The Near Occasion of Sin

 

 

I think a great deal about sin. I think a great deal about my sins. Not that I sin any less because I think about it. Nope. Nope. Nope. You know the St. Paul lament, something like, as I promise that I will not sin anymore, I find myself sinning. That's my summary of St. Paul, and far less poetic.

I also go to Confession. Oops. I forget. We call it the Sacrament of Reconciliation now. I am Old School Catholic so I still tend to use the old titles and concepts. Well, actually the concept hasn't changed, the idea that by confessing our sins through the mediator, in the line of St. Peter, to whom the power to bind and loose was given by Christ, and in true contrition, we receive absolution and the Grace to sin no more. But I guess the emphasis is different. Kids used to fear being yelled at by the priest. Adults too for that matter. It had the feeling of "OK, what did you do now?" coming straight from the Lord but that isn't what was intended. That was a human misinterpretation passed down from the Middle Ages maybe and then right into my Church and girls' school in the middle of the Bronx. Really, Confession is the first part only. It's the Reconciliation that makes it worthwhile to humble oneself before God with an admission of frequent frailty. Reconciliation with who? With God, by acknowledging our need for His Help and seeking His Friendship. Yeah, I know, if you're not Catholic you figure that this seems largely unnecessary. You can talk right to God. Anytime. No intermediary necessary. True, and I am not here to proselytize. Just to offer my sense of it. Because, as I said, I think about sin all the time. I guess I also think about restoration of friendship with God all the time and it just seems that the Catholic process, the sacrament, which means a visible sign of God's Presence, really brings home what you are doing, what I am doing. I am laying myself, wide open. This is serious. This you don't do lightly as I might when I am just chatting with God. It requires a real preparation. A real examination, and a real action, to go to a specific place, at a specific time and say, yes, I did this, and I know it was wrong, and I pray for the Grace, Lord, Your Most Amazing Grace, not to do that again. It darkens me. It sullies. It turns my face from You.

Something like that. Today I am thinking about it again, sin, and Reconciliation, because I just went last weekend, to a Church down the block and gave one of my usual litanies. Before I go, I am a little despairing that it makes any difference. But every time, thereafter, I sense a lightness of soul and yes, even possibility that this time I can truly avoid the near occasion of sin to which I so readily succumb the moment I step out my apartment door. Sometimes before I get out of the door, when I think about it. But it is always there, the room, the reconciliation, the Grace, Him. A cleansed feeling within and without. Big stuff.