All of us are very familiar with the terms “sin” and “repentance” and yet our understanding of these concepts may be quite inadequate or misinformed. Recently, I reread a small book called The Way of Repentance by Irma Zaleski, a former university professor who now lives at Madonna House in Combermere, Ontario Madonna House is a community of lay people and religious who live a simple life. They pray, work on a farm and reach out to the poor in their area. Rereading Irma’s book got me thinking a lot about sin and repentance—something I also spent some time reflecting on at my recent retreat at Scranton University where I did a directed retreat with a Jesuit priest. Between now and Christmas, there will be several opportunities for those interested to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation. In this column I will share with you some reflections on sin and repentance. In next week’s column, I will offer some more reflections especially on the Sacrament of Reconciliation. One of the things that help us to make fruitful use of the Sacrament of Reconciliation is prayerful preparation. One of the main reasons why this sacrament makes little or no difference in many peoples lives is that they come to the sacrament with little or no preparation.
Sin—What is it?
Many Catholics are confused about sin and have been ever since Vatican II. Before Vatican II morality was a very black and white issue. We were clear on what was and wasn’t sin. Today, many are not sure. For example, before Vatican II, missing Mass for no good reason was considered a mortal sin, no ands, if or buts. One didn’t go to holy communion until one had confessed. Today, many Catholics will miss not only one Mass but lots of Masses for no good reason and not feel any need to go to confession. Most likely they may not even confess omission of Mass directly to God. What’s going on here? Other people will come to me and say: “it’s several years since my last confession. I can’t think of any sins have committed.” I’m Tempted to say “lets start your cause for canonization”. Others will confess that are very scrupulous about sexual sins e.g. “impure thoughts” and may have little or no conscience about much more important sins like insensitivity to the poor, the taking of another’s good name, pride, coldness towards a spouse. Still others of us may simply not want to face our sins because we may not be particularly sorry for them or because we don’t want to look at the dark or ‘less nice’ side of who we are. Instead, we want to stay “positive” and “upbeat”.
So What is Sin or the ‘Mystery of Iniquity”
Pope John Paul and some Early Fathers of the church sometimes refer to sin as the ‘mystery of iniquity’ because sin is a mysterious destructive force or reality. When we realize that sin is like a spiritual cancer and that it has the power to send us to hell for all eternity, why would we mess with it? Even the great St. Paul wondered about the mystery of sin in a celebrated passage in Romans 7:14-25 Paul wonders about his own behavior. He writes:
Genesis 3
One of the best descriptions of sin and its consequences can be found in Genesis chapter 3. (If you have access to a Bible while reading this column, you might want to open it to Genesis 3). In the opening chapters of Genesis, Adam and Eve ‘live in Paradise’. They live in harmony with God, with each other, creation and with themselves. All is literally peaceful and ‘rosy in the garden’. Then enters Satan and sin. Satan, depicted as a cunning serpent, slowly but surely tempts Adam and Eve to turn their backs on God, to loose their trust in him. As a result of allowing Satan to seduce and deceive them, Adam and Eve experienced the three consequences of sin:
So sin has some far reaching effects. It diminishes our relationship with God, others and self. Disharmony replaces peace and harmony. Sin leaves us spiritually wounded or spiritually dead if the sin or pattern of sin is serious enough. Some people today are spiritually dead. They have absolutely no sense of right or wrong.
In her book on Repentance, Irma Zaleski sees our first parents sin as a loss of trust in God. She writes:
The essence of our parents “fall” was not that they broke a specific commandment, but that they failed to trust God. Having experienced God’s friendship and love, surrounded as they were by the beauty and goodness of his creation, they listened to the voice of the Adversary, who accused God of jealousy and deception: of forbidding them to reach for the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil in order to protect his own power!
It is hard for us to understand how Adam and Eve could have done that, how they could have chosen to believe the devil rather than God. But they did, and in this lies the mystery of human freedom. Because of that choice, sin entered the world and the unity of all things was broken. Our first parents became estranged from God, from each other and from the rest of creation; they became fragmented in themselves and afraid. Because they had lost trust in God’s love, they did not ask for his forgiveness, but hid from him, blamed each other for their sin and were banished from Paradise.
“They lost their trust in God.” In the journey of life doesn’t this happen to all of us at times. During my retreat I did an exercise which asked me to write down the things I think God likes and dislikes about me. When I was finished with the exercise, I discovered (to my surprise) that the thing God, most likely, dislikes about me (or grieves about) is my lack of trust in him. Now I am trying to do something about this. Trust is so key to any relationship. Its absence hurts the relationship a lot.
One truth we must never forget when it comes to sin is that no sin of ours could ever stop God from loving us. God’s job description is to love us unconditionally, no strings attached. Of course, that does not mean that he is not disappointed or grieved by our sin. Of course, he is. Jesus wept over Jerusalem because of her refusal to receive him. (Matt 23:37-39). While his love is always there our sin can blind us to his love and cause us not to believe in it. When someone says “how could God love me with all my sins”, we can assume that sin and Satan has a strong hold over that person.
