Well, here we are, most of the way through Lent and at the end of our homily series, Healing Our Wounded Hearts. I promised at the beginning it wouldn’t be boring, and I hope you agree that it has not been! Over the last four weeks, we have been spinning the diamond of the great Sacrament of Reconciliation and appreciating all of its sparkling facets. We saw how Reconciliation can arm us against the temptations that the world, the flesh and the devil throw at us each day. Next, we pondered the great ability of Jesus our Redeemer to bring us freedom from slavery to sin through Reconciliation. After that, we got to appreciate the ability of God to cultivate the virtues in our soul through the healing that the grace of Reconciliation brings. Finally, last weekend, you had the opportunity to dive into the beautiful Parable of the Prodigal Son, one of my favorites, with one of my favorite priests, Fr. Blau. He spoke about the beauty of knowing for sure that your sins are forgiven as you are wrapped in the Father’s embrace through Reconciliation. Fr Blau spoke of the power of hearing those words of absolution from a priest, who shares in the same power of forgiving sins that Jesus shared with the Apostles after His resurrection. When you hear those words from any priest in Confession, you can know for sure that the Father has forgiven you and wrapped you in His merciful embrace as His beloved son or daughter.
Brothers and sisters, we are blessed as Catholic Christians. Each Sacrament is an incredible gift that can transform our lives profoundly when we let it. And the Sacrament of Reconciliation is that kind of gift. It allows us to be cleansed and renewed each time we receive it. For me, as a priest, hearing confessions and helping people to be reconciled to the Father through this Sacrament is an incredible honor and one of the most beautiful things that I am humbled to do as a spiritual father. It is my profound pleasure and privilege to be God’s instrument of encouragement, healing and peace to those who come into this Sacrament seeking healing and forgiveness. There are no words to describe the beauty of the moments of healing and hope that occur there.
So let’s now take time to ponder the beautiful scene of healing and hope in the Gospel today. As I prayed with this inspiring story of the encounter between Jesus and the adulterous woman, I couldn’t help but think of a skit I have seen several times at retreats. The skit involves a person going through his day and picking up “baggage” as he struggles with various different areas of sin. This baggage is physically represented by backpacks and bags. The person speaks rash words of anger to his friend and picks up a backpack. He lies to his parents and picks up a backpack. He cheats on a test and picks up a backpack. And over and over it goes. By the end of the skit, he is weighed down by a whole slew of backpacks and bags and has even dumped some on others. Speaking of one bag in particular, he says, “And then there is this bag, my secret sin, the one nobody sees, but it’s cool. I’ve got it under control. Who am I kidding? Most of the time it has control of me!”
Finally, the guy in the skit comes to his breaking point. Laden down with all his baggage, he says: “And this is the way I live. And yet I hear the words of Christ, who says, ‘I come that you may have life and have it abundantly.’ I don’t know about you, but this doesn’t really feel like abundant life to me. I can’t walk straight, I can barely keep my balance. And then, then I remember his words, because Christ also said, ‘Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.’ That’s what I want. So I go to God. God if you’re willing, would you take this baggage from me? Because I’m miserable and I can’t live this way anymore. Please take it!” And as he says these words, the bags fall from him.
Let me tell you a little story about myself. Some of you have probably heard of the “Freshman 15”–the weight that you tend to put on during Freshman year of college. Well, there were a good number of people who experienced the “COVID 15”–that weight you may have put on when we were all locked down a couple years ago. For me, though, it was a different experience in the first half of 2020. Instead of gaining weight, I actually lost 30 pounds. I know it’s hard to believe, but I actually did have 30 pounds to lose. Shortly before the pandemic struck, I started a weight loss journey using an app called Noom. Up till that point, I had been slowly gaining weight throughout my twenties and early thirties. And through that program, I lost 30 pounds and have kept it off ever since, praise be to God. It’s crazy what a difference 30 pounds makes. Let me give you a visual example.
