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Conversion during Advent
Homily
It’s not at all rare for me to experience in the confessional, when I am the confessor, that a penitent will come in and tell me all the great things he is and does, yet not confess a single sin. “Father, it has been one year since my last confession. I’m a good man. I fast, I pray, I’m kind to others, I don’t commit any sins. I’m a great guy.” And that’s the confession. Yet do we not read, “a righteous man falls seven times, he rises again,” in Proverbs 24:16? If the righteous man falls and converts seven times a day, what are we to think of a man who after a year does not commit a single sin for which he repents? I’d say that the man in question were Jesus Christ. I have also found as a Confessor, that those who confess often have more to confess. It is not that they necessarily sin more or worse than those who confess rarely, for usually they don’t. Rather, the conscience of the frequent confessor is acute, perceptive, alive and lively. The conscience of the rare confessor is dull, dark, obscure and almost completely dead. I insist to one and to all, and will do so to the day I day: Convert and believe the Gospels! By convert, I mean, recognize your spiritual misery. Jesus died for sinners; if you’re not a sinner, he didn’t die for you, and you don’t have a Savior in whom to believe and so be saved. For it is by faith, incarnated by our works, by which we merit the salvation Jesus won for us in his Paschal mystery. I say all this all on account of our first reading. Zephaniah urges the listener to fear not, for the “Lord has removed the judgment against you; he has turned away your enemies.” How hard it is for Americans today to understand this; we who live in an anti- culture and an anti-society filled with sin. We are told to love ourselves, not to hate our sins. We are told to have a positive self image, not to continually admit our failings to God and the Church. We are told that some are saved by Buddha and others by Allah and others by some New Age Power and Energy, and that there is not really one God and one truth. There is no truth, there is not One God, there is no Church which is really One or Holy or Catholic or Apostolic, there is no sin, there is no evil, there is no ugliness, and no one is allowed to transgress these teachings lest his neighbor “feel offended.” We all have a judgment against us, first for original sin; but after that is washed away, for our countless and grave actual sins. Yet the arrogance of man today has us all imaging that at our last judgment, we’ll simply go in and give God the “high five,” ready to demand a heaven to which we attribute ourselves some unalienable right. Yet that is not the truth. The truth about divine judgment is this, and the Church teaches it so the teaching is solid: He who dies in unrepentant mortal sin will not enter heaven; he who dies in venial sin or with unpaid temporal punishment will get to heaven but only after a long, painful delay in purgatory. So yes, we should have much to fear about our judgment. Only in view of the punishment which our sins have deserved from God can a sinner make any sense of the countless passages that talk of God’s mercy, a mercy which none of us deserve yet is offered to all. Yet this is the hope of Christmas. It isn’t the hope of crisp December air, of perfumed pine trees in our homes, of lots of gifts, of good retail at the places of our employment. It isn’t the hope of comfort or greed. It’s the hope that I, a sinner, have been offered salvation by a God who never gave up hope on me when he darn well should have. How can anyone hope to have a Merry Christmas without coming to terms with his profound and grave sinfulness? Yet as two points opposite on a circle move out as the circle grows, so too as our spiritual life grows, there will be a corresponding growth both in the understanding of my misery, and in the understanding of God’s mercy. When the scripture says that God is your savior and will rejoice over you, and he is in your midst,[1] this gives us hope. He is my savior from the enemies which seek to destroy my soul, terrifying enemies, namely, the devil, the flesh and the world. And he is in my midst, drawing close in love and not staying afar as a threat. And in this way, the meditation on sin and salvation help us appreciate the message of salvation all throughout the scriptures. About these verses, the Catechism writes, “Mary if full of grace because the Lord is with her. The grace with which she is filled is the presence of him who is the source of all grace. ‘Rejoice… O Daughter of Jerusalem… the Lord your God is in your midst.’ (Zeph 13, 17a) Mary, in whom the Lord himself has just made his dwelling is the daughter of Zion in person.” If this is what Jesus did in the flesh to Mary by his incarnation, what would he not do for your soul when he enters your flesh by his flesh in holy communion? Come therefore, all ye faithful, to adore Jesus in Holy Communion. Come and eat your salvation, and live like ones who have been saved from sin. Today starts the second half of Advent; it is the novena up to the great solemnity of Christmas. So in the days left before Christmas, prepare yourselves as best you can, for this year’s Christmas will happen only once in the history of the world, and in the history of your own life. I encourage all to seriously examine your consciences, and to get to confession before Christmas comes, so you may be like gold, frankincense and myrrh, a worthy offering to Jesus in the manger, the baby who was the Priest, the Prophet and the Great King. Amen. |