I've
been “hearing confessions” for almost 55 years. I don't count my summer as a
bar tender in Crater Lake National Park in Oregon. If you want to test your
sanity, try listening to a couple hundred grade school confessions in one
afternoon. It’s like the drip, drip, drip of a water torture. If you want to
test your threshold for shock, try listening to confessions some afternoon in
about any center-city Cathedral. The stories on the trash TV are puny by comparison. And if you want to be stoned with
marshmallows, try the saintly confessions of retired nuns at your local
Motherhouse!
Seriously
though, as an obvious sinner myself, I have great empathy for those who have
failed. There is something wondrous about the privilege of announcing God's
unconditional love and forgiveness to a truly repentant sinner. Over the years,
I have had people write me, many years after the fact, about an especially
moving experience of reconciliation they have experienced in this sacrament.
But there is one common type of confession among some traditional Catholics
that sends me up the wall! It goes something like this. “Bless, me, Father. I
really haven't done anything wrong. I didn't kill. I didn't steal. I didn't
commit adultery. I didn't miss Mass or take God's name in vain!” In that
situation, I have probably sinned on some occasions by wanting to rip the
curtain back and strangle them on the spot! How often have I wanted to scream,
“Well, goodie for you! You are now at zero! When are you going to start living
the Christian life?”
I
realize where this comes from. Many Christians have tended to equate sin only
with doing bad things. The Christian life, in fact, is not just about avoiding
evil, it is also about actively doing good things. That is why the church's Confiteor is such a powerful old
prayer. It reminds us that we can sin by what we fail to do, as well as what we do!
I hid your money because I was afraid.
The
“sin” in this parable is what the third servant “failed to do.” To cover his
inaction, he uses the lame excuse of “being afraid.” He even blames his fear on
his master, calling him “a hard man.” But behind this fear and blame is the
root of all sin: pure old laziness The fact of the matter is: we are all
abundantly blessed with talents and gifts to be used, to be “invested” as the parable puts it. Spiritual and
personal growth is hard work and there is a part of us that is lazy, that wants
to take the easy way out, that backs off from the demands of life. There is a
part of us that does not want to exert ourselves, that clings to the old and
familiar, fearful of change and effort, desiring comfort at any cost and
absence of pain at any price. It is the call of sin. It must be stood up to!
It seems to me that all sin, both what we do and what we fail to do, has laziness at it root. To avoid all the work we need to do, we often look for an easy way out! We seek to feel good about ourselves, not by building ourselves up, but by tearing others down through gossip and character assassination. We cheat and steal from others as a way to get what we want rather than doing our own work. We lie to appear good rather than actually being good. We rationalize and rename our sins, rather than owning them and eliminating them. We mask our problems and pains with alcohol and drug abuse, rather than confront them. Rather than doing the hard work of developing real intimacy, we fall for the short cuts: promiscuous sex and pornography. We “fail to do” because we are afraid; we give into our fears because we are lazy.
We
are here, first of all, to celebrate God's unconditional love and willingness
to forgive our sins. We are here, secondly, to express sorrow for the negative
impact our sins have had on others. We are here, thirdly, to pledge our “firm purpose of amendment.” The process of
healing our sinful habits begins with our willingness to name them. When we
name them, we have the possibility of standing up to them. Standing up to them,
with God's grace, we can eliminate them.
No comments:
Post a Comment