Hardly a day goes by when we aren’t reminded that life can end abruptly and cruelly, perhaps an airplane crash, a mass shooting, a natural disaster, or a traffic accident, to name just a few examples. In the gospel, we were told that some Galileans were killed in the temple. This prompted Jesus to ask if the victims were greater sinners than other Galileans because they suffered such a fate. His question doesn’t surprise me since many individuals presume that God decides the fate of people based on their conduct.
In his book, Why Bad Things happen to Good People, Rabbi Harold Kushner makes the point that God gives us free will so that we could love both God and others. Because of that, God cannot control our lives. Most tragedies happen not because God wills them but because people happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They made the choice that put them there and as a consequence they became victims. God knows the moment when we will die, but God doesn’t decide the manner of our death. Death happens as a consequence of the choices we make along the way.
On Ash Wednesday, as I put ashes on everyone’s forehead, I said, “Repent and believe in the Gospel.” Did the words sink in since then? In the Gospel today, Jesus cautioned his listeners twice, “If you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!” Death is one fate none of us can avoid, but as we know, eternal life is a whole new ball game. When we take our last breath, will we be welcomed to the eternal life of heaven or will we perish in the painful eternity called hell?
In the meantime, are we creating another form of hell for ourselves? Being human, we are like the Galileans. We are sinners so we too can perish because like the Israelites, we stumble into evil desires, fall into grumbling, and drift away from God, forgetting all the benefits that God is offering us. Sin, that is, any evil act that violates God’s will, has consequences, not only for the victim but also for the sinner. Unless we repent, we can find ourselves carrying around much dead weight that we call guilt.
Set in Paraguay in the late 18thcentury, the 1986 film, The Mission, recounts the Jesuits’ attempt to evangelize the Guarani Indians. One scene I will never forget is the climb by Rodrigo Mendoza. This humble penitent, once a proud army officer, now struggles to carry himself and his dead weight up to the top of Iguazu Falls. His dead weight is a huge net, tied to him with a thick rope that contains his helmet, sword and breastplate, instruments of his violent sinful past.
Like Mendoza, we struggle to move onwards and upwards on our life journey, hoping to eventually be with God in heaven. But often the weight of our sinful past holds us back and drags us down as surely as Mendoza’s net, stuffed with his sinful souvenirs, held him back on his arduous climb.
When he reached the top, Mendoza’s load was cut loose by his confessor. He was freed of his dead weight, just as we yearn to be freed from the sins of our past. And the great message of Jesus is that we can! While many times we can’t undo the past or pretend our past didn’t happen, the rope of guilt, which keeps us bound to our past sins can be cut, allowing us to continue our life journey with a greater sense of hope and peace. That is the central message of our faith.
The sacrament of reconciliation, known also as penance or confession, offers us an alternative to lugging around the dead weight of guilt by providing us an opportunity to take responsibility for the wrong we have done or the good that we have left undone. This sacrament provides the means for us to repent and draw closer to God rather than remain distant and estranged.
The Church teaches us that sin is either mortal or venial. While we can obtain forgiveness for our venial sins through a sincere act of contrition, we need to confess our mortal sins, which are defined as deliberate gravely offensive acts done with full knowledge of the evil of the act and full consent.
Granted, it is not easy to admit our sins to another person yet that is one of the values of this sacrament. Our personal confession merits a personal response and a personal act of forgiveness. After listening to the penitent, a confessor will often extend a penance that offers a spiritual prescription for healing based on the sins that were confessed.
We seek forgiveness for the specific sins we confess because these sins are the dead weight that weigh down on our conscience. How uplifting it is to hear the words of absolution spoken by a priest on behalf of Christ and his parting words, “Go in peace, your sins are forgiven.”
Many, I suspect, shy away from the sacrament because they imagine the priest will think less of them. Not so. What impresses many priests is not the sins they hear but the humility and the courage they encounter.
Jesus calls us to repentance, not a one time change of heart, but an ongoing, daily transformation of our lives. We are called to live the life we sing about in today’s psalm, blessing God’s holy name, forgetting not his benefits, but giving thanks for his kindness and mercy. Through this sacramental encounter, Christ seeks to fertilize our lives with his love and mercy, so that by turning away from sin and being faithful to the gospel, we can bear much fruit.