Next Wednesday is a day of love, Valentine’s Day, but there is an even deeper love that will be celebrated, the first day of Lent, Ash Wednesday where the sacrificial love of God’s gift of peace and reconciliation becomes a reality in our life. We are also in the middle of “National Marriage Week” where we celebrate the unity of love between husband and wife in the sacramental union of relationship. In other words, love is certainly overflowing these next few days. And if this was not enough, this weekend I will be presenting a Worldwide Marriage Encounter weekend and then Monday evening will be a presentation to our Catechumens on the Sacrament of Marriage.
So, the theme of this reflection is on reconciliation and confession. You may at this point be shaking your head and asking, “Why not love?” This is a legitimate and good question. My simple answer is the gift of love must alway be rooted in the forgiveness of the other because we are sinners. My love of the Church, and I do love the Church, is always grounded in that we are a collections of saints and sinners and the “saint” part of me must always be willing to forgive the “sinner” part of me and our Holy Church. Because the Sacraments of community and relationship, Matrimony and Holy Orders, are always focused towards an other. The Other being firstly God through whom we see our beloved spouse. And God gives us the great Sacrament of Healing, Reconciliation, so that we might see each other as God sees us.
This is one of the great acts of love we can share, and as noted above, if we are able to see Lent as a movement of sacrificial love, then we are able to move toward the other in compassion, mercy and forgiveness.
The Lenten discipline we practice as Catholic Christians is to empty ourselves from the “stuff” that does not allow love to rest deeply in our hearts and to allow the other in or life to envelop us in tenderness and care. This can often mean we have to let go of hurts and sins we are holding on too out of fear our hardness of heart. And this can and is hard to do…which is why we have the help of God and His Church in the gift of reconciliation and confession.
I remember several years ago as we were preparing for first Reconciliation with a group of children, one parent came up and said how her child was looking forward to the Sacrament. I can remember the little boy coming and plopping himself down in the chair and going through the ritual greeting with clarity and joy and then confessing his sins, but especially one that he added at the end, “I hope God forgives me.” I assured him God did forgive and while I don’t remember the exact sin, I do know that it was very small and minor and the scale of seriousness but for this little boy it was a barrier in loving God and his family. (And believe it or not, this same basic conversation and confession happens many times each year) But the point I wish you to pray about is for some of us, we can say the phrase, “I’m a good person,” which is true, “why do I need confession?”
We all need the Sacrament of Healing so we may move closer to God. I am glad when people come in and confess only “minor” sins and not “grave” matter, but I always remind them that these small sins can begin to build up and need to be forgiven in the grace filled moment of reconciliation, which brings us back to relationship and love.
The great evangelist, Bishop Fulton Sheen, reminds us of our need for healing and reconciliation when he wrote, “Our Lord is telling us that it is never enough to be free from the powers of evil; we must also be subject to the power of the good. The elimination of an ego does not necessarily imply that happiness of the I, unless the I, in its turn, lives by a higher spirit of love.”
I would encourage you during the Lenten season to make us of the Sacrament of Reconciliation as an act of sacrificial love.
God Bless
Fr. Mark