A SAINT JOSEPH HOME
Father Ronald Knott
January 12, 2017
OUT WITH THE OLD
PART ONE
11:00 am - Mass Homily
“Clearing
the Old Weeds: A Simple Way to Make a Great Confession”
Rev. Ronald Knott
January 12, 2017
A leper came to him and kneeling down begged him and said,
“If you wish, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity,
Jesus stretched out his hand, touched the leper, saying,
“I do will it. Be made clean.”
Mark 1:40-45
President Clinton was forced by
the press to “fess up” for his behavior with Monica Lewinsky. Before that, TV
evangelist Jimmy Swaggert, who is known for criticizing the Catholic Church for
our Sacrament of Confession openly wept and confessed his sins of adultery to
the world - on television. Today, not a day goes by now that somebody is not
confessing his or her sins to a twelve-step group, talk show audience,
counselor or kiss-and-tell book writer. Indeed, the old saying “confession is
good for the soul” seems to be true. There is a natural need for human beings
to “unload” and “get things off their chests.”
The Jews have Yom Kippur or Day
of Atonement. On that day in ancient times, Jews pinned their sins to a goat
and turned it loose into the desert, thus the term “scapegoat.” Moslems have Ramadan, the holy season which
“scorches out sins with good deeds.”
I’ve heard that native Americans had a tradition called the “Eater of
Impurities,” whereby each member of the tribe was invited to sit down with a
wise man before a high holyday and bring to mind some thought or action that
they felt they must hide. After encouraging them not to be afraid, he would
say, “now give me that thought” and it would be shared between them and the
darkness in which it was held was dispelled.
Confession may not only be good
for the soul, it may even be good for the body. What the ancients knew is now
being scientifically documented by people like James Pennebaker of Southern
Methodist University. Baring your soul can not only calm your heart, research
suggests it can lower blood pressure. In the laboratory, white blood cells of
“confessing” participants proliferated. Six weeks later, their T-lymphocytes
were still showing signs of stimulation. Other research revealed that
distressed people tend to have weakened immune systems and that those who keep
the pain to themselves are most likely to sicken. This research concluded that
the health benefits of “confession” tend to be proportional to the seriousness
of the matter “confessed.” It even
concluded that we “confess” most readily in dark or dimly lit settings and if
the location is unique or unusual. Did we throw out those old confessionals too
soon?
We Catholics have the Sacrament
of Reconciliation, a place to unload one’s guilt and celebrate God’s unconditional
forgiveness for whatever we have done or failed to do. It’s a time to “own up”
and “let go.” It is a moving experience for both priest and penitent when it is
celebrated with the right spirit. I have been moved to tears many times. When
it is done under duration or without having one’s heart in the right place it’s
real power is diminished dramatically. The regular celebration of the Sacrament
of Reconciliation may have fallen on hard times, but it may still be our best
kept secret, even among Catholics.
Why confess to anyone, much less
a priest? The main reason is because our sins are not just personal, they are
also communal. The priest, in confession, not only puts God’s forgiveness into
human words, but as a representative of the community, he puts into words the
forgiveness of the whole community. That beats having to go from person to
person, asking for forgiveness. As St. Paul tells us, “Whenever one member
suffers, the whole body suffers.” We are
not a collection of loners, we are a community called humankind. We are
responsible to each other and for each other. In the Sacrament of
Reconciliation we not only hears the forgiving words of Jesus, but also the
forgiving words of our brothers and sisters.
Why confess to anyone, much less a priest? When Jesus appeared to his disciples in the
locked room after he had risen from the dead, he told them “Whose sins you
forgive, they are forgiven. Whose sins you retain, they are retained.” The
celebration of the forgiveness of sins has been celebrated by the church, ever
since, in three major ways: in the sacrament of baptism sins are forgiven, in
the sacrament of the anointing of the sick sins are forgiven and in the
sacrament of reconciliation or confession, sins are forgiven. One of the most
humbling roles of a priest is to lead the church in the celebration of these
healing sacraments.
