Sin Is Like A Cancer On The Soul

Failing to deal with sin is like failing to deal with a cancer in our bodies. Sin, left unchecked, will eventually kill us spiritually. It will weaken our wills and cloud our minds so much so that our sense of right and wrong is distorted. We won’t recognize sin or we will justify it or rationalize it. This happens all the time. Just as we can be out of touch with our bodies and not recognize various symptoms of disease, so we can be out of touch with our souls and not recognize how distant we are getting from God and his ways. Hence, the importance of confession — ideally, regular confession. Regular confession, properly prepared for has a tremendous potential to keep us spiritually tuned up or tuned into God. Of course, confession, being a sacrament of the Church, is also a source of grace, which we always need to fight sin.

Prayerful Preparation Is Very Important

One reason why our confession may not impact our spiritual lives in any significant way is poor preparation. We need to take time to prepare prayerfully for the sacrament of reconciliation. We need to ask the Holy Spirit to show us where there is sin in our lives. The following are some suggestions. Set aside some time to reflect on your life, especially in relation to God, others and the larger world we live in. Ask God’s Spirit to help you to name attitudes and behaviors that are hindering you from walking closer to Christ and his ways. For example, many Catholics are prejudiced against certain groups of people and think that is okay. Well, of course, it is not. It is sinful —no ifs, ands or buts.

An opening prayer to our time of preparation might be:

“Holy Spirit, help me to prepare now for my next confession. Help me to know in my heart that l am confessing to a God who loves me very much and that no sin of mine can make God stop loving me. Help me to see and name any attitudes and behaviors that are hindering me from walking closer to Jesus. Help me to be truly sorry for my sins. Help me to have a true “purpose of amendment,” to have a true desire to change sinful attitudes and behaviors. Help me to experience your mercy and remove any fears or hang-ups I have about receiving this sacrament. Holy Spirit, I ask you to be also with everyone who will be receiving this sacrament this Advent. May it be a positive and healing experience. May all of us come away from this sacrament with a fresh desire to try harder to walk in your ways. “Amen.

Having prayed in the above or similar way, you might find the following helpful as you examine your conscience:

Relationship with God. Since my last confession, have I genuinely sought to nurture my relationship with God or have I neglected it? There are ninety 15-minute periods in every day. Do I honor my God by giving him at least one of those ninety 15-minute periods? Isn’t it hard for us to say God is important in our lives, if we do not give him at least 15 minutes of our exclusive time, time when he receives our total attention? We can and should try to pray at other times of the day as we walk drive our car, work around the house, lie in bed, etc. But, we should also give God exclusive time when our total focus is seeking to be present to him. A part of this time should be spent in listening. God, through the psalmist, says to us: “Be still and know that I am God.” Too often we are very busy during our prayer, busy reading, saying prayers -- all of which is good, but we must also be “non-busy” so that God is given a chance to speak to us. Don’t worry if you get distracted 10 times, just keep coming back to God. Every time we leave a distraction and turn back to God, we are choosing God over the distraction and that in itself is an act of love.

Making an effort to be quiet for just two or three minutes is important because it gives God a chance to speak to us. Frankly, he may not speak to us in those few minutes but that is his business. Our business is to give him a chance. If I am in a conversation with you and I never shut up, how am I going to hear what you may want to say to me? God gave us two ears and one mouth. I wonder if in doing this he intended for us to listen twice as much as we talk. Perhaps. So, the first area to look at in our examination of conscience is our relationship with God and how we attend or do not attend to it.

Horizontal Relationships. This includes family relationships, neighbors, friends, and coworkers. Just pause and imagine yourself in these various relationship situations. Am I a positive or negative presence? Do I let go and forgive hurts or do I tend to harbor resentments? (This, of course, is very difficult in a situation where there is abuse. If possible, we should try to remove ourselves from such a situation.) We all feel angry at times. How well do I deal with anger? Do I express it in an appropriate way or in an inappropriate and hurtful way? If I have a temper that is destructive to family relationships, how ready am I to work at this area of my life so that it is not so destructive to my relationship with others? Am I willing to do whatever it takes to learn how to express my anger in a constructive way? (If interested, call the parish office for my article on Dealing with Anger.) Growing in the Christian life is intimately connected to how we negotiate our day-to-day relationships. Take a few minutes watching yourself on a mental TV screen move through the day. What do you see? Are you okay with what you see or would you like to change, with God’s help, some attitudes and behavior?

Our mouths can be a big issue, sins of the tongue. Speech is a beautiful gift - not everyone has it. We abuse this gift when we use the gift of speech to say nasty words to or about other people. Of course, at times we need to confront someone about a behavior or attitude that is hurting us. But how we confront is important. We can do this in a constructive way or we can blurt out the first thing that comes to our minds, thereby, adding more fuel to the fire. We may have satisfied our need to hurt and be nasty, but we have failed badly in our efforts to be a mature Christian. So, a second big area to look at is our relationships with others.

The Larger World We Belong To

We all belong to a larger world. This includes our church family, local city, our nation and global family. How do we see ourselves in this area? Do we just care about our own family and home or do we try to be a positive influence in our larger world. This may mean involvement in our church family, some organization in the city, being a good neighbor, charitable donations to ministries and organizations that are committed to alleviating poverty in our world. This is really big and important. The Last Judgment Gospel (Matt 25:31-46) makes it very clear that we are called to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, etc. In fact, Jesus made it clear that our eternal salvation or condemnation hinges on our response to the person in need. Our global family is in dire need of help. None of us can solve the whole problem.. But, all of us can do something. Do we? This is an important question. To what extent do we have a heart of compassion for the poor people in our human family? So, the above are three areas we can use to guide our examination of conscience. As I said, we need to set aside at least 15 minutes to sit down and look at how we are doing in at least the above three areas.

Pray For The Grace Of True Contrition

In the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the first challenge, with the help of the Holy Spirit, is to name attitudes and behaviors that hinder us from drawing closer to Christ. The second challenge is to pray for the grace to be truly sorry for our sins. Frankly, we may sometimes not feel particularly sorry for our sins. In fact, we may even enjoy them. For example, we may have enjoyed bringing someone down a peg with a remark and we may or may not feel a bit contrite for the putdown we indulged in. We may or may not be contrite for racial slurs we have made, for missing Mass, for judgmental remarks about the poor. We may or may not feel contrite about the cold treatment we indulged in with our spouse or friend or neighbor.

If we do not feel sorrow for sin, we shouldn’t let on we do. But, we certainly can and should pray to God for the grace of true contrition. If we have little or no desire to pray for the grace of true contrition, we are, to be frank, in a bad spot, spiritually. Our hearts have become hardened, uncaring and cynical. Hopefully, very few of us are in that situation. Finally, sometimes we may not feel contrite even though we desire it and pray for it. We should not worry if this is our situation. The very fact that we desire and pray for true contrition is very pleasing to God. In the sacrament of reconciliation, our third challenge is to trust that God has truly forgiven us for our sins. Only the devil wants us to believe otherwise. The fourth and final challenge is to carry out the penance the priest/confessor gave to us.