for God? We bless ourselves with holy water when we first enter the church, to remind ourselves that in Baptism we have died with Christ and have risen with him to become part of the new creation. We also remember our baptismal vows to reject the things of Satan and to say, “yes” to the will of God. We then genuflect, kneel on our right knee, again making the sign of the cross, invoking the Trinity of God as we acknowledge the presence of the Body of Christ in the tabernacle. For where the Son is present, so is the Father and the Holy Spirit.
As we come to our seats, allowing ourselves to be still and silent in the presence of God, we call to mind our sins as did Isaiah and Simon and seek God’s forgiveness that will be offered for our venial sins during the penitential rite during the beginning of the Mass. As Isaiah received the ember from the heavenly altar in his vision to purify his lips, so we receive the Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Christ, that has been represented on the altar during the Eucharistic rite. We are purified and transformed. Our hearts and minds are made new through the love of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit that has transformed bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ.
Simon, like Isaiah, was willing to experience the light of God coming through Jesus’ miracle. He did not roll and jump overboard, instead he remained in Jesus’ presence, and confessed his sinfulness. Simon, after fishing all night, was asked to do probably the last thing he wanted to do. Have some itinerant preacher enter his boat and command him “to put out a short distance from shore” so he could teach for a while. If that wasn’t enough, then Jesus, this carpenter, said to Simon, a seasoned fisherman, to “put out into the deep water and lower your nets”. In both cases, Simon, though reluctant, and not seeing any sense in the command, was willing to obey.
Because Isaiah and Simon were willing to trust, God happened. Their lives were transformed, and they were sent on mission. Most of us will not experience such a vision as Isaiah experienced but Jesus will come to us in the same way that he came to Simon. He meets us in the midst of our everyday lives.
So often we think or feel that it is our initiative that draws us closer to God, when in fact, the initiative is God’s. Our very desire to pray, to seek out God is already an awareness, a recognition of his invitation to draw close. God speaks to us in the silence of our hearts, through quiet invitations, and experiences. Each time we are aware, and each time, as did Simon, even when we hesitate, we still say “yes” to his invitation, we grow in our relationship with God.
Jesus comes to us as we are and loves as we are, even in our sin, but he doesn’t want us to stay there. When we are willing to become aware of our sin and faults and allow more of the light of Jesus to shine into the darkness of our lives, as we put out into the deep, as we go where the Holy Spirit leads us, beyond the horizon of our comfort zones and understanding, we will be forgiven, and blessed by the grace and wonder of God’s glory present in our lives. Apart from Jesus we can do nothing, but with him and following his guidance all things are possible. This is what Simon experienced in the miracle of the abundance of the fish filling his nets. What he could not accomplish on his own experience, skill, and strength, he did by following the invitation of Jesus and he became more acutely aware of the divinity of Jesus in his midst.
The deeper and more intimate our relationship grows with Jesus, the more our own sin is revealed to us. This is a gift to welcome, because in our awareness and confession of our sins we are freed from that which keeps us at a distance and prevents the growth of our relationship with the God who loves us more than we can ever imagine. When we face and confess our sin and weakness, and resist settling for mediocrity, we will grow in holiness, humility, and receive more of the light, love, and grace of Jesus such that we can grow beyond our fears, grow deeper in our relationship with him, so to better allow ourselves to be agents of his grace and mercy in the lives of those he brings into our realm of influence.
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Painting: Some quiet time with Jesus, listening to his invitation to, “Go into the deep.”
Humility, contrition, and confession are the pillars for forgiveness, love, and peace.
Logistically, to our modern minds, the setting of this verse may appear confusing. How could this “sinful” woman be standing behind Jesus such that her tears would fall on his feet? When we think of someone sitting and eating, we imagine them doing so by sitting in a chair. Thus, the feet would be toward the front of the person.
During the time period Jesus lived, the customary practice when eating was not to sit at all but to recline. Thus, the woman was standing behind the feet of Jesus as he reclined, and her tears fell on his feet. She then knelt down, dried his feet with her hair, and then anointed Jesus’ feet with the ointment she brought for him.
She did not rationalize, deny, ignore, or come grudgingly nor wait for Jesus to call her out, she came not asking for healing but with true contrition for her sins. Being in the presence of Jesus, when we are open to his love and experience his compassion, we are pierced to the heart with our own sorrow for the hurt we have caused others through our sinful actions.
Those quick to point the finger at other’s sins, like Simon who judged this woman, are less apt to be aware of the depth of their own sin and thus “the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little” (Lk 7:47). We are not forgiven less because God is not willing to forgive but because God will not go against our free will. If we are unaware or unwilling to bring our sins forward in a contrite manner, we are cutting ourselves off from the healing forgiveness God wants so much to share with us. But if we, like the woman in today’s Gospel account, are willing to bear our soul with humility and sorrow we will not only be forgiven but experience a deeper outpouring of God’s love. The one who confesses truthfully, fully, and contritely is forgiven more and thus will love more.
We are offered the same gift of grace and forgiveness as she received. What if instead of hiding from, being in denial of, rationalizing, or justifying our sins, we acknowledged them and sought the healing forgiveness of Jesus as she did? In opening our hearts and minds to the forgiving and purifying love of the Holy Spirit there is pain, as there is in any healing, but there is also freedom. When we trust Jesus as she did with our deepest and darkest sins, we too can be forgiven, healed, and freed of the shackles that bind us and experience his love.
Don’t believe the lies of the enemy. God loves us more than our worst mistakes and sins. When we trust him, are contrite, confess, and willing to atone for our sins, the truth will set us free, and we will experience God’s love more fully and his peace more deeply.
Photo: Good to be still, quiet, breathe, and examine our lives from time to time.