So this camping backpack is just about 30 pounds. And walking around with this on, I can feel the difference in my whole body–on my legs, my shoulders, my feet, my back. Those 30 extra pounds affected my whole body and I didn’t even realize it. Maybe some of you have seen the show, My 600-lb Life. This show documents the struggles of the morbidly obese to change their lives and get to a healthy weight. While their cases are much more dramatic, I know that they didn’t get to their dangerous weights overnight. Their weight gain happened over time, most of the time slowly, but then sometimes quickly. It was the same with my own extra 30 pounds. Most of them came slowly, and some piled on quickly in times of stress, depression, etc. But every day I carried around that extra burden, mostly without even realizing it.
This is how sin works in our lives, brothers and sisters. Most of the time it just quietly creeps in, but sometimes it rushes in in dramatic ways. And the thing that breaks my heart as a priest and a spiritual father is that so many of us are just walking around burdened! You may not even realize the ways that your sins impact others and yourself, but they always do. Sin always offers a false promise, and it’s always a lie. It beckons to us with what we think will make us happy but always leaves us miserable, isolated, hopeless, and empty in the end. You may think your sin is just a personal problem, but I can guarantee that it affects everyone around you–your children, your spouses, your boyfriend or girlfriend, your best friends, your co-workers and this parish family. I say this not to condemn you, but to remind you that this is not what you were made for. What is the burden you carry around? Is it 10 pounds? 30 pounds? Maybe a hundred? Maybe it feels like you’ve got an elephant on your back!
Whatever your burden, God wants to restore you. He wants to lift you up! He wants you to know for sure that He is not going to condemn you, but wants to make you into a new and better version of yourself. In Reconciliation, God does this by removing your burdens!
Think of the burdens weighing down this woman who found herself at Jesus’ feet, surrounded by a crowd ready to stone her to death. Jesus looked at her, weighed down by all the burdens of her sins which had led her to this low moment. He looked at her as He looks at you and me whenever we are at our lowest–not with condemnation, but with merciful love. He sees through your failures and the burdens you have been carrying around. He sees through all of that to the person wanting to be set free; the person He made you to be–a person of joy, hope, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness and self control. He sees all of the wonderful things that He can do through you when you start to cooperate with the grace He has poured into you and will continue to fill you with. He sees the saint you can be with His grace! Jesus knows that your past failures can’t hold you back from a future full of hope with Him. That’s why He took on the Cross–to bear the burden of your sin so that you can be unburdened!
Remember Jesus’ words: “Has no one condemned you? Neither do I condemn you.” Jesus is not waiting in Reconciliation to condemn you! Through the priest sharing in His authority, He wants to unburden you and make you new. He wants to give you the power to go and live a new life! Come to Reconciliation, and experience not a condemning Father, but the Father of mercies!
When Jesus lifts up that woman from the ground, assuring her that He is not condemning her, He tells her: “Go and sin no more.” These seem like impossible words until we consider what’s happening here. Jesus is not just telling her, “OK, I’ve forgiven your sins, good luck!” He is flooding her with the grace at that very moment that will give her the power to do just that–to sin no more! On our own, it is impossible to avoid sin, but with God’s grace, truly all things are possible. We don’t have to keep carrying around those same burdens our whole life. The more we lean into God’s grace, the more He will unburden us by giving us power to live in Him! So the next time you say the words of the Act of Contrition, think about what you’re saying: “I firmly intend, WITH THE HELP OF YOUR GRACE, to sin no more and to avoid the near occasion of sin.” This is my prayer, that through this profound encounter with God in Reconciliation, you can feel those burdens being lifted off and can move forward with the power to avoid those burdens in the future! And so I end this homily series as I began it, inviting you to embrace this beautiful sacrament once a month and see how God will change your life through it!
+ Father, thank you for the abundant mercy that you pour out to draw us to you so that our burdens of sin might be lifted. Jesus thank you for taking the burden of all our sin on yourself to save us. Holy Spirit, help us know where we are burdened with sin so that we might bring those burdens humbly to Reconciliation and have them removed. We ask this through Christ, our Lord. Amen. +