The Ugliness of Sin and Why We Often Are Unaware Of It.
We might ask: Why are we or others often numb to the ugliness of sin? It’s an important question. We might ask:
I could go on and on, but I think you get the point. There is absolutely no doubt about it we have been experiencing in our church and society for some time a clear loss of the sense of sin, a clear blindness to or denial of sin.
Thirty or so year ago, a famous psychologist, Dr. Carl Meininger wrote a book called Whatever Became of Sin? In this book Meininger who was not a Christian bemoaned the loss of the sense of sin in his clients (and colleagues). Meininger noticed that as long as his patients refused to take responsibility for their sin and wrongdoing they remained sick. But once they started to take responsibility they started to get better. Dr. Meininger also bemoaned the fact that so many of his colleagues were trying to be so “caring” to their clients that they failed to help them to take responsibility for their wrong doing. Instead they placed the blame on their dysfunctional upcoming and society.
So why are we so often blind to the spiritual cancer we call sin? I am not sure. Your guess might be as good as mine if not better. Here are a few possibilities.
Whether we like it or not this pervasive secular environment influences our attitudes and behaviors in ways that we are not often aware of. Our secular culture makes it easy for us to rationalize wrongdoing. It becomes easy for us to say “everyone is doing it”.
Before moving unto repentance a final word or suggestion. I think it would be wise for us to occasionally pray for the grace to see the true ugliness of sin. “Lord open the eyes of my heart to glimpse even in a small way sin as you see it. Never let me be comfortable ’being in bed with the enemy’. Another way for us not to loose touch with the ugliness of sin is to periodically meditate on the passion and sufferings of Christ. After all it was the sins of humanity that caused his cruel death. In Isaiah 53:5-7 (the first reading on Good Friday) we hear these words: “He was pierced through for our faults, crushed for our sins, Yahweh, burdened him with the sins of all of us.”
By meditating on the passion of Christ, prayer and with a deep sense of God’s goodness, we will surely grow in our awareness of the ugly and destructive nature of sin.
The Grace of Repentance.
Repentance is not to be confused with remorse. Judas was remorseful for his sin of betrayal and returned the thirty pieces of silver. But, he wasn’t truly sorry for offending Jesus. Peter was truly sorry for his sin, as was David in the Old Testament. Psalm 51 is his magnificent Act of Contrition.
Our sorrow can be perfect or imperfect. We may be sorry because we are afraid of going to hell. (imperfect contrition) Or we may be sorry out of a deep sense of offending Love (like Peter). God accepts both types of sorrow. True sorrow and repentance should be accompanied by a ‘firm purpose of amendment’. If I have cheated or stolen stuff, I need to try and make restitution as best I can. If I can’t return stuff stolen at a store I need to make a donation to charity and I must resolve, with the help of God’s grace to avoid this sin in the future.
Sometimes we may feel little or no sense of sorrow for our sins. In fact, if we were really honest we may have to say to God. “O my God, I am sorry that I am not sorry for this particular sin. In fact, I kind of enjoyed bringing so and so down an inch or two. I enjoyed my little act of revenge. I enjoyed that sexually explicit movie.” If this is our situation we need to pray for the grace to be repentant realizing of course that repentance is not a feeling but an act of the will. It would be nice to be blessed with the gift of tears for our sins, but less is sufficient. If we can say the following, I am sure God will be pleased with us. “Lord, while I did sort of enjoy that sin, I realize it was wrong. It goes against your teaching and I am sorry.”
Sometimes, we may find it very hard to pray the following part of the act of contrition: “and I firmly resolve not to sin anymore.” All of us know that we will sin again. We especially know that we will most likely commit certain sins over and over. But, hopefully we can sincerely say: “Lord I hope and want to avoid this sin in the future. Please grant me the grace to do so.”
Irma Zaleski writes:
Repentance-conversion of the heart-does not mean being filled and tormented by guilt. Instead, it means being ready to admit our responsibility for our actions and our need for forgiveness, and having a firm desire to change our life: to turn away from ourselves in prayer and in love. Repentance means, above all, a constant, patient, growing in love. It means our willingness to open ourselves to the work of the spirit in us and to embrace fully the gift of our salvation.
I believe the most important piece of the Zaleski quote is: “our willingness to open ourselves to the work of the Spirit. . . “We can say all kinds of prayers, attend all kinds of seminars and read all kinds of books, but if we are not committed to growing in openness and responsiveness to the Spirit, what is the point of it all. The evil spirit may seduce us into sin time and time again but God’s Holy Spirit is always calling us out of sin into walking in his ways. For the Holy Spirit to have his way with us, we must be someone who seeks to live his/her life in openness to the Holy Spirit. To do this we must seek to live life reflectively. One simple way to do this is to look back over our day and with the enlightenment of the Spirit look at the flow of the day.
The above simple exercise prayerfully carried out will help us a lot to live our lives with greater openness and responsiveness to the Holy Spirit.
Reflection Questions