Even though the Sacrament of Confession has fallen on
bad times, it is not because we have quit sinning. It is more due to the
fact that we have lost our sense of sin. We ran off the road with a too strong
message of guilt when I was a kid. Now we have run off the other side of the
road with a message that there is nothing to be guilty about. St. John tells us
that “if we say we never sin, we make Jesus a liar and his word finds no place
in us.” We don’t come right out and deny that we have sinned, we just rename
our sins so that they don’t sound as bad, and if they don’t sound as bad, we
can more easily live with them. People
today don’t actually “steal” from work, they just “take a few things.” People
today don’t “kill unborn babies,” they “terminate pregnancies.” People today
don’t “commit adultery,” they merely “have an affair.” People don’t “cheat,”
they merely “stretch the truth.” When the Watergate scandal broke in the Nixon
administration, they did not “break the law,” it was called “misguided zeal.”
Our State Department sent out a memo several years back saying that
“assassinations,” in Central America should from then on be called “the
unlawful deprivation of life.”
Euthanasia is “mercy killing” or “death with dignity.” Notice the use of
the words “mercy” and “dignity.” Changing the names of sins by using euphemisms
is a lot more popular than changing sinful behaviors. A euphemism is the substitution of a mild,
indirect, or vague term for a harsh, blunt, or offensive one. And then if it is
not really that bad, then what is there to confess?
I can think of nothing better to recommend to you for
a “prayer day” than seriously preparing for an honest celebration of this
sacrament of reconciliation. Take some time to prepare. Pray over it. Dump all
the guilt and grudges in your life. Bag it all up and dump it at the feet of
Jesus. Pin it on the “Scapegoat,” Jesus Himself. He will gladly take it
from you. Like the Indian medicine man I talked about before, he invites you to
“give it to a priest” and “let him assure you of God’s forgiveness” as you “let
it go.” You will feel great.
One of the best confessions I have ever heard was from
an elderly man many, many years ago. He was about to die but managed to talk his son into bringing him to church for his last confession. He was convinced he
would go to hell if he didn’t because he was carrying a secret sin from many
years that he was unable to share with
a priest. He was convinced she would go to hell if he didn’t confess it and
all the “bad communions” he had made ever since. He struggled to get his walker into the
confessional. He also struggled to get up enough courage to say the words. I
helped him out. I told him he did not have to say the words. I would guess
until I got to it and all he had to do was say “yes” when I got to it. I
guessed it in about three of four guesses. I didn’t talk about it or discuss
it. I just gave him absolution. He said to me on his way out, “Father, I have
never had anyone talk that nice to me!”
He left and literally died in about a week. His daughter called to tell me, saying, “I don’t know what my father told you and I
don’t know what you told him, but he came out of that confession grinning from
ear-to-ear, saying “OK! I am ready to die!”
If there is anyone of you who is carrying some deep
dark secret sin that you have been carrying, unable to confess, this is your
lucky day. Come to me and simply say, “I have some old sins that I would like
forgiveness for, but I can’t talk about them.” I will pause for a few seconds,
pray quietly as you call it to mind. I will then give you absolution without discussion. I believe it is
the right thing to do under these circumstances.
I am available for confessions from, from 1:00 till
2:00. We will then finish with a
conference at 2:30 in the chapel.
12:00 pm - Lunch
1:00-2:00 pm –
Opportunity for Individual Confessions
IN WITH THE NEW
PART TWO
2:30 pm - Prayer Day Conference
“Planting
a New Garden: Building A Renewed Spiritual Life in Your Senior Years”
January 12, 2017
“No longer do
I believe because of someone else’s word.
I have heard for myself and now I believe.”
John 4:4-42
After seventeen years of service, I retired from
Bellarmine University last June. What I tried to do there is to encourage young
adults to choose God, not because their parents have told them to, not because
other people have said they should, but because they have gotten to know God
personally and want to know more about God.
