The Heart of the Matter

It's time to go to confession!

Advent is a great time to go to confession.  It’s a perfect gift to give to the Lord; after all, He is the one who should be getting the gifts because, frankly, it’s His birthday we are celebrating.  Why not give Him the gift of a pure heart this Christmas?  

 

Just begin by saying, "Bless me Father, for I have sinned.  It's been [however long] since my last confession.  Here are my sins."  Then list them.

 

How should one prepare oneself for going to this sacrament?  By doing a little bit of self examination beforehand.  Here is a good set of things to think about ahead of time:

 

• What has most bothered my conscience since my last confession?  When have I acted in a way that embarrasses me even to this day?
• What might I have done that I really wanted to do, even though my mind said it was wrong, but my feelings overcame the right judgment of my mind, and I did it anyway?
• When have I failed to cooperate with God’s grace?  When did I allow a chance to act or speak out for righteousness to pass by?  What was the good that I could have done and did not do?  Have I fallen silent when others made disparaging comments about the Church?
• Would I say that my life has been exemplary in adhering to the teachings of the Church?  If not, in what specific ways have I not been a good example?
• What habit of sin have I embraced and accepted as the norm for me?  What compromises have I made in following the Lord?
• Have I always “thought with the Church” or have I thought that I know better on this topic or that, or have I thought that worldly opinion is more reliable than the Church?  (This would be a failure in humility and quite possibly complicity in the advance of evil.  Remember that Jesus said to the Church, “Whoever hears you, hears me.”)
• Have I taken a stance that I can criticize other people for their behaviors and attitudes and that I, I alone, am free from such evaluation?
• Have I allowed myself to have an idol in being busy, or in leisure, or in something else that minimizes the primacy of God in my worship, prayer, and devotion?
• Have I contributed to the wellbeing of the Church by my involvement, by my giving and by my thinking about my church as “us” rather than as “them”?
• In my family life, have I turned my back on my own?  Have I let go of injustices done to me?
• As an employer or as an employee, have I acted justly in my work ethics?
• Am I a hypocrite by professing noble things but acting sometimes in an ignoble way?
• Do I see myself accurately, or do I believe my own “PR”?  
• Have I given in to being overly harsh in regard to my view of myself; and has that harshness spread into my view of others?

I hope this helps. And if you just don’t what to say, just ask the priest to help you.  He will.    

"Are you 'he who is to come' or are we to look for another?"

One of the most poignant moments in the gospels is when John the Baptist, near the end of his life, sends a very sad message to Jesus, “Are you ‘he who is to come’ or are we to look for another?”  What does this tell us?  It foretells the possibility of the dark night. 

There are 2 dark nights: one being a difficulty that happens in the soul of a person who is serious about prayer. When such a one has decided to give up serious sin, one can be tormented by all kinds of fallacious reasoning so as to keep the sinner in his ways.  Because habits of sin are very difficult to get free from, when deliverance does happen, one may enter into a darkness, a feeling that this desired freedom is not worth the effort.

Most people who are serious about loving the Lord, and serious about wanting to rid themselves of whatever stands between them and God will encounter this dark night, called “the dark night of the senses.” 

The other dark night is far more difficult.  This is “the dark night of the spirit” that John went through during his incarceration before he was beheaded.   Only a few hardy souls face this dark night, but it may just be the reward of one who truly wished to grow in sincerity and truth.

John had spent his entire life in service to the living God.  There was no one, Jesus had said, born of woman who was greater than John the Baptist.  John’s main mission in life was to prepare the way of the Lord and then to point out the Lord’s anointed when He came as “the lamb of God.”  When Jesus did appear on the scene John had the humility to say about Him, “I am not worthy to untie His sandal strap!” - and to say to Him, “I should be baptized by you!”  And when word came to John some time later that more people, indeed even his own disciples, were going over to follow Jesus, he had the humility to say, “He must increase and I must decrease.” 

John had done his job very well.  He was even visited with a martyr’s crown for speaking truth to the powerful.  But before that beheading John was troubled.  He had pointed out Jesus as the Messiah, but where was the fair dealing for those who have been sinned against?  Where was the promise day of the Lord?  Where was the day of wrath, the day of vengeance?  Where was the winnowing fan that would