Link for the Mass readings for Thursday, September 19, 2024
Which path will we follow? Judas’s or Peter’s?
The Gospel reading for today from John is painful on two fronts. First, Jesus said to Judas, “What you are going to do, do quickly” (Jn 13:27). Did their eyes meet at that moment, was there an unspoken appeal from Jesus to Judas, or had that already been settled in Jesus’ full surrender in the Garden of Gethsemane? Judas aligned himself with Satan and set his course, and removed himself from Jesus and his companions and it was night.
The second front appears at the end of today’s reading. Despite Peter’s apparent full endorsement of Jesus and promise to even lay his life down for him, Jesus predicted that “the cock will not crow until” Peter will deny him “three times” (Jn 13:38). The momentum of utter betrayal builds. Judas will agree to turn Jesus over for thirty pieces of silver. He will betray the Son of God, yet in so doing, Judas will play his part in salvation history.
Judas will set in motion Jesus’ arrest that will culminate in his crucifixion. Peter will come to deny Jesus three times as Jesus predicted. I cannot think of any experience worse than the pain of betrayal. And yet, if we read these passages closely, they ought to convict us to the heart. How have we betrayed Jesus? This is an important question to ask, and what is even more important is that we not only answer it honestly but seek forgiveness and resist the temptation of isolating ourselves in our sin and pride when we come to admit where we fall short.
Judas separated himself, cut himself off from Jesus and his companions. He came to realize his sin, though he did not seek forgiveness, but isolated himself further and in his despair took his life. Peter, also regretted his sin, his cowardice, he wept when he heard the cock crow, but he also trusted, and later affirmed his love for Jesus three times, atoning for his three denials and was forgiven.
This Holy Week we can choose to walk the path of Judas or Peter. With each humble step, may we come to see how our spirits are often willing but our bodies are weak, that we have been wounded by others and acted in kind. We have also fallen short of who God has called us to be in what we have done and what we have failed to do.
Awareness of our unworthiness is a good thing. We must resist isolating and beating ourselves up though. The confessional is not a place of condemnation but a place of healing. With each confession, we don’t go back to the beginning and start all over, the grace of each confession builds on the past one, and strengthens us to resist temptations going forward.
Jesus has not come for those who are worthy, he has not come to call the righteous, but he has come to call us sinners to repentance (cf. Luke 5:32), and this is good news! Jesus will receive us when we are humble enough to admit our sins and willing to be forgiven and so healed. In this way, we can learn from Peter. Even if we have betrayed Jesus and each other, Jesus is willing to forgive us too so that we will become wounded healers as well!
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Painting: I have experienced many blessings these past two years, one being walking down this ramp each evening for a Rosary walk! St. Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary, Boynton Beach, FL.
Link for the Mass reading for Tuesday, March 26, 2024
Confession – Intimate and healing encounter with Jesus.
“So they went off and preached repentance” (Mark 6:12).
They, being the Twelve Apostles, preached repentance. There is a pattern. John the Baptist called people to a baptism of repentance. The first words of Jesus’ public ministry were, “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent and believe in the Gospel” (Mark 1:15). And now in today’s Gospel, the Twelve are going off two by two preaching repentance.
What does repentance have to do with us almost two thousand years later? What repentance had to do then. We all have in the deepest part of us a yearning to belong, to be part of, to be loved. We want to be seen, heard, and understood. We want our lives to have meaning, fulfillment, and a sense of worth and dignity. This deepest longing has been placed in us to be filled by God and as we receive and abide in God’s love, we are better able to encounter and share his love with each other.
The problem is that since the Fall, we all fall short of the glory of God. The good news is that we have not been totally corrupted. We are still good. Even though we have intentionally and consciously chosen to turn away from God and seek to feed our deepest longings with something or someone other than God. We can change. We can come to realize that who and whatever we place before the Father separates us from a deeper and more intimate communion with him.
We can realize that when we sin, we turn away from God, isolate ourselves from God, and feel the loneliness of that choice. This worsens when we decide that we don’t need God, that we are self-sufficient, and can take care of ourselves. Our hunger grows and is unsatisfied by the finite ways we try to fill our infinite hunger. The answer then is to slow down, be still, and listen to the invitation of God that he constantly offers and then to decide to repent, to turn back to him, to change our heart and mind.
What we see in the path blazed by John the Baptist, Jesus, and then his Apostles are the seeds of the Sacrament of Confession which Jesus will institute with the Twelve in the upper room after his Resurrection. Jesus has experienced the loneliness of the separation that we all feel in our sinful state. Only he felt it much more intimately and profoundly as he received the full assault of the weight of all our sin on the Cross. And what did Jesus do when he met the same Twelve who betrayed him? He forgave them and called them to forgive others in his name.
Jesus instituted the Sacrament of Confession to help provide the healing we need to repent and to turn back to the Father. He gave this gift to the Apostles who then passed it on to their followers, and who then successively passed this gift on through each generation of priests to our present day. Confession is a grace, a bridge that leads back to the Father that keeps on giving for those who come to receive this miracle of healing. “Confession is the personal gift of redemption, always unique, to each person, just as each person can accept and apply it” (Confession, Adrienne von Speyr, p. 93).
God the Father loves us more than we can imagine, and he wants us to experience his love. Confession is one of the most intimate ways we can experience his love. We are only as sick as our secrets. In Confession, we can bring forth the deepest and darkest of what we have done and what we have failed to do. We don’t need to buy into the lie that we will be abandoned if anyone knew. Instead, Jesus, who was abandoned, does not abandon us. Jesus forgives, loves, heals, frees, and restores us so that we can experience what we have been created for, to be loved by God and to love him and each other in return.
Photo: Rosary walk St. Vincent De Paul Regional Seminary, Boynton Beach, FL.
Spiritual Stepping Stones 