I tried to encourage them to choose, on their own, to be a serious
disciple of Jesus. I couldn’t give them
the gift of faith, only God can do that, but I thought I might be of help,
simply by sharing what I know about the scriptures and from walking the
spiritual path myself for the last 73 years. I challenged them to say, like the
people of Samaria said to the woman at the well, “No longer do I believe
because of someone else’s word. I have
heard for myself and now I believe.”
In this wonderful story, after one of his many hot
walking trip around Galilee, Jesus runs into a woman, while looking for a drink
of water at the communal cistern. Even though it was illegal for a man to speak
to a woman in public, even his wife and daughters, Jesus breaks the rules and
engages this woman in a conversation, a conversation that leads to her
conversion.
As the story unfolds, the whole town comes to believe
in Jesus, at first because of her story, but later because of their
own experience - after engaging Jesus in a conversation themselves. “No
longer do we believe because of your word. We have heard for ourselves and have
come to believe on our own.”
Let me confess something to
you. Most of my priestly life I have felt guilty about my spiritual life. I
always felt I was trying to fit into a spiritual life designed for others, but
one that didn’t fit me. It was like wearing the wrong size shoes. As a priest,
it got worse. It was always a battle between time for my prayer life and time
for my ministry.
As a seminarian formed by
Sulpician priests and Benedictine priests for twelve years, then a diocesan priest
for almost thirty-seven years, and finally back in a Benedictine-run seminary
as a diocesan-priest staff member for ten years, I had the advantage of seeing
“diocesan priest spirituality” from both sides: how it’s taught in the seminary
and how it’s lived in the real world of a diocesan priest.
Additionally, as a vocation
director for seven years, I can say that the spiritual formation of seminarians
today is excellent, but because it is derivative of charisms not necessarily
our own, I can say from experience that it does not often translate well after
ordination. (1) There is great emphasis, for example, on more and more communal
prayer and group activities, when overnight most of us will be praying alone
and living alone for the rest of their lives. 68% of all American priests now
live alone and number is growing. (2) They are taught personal spirituality,
but not necessarily how to be spiritual leaders and teachers of spirituality.
As such, with ordination they become “designated” leaders, but not necessarily
“real” leaders.
Most writers on the subject
of the spirituality of diocesan priests agree on two things: (1) the diocesan
priest’s spirituality is eclectic, an amalgam of quasi-monastic Jesuit,
Dominican, and Franciscan spiritualities often filtered through Sulpician and
Irish approaches to the spiritual life (2) the diocesan priest continues to
search for a spirituality properly his own.
Even today, especially when
I worked with seminarians, as well as ordained priests, I hear that many
struggle with a spirituality that works for them. It was common to hear
seasoned pastors tell me, “By the time I finish all my pastoral duties, I don’t
have time for a prayer life.” It was common to hear newly ordained priests tell
me, “By the time I finish my Holy Hour, my Chaplet of Divine Mercy, my Rosary,
my Stations of the Cross and my Breviary, I don’t have time for ministry.” New
priests today tend to run off one side of the road while older priests run of
the other.
A few years ago, I had a big
“breakthrough” in my spiritual life. My
“spiritual life” became “my” spiritual life. It released me from guilt. It started with these words from Pope John
Paul II. “There is an intimate bond, a deep unity, between the priest’s
spiritual life and the exercise of his three-fold ministry of word, sacrament
and spiritual leadership.” Pastores Dabo Vobis III,26. I finally learned that, for me, preparing to preach is a spiritual practice for me, preparing to celebrate the
Sacraments with people is a spiritual
practice for me and leading people spiritually is a spiritual practice for me. I also learned the same thing from
the Catechism of the Catholic Church (#1534) that says “If priesthood
contributes to personal holiness it is
through service of others that it does so.”
No longer do
I believe because of someone else’s word.
I have heard for myself and now I believe.”
