"But now, now - it is the Lord who speaks -
Come back to me with all your heart". (Joel 2:12)
My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
The words from the prophet Joel are proclaimed in the first Reading at Mass
on Ash Wednesday, the day which "marks the beginning of the holy season
of Lent, when the Liturgy once more calls the faithful to radical conversion
and trust in God's mercy" On that day the rite of the imposition of the
blessed ashes is carried out as a mark of our repentance, an acknowledgement
that we are sinners and have need to be reconciled with God and with one another.
The prayer of blessing over the ashes reads:
"Lord, bless the sinner who asks for your forgiveness
and bless all those who receive these ashes.
May they keep this lenten season
in preparation for the joy of Easter"
The Lenten season is a period of discernment in the light of God's Grace. It is a time to step back from our normal daily activity in order to assess exactly our relationship with God, with ourselves and with our neighbours. It is a time for looking at our set of values and our range of priorities. It is a time for finding space in our lives so as to give voice to our inner conscience which is defined by the Second Vatican Council as "the most secret core and sanctuary of a man"
"Over the course of generations, the Christian mind has gained from the Gospel… a fine sensitivity and an acute perception of the seeds of death contained in sin, as well as a sensitivity and an acute perception for identifying them in the thousand guises under which sin shows itself. This is what is commonly called the sense of sin. This sense is rooted in man's moral conscience and is as it were its thermometer. It is linked to the sense of God, since it derives from man's conscious relationship with God as his Creator, Lord and Father. Hence, just as it is impossible to eradicate completely the sense of God or to silence the conscience completely, so the sense of sin is never eliminated".
In the inner sanctuary of the human person there is always the delicate interplay between the sense of God - a God who creates and redeems-, the sense of sin - an offence against God and the moral conscience, the spiritual thermometer which indicates the well-being or otherwise of one's inner self. Immersed as we are in a world which becomes more and more secularist, the moral conscience of the individual may become weakened under pressure from standards and values, resulting in the obscuring of the sense of sin and ultimately of the sense of God.
"'Secularism' is by nature and definition a movement of ideas and behaviour which advocates a humanism totally without God, completely centred upon the cult of action and production and caught up in the heady enthusiasm of consumerism and pleasure seeking, unconcerned with the danger of 'losing one's soul'. This secularism cannot but undermine the sense of sin. At the very most, sin will be reduced to what offends man…. It is vain to hope that there will take root a sense of sin against man and against human values, if there is no sense of offence against God, namely the true sense of sin"
Indeed some fifty-eight years ago Pope Pius XII stated that "the sin of the century is the loss of the sense of sin". Now in this new century, in this third Millennium of Faith, when self-sufficiency and achievement are the hallmarks of personal success, when the so-called "taboos" of the past have given way to a false sense of freedom which seems to justify life-styles which deaden and obscure the sense of God and the offence against Him, which is sin, we need to be reminded that there is a God, compassionate and all-loving, who calls each individual to a personal encounter with Him as He cries out: "Come back to me with all your heart" (Joel 2:12).
The way back may seem difficult and forbidding, as did that of the Prodigal Son, but the surety is there that the Father is waiting to welcome back with open arms. The beginning of that road back entails a personal decision, a conversion: "Then he came to his senses and said… I will leave this place and go to my father". The journey back to reconciliation with the Father and to the re-establishing of relations with the Father, broken by sin, is through the person of Christ, "The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world". Christ entrusts to the Apostles the mission of proclaiming the Kingdom of God and preaching the Gospel of conversion. On the evening of the day of his Resurrection, as the apostolic mission is about to begin, Jesus grants the Apostles, through the power of the Holy Spirit, the authority to reconcile repentant sinners with God and the Church: "Receive the Holy Spirit, for those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; for those whose sins you retain, they are retained". The encounter with the all-merciful and loving God in the Sacrament of Reconciliation was won for us, priest and penitent alike, by the Sacrifice of the Son of God on the Cross. The faculty granted by the Risen Christ to His apostles and handed down through the Apostolic tradition continues to bear fruit in the Church every time a repentant sinner seeks reconciliation. The penitent, having made the decision to "come back with all his or her heart" (cf. Joel 2:12), and seek forgiveness of sin, must be prepared, in conscience, to repent and make amends. This demands, on the part of each individual penitent, a threefold action: contrition, confession and satisfaction.