What about you? I suspect some of you have been in the
same predicament as me – trying to force yourself to fit into someone else’s
spirituality and feeling guilty all the time that it doesn’t feel comfortable
to you. Well, let’s talk about that for
a bit and see what you can do about it. If I didn’t believe you can teach old
dogs new tricks, I would have agreed to do this prayer day to begin with!
I believe that developing one’s prayer life is a lot
like trying on shoes. To make it fit comfortably, you don’t file your foot down
to fit the shoe, you stretch and shape the shoe to fit your foot!
One of the good things about the Catholic Church is
that it has a huge shoe store with all sizes, shapes and designs. We have many
pious practices and prayer styles -
anything from meditation, Lectio Divina, spiritual journaling, novenas, the
Rosary, Stations of the Cross, candle lighting, memorized prayers, printed
prayer cards, Anointing of the Sick, the Liturgy of the Hours, pilgrimages, Mass, Holy Hours, Reconciliation,
chaplets, hymn singing and the veneration of relics to name a few. Some of on
that list appeal to me more than others. Some do not appeal to me at all – and
I don’t feel guilty about it at all! I don’t need to feel guilty that every
shoe in the store doesn’t fit me! I like
slippers more than boots. I can wear sandals sometimes, but I have a priest friend
in California who won’t wear anything but
sandals. I don’t see the point of high heels, even though I know a woman
who has nearly 100 pairs of them. Almost every shoe I own is black, but I know
people who wear nothing but brown shoes. Some of you can wear shoes off the
rack and some of you need orthopedic shoes. Like shoes, one-size does not fit all when it
comes to a personal spiritual life.
Sometimes, we need to re-evaluate our spiritual lives.
What worked when I was on the seminary staff does not work for me as a retired
priest. What worked for you as a married woman may not work as well for you as
a window. What worked when you could hear and see well may not work when
hearing aids don’t work for you or you have macular degeneration. You may have a friend who loves the rosary,
but you can’t get in to it, while you love journaling and your friend has no
interest in writing their own prayers.
We have the word “catholic” in our name for a reason.
“Catholic” means “universal.” Priests, if they are to be pastor all this
diversity, must realize that different approaches and strategies will be
required for their various parishioners. As St. Gregory Nazianzus said, and St.
Gregory the Great repeated, "One and the same exhortation does not suit
all" and "according to the quality of the hearers ought the discourse
of teachers to be fashioned."
Again, one size does not fit all.
Sisters and brothers, maybe this can be a good
opportunity to re-evaluate your spiritual lives. What worked in the past may
not be working well these days. God knows that you have had to adapt in so many
ways when you left your home to come here, just as I have had to do when I
“retired.” If your spiritual life is working, stick with it! If it isn’t, it
might be time to re-asses and even time to try something new.
(1) If you think you would like to start journaling and
maybe even writing your own prayers and thoughts, let me know and I can fix you
up with a journal and suggestions about journaling. What you write might even inspire your family
long after you are gone.
(2) If you would like to read prayers, let me know and I
can fix you up with a prayer book with lots of traditional Catholic prayers.
(3) If you would like to start saying the rosary again and
you don’t have one or forgot how, I am sure we can help you secure a rosary and
a little book with directions.
(4) If you would like to do some spiritual reading of some
little short reflections, I have 15 volumes. I can leave them somewhere and you
could take turns borrowing them.
(5) There are little books laying around the chapel with
daily Scripture readings for your use. You can read and pray over them ahead of
daily or weekend Masses as a way of preparing yourself for Mass.
(6) If you want to
try meditation, I have a one-sheet guide to help introduce you to it.
Whatever you do, find a way to pray that fits you.
Don’t feel guilty if it doesn’t. I have been trying to get myself ready for the
home stretch these day by re-assessing many things in my life, including how I
pray. At our ages, we ought to be able to say what the woman of the well said
in our reading this afternoon.
No longer do
I believe because of someone else’s word.
I have heard for myself and now I believe.”
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