"The essential act of Penance, on the part of the penitent, is contrition, a clear and decisive rejection of the sin committed, together with a resolution not to commit it again, out of the love which one has for God and which is reborn with repentance".
"Contrition and conversion are drawing near to the holiness of God, a rediscovering of one's true identity which has been upset and disturbed by sin, a liberation in the very depth of self and thus a regaining of lost joy, the joy of being saved".
The encounter between the Prodigal Son and his Father was prefaced by a sincere confession on the part of the son: "Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you". Sin creates a rupture in relations between the sinner and God, it inflicts a wound which, if not healed, will fester. The personal confession of sins to the Priest, who acts 'in the person of Christ', enables him to exercise his role as healer in the Sacramental action. This personal encounter is of vital importance for the penitent since, through it, he or she touches the very holiness of God.
"God is always the one who is principally offended by sin - "tibi soli peccavi" - and God alone can forgive. Hence the absolution that the priest, the minister of forgiveness, though himself a sinner, grants to the penitent, is the effective sign of the intervention of the Father in every absolution and the sign of the 'resurrection' from 'spiritual death' which is renewed each time that the Sacrament of Penance is administered. Only faith can give us certainty that at that moment every sin is forgiven and blotted out by the mysterious intervention of the Saviour".
The personal confession of sins ensures that the healing power of God's grace in the Sacrament will enable the penitent to avoid the occasions of sin in the future, to change a life-style which is not in keeping with the mind and heart of the Saviour and to make amends for any hurt caused. Recently and evidently in response to a practice that, in the use of the second Rite of Reconciliation, might lead one to think that it is sufficient to state generically one's sorrow for sin, the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, stated:
"any practice which restricts confession to a generic
accusation of sin or of only one or two sins judged to be
more important is to be reproved. Indeed, in view of the fact that all the faithful
are called to holiness, it is
recommended that they confess venial sins as well"
and he reiterated
"the faithful are obliged to confess, according to kind
and number, all grave sins committed after Baptism
of which they are conscious after careful examination
and which have not yet been directly remitted by the
Church's power of the Keys, nor acknowledged in individual confession"
"Satisfaction is the final act which crowns the Sacramental sign of Penance". Normally this is called one's penance. It is what the penitent agrees to do after having been reconciled with God. It may include acts of charity, gestures of reconciliation with others, commitment to finding that special space in one's daily life to acknowledge God's presence and His goodness and mercy shown.
As one rises, renewed and restored by the grace of the Sacrament of Reconciliation a whole new chapter in one's life begins. The freshness of renewal, the commitment of living the Christian way of life and the joy of knowing that one is restored to friendship with God gives the penitent a sense "of peace and serenity of conscience with strong spiritual consolation".
As we start out on our Lenten journey may we always be conscious that He who came among us in order to reveal His Father's love and to show us the way back to Him will walk with us on that journey. He will listen as we walk together. He will explain to us the richness of God's love and mercy towards us as we read the Sacred Scriptures and when we sit at the Eucharistic table with Him, as He breaks bread with us, He will reveal Himself to us as "the Way, the Truth and the Life". May we take Him at His Word and seek out our personal encounter with Him this Lent in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. May we make of this period of grace an intense preparation for the celebration of the Easter Liturgy so that, through Him, we may become an Easter People. Saint Paul, writing to the Corinthians, has put it very well:
"For anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation
The old creation has gone, and now the new one is here.
It is all God's work. It was God who reconciled us to
Himself through Christ and gave us the work of handing on this reconciliation.
In other words, God in Christ was reconciling the world to himself, not holding
men's faults against them, and he has entrusted to us the news that they are
reconciled. So we are ambassadors for Christ; it is as though God were appealing
through us, and the appeal that we make in Christ's name is: Be reconciled to
God".
+ JOHN MAGEE
Bishop of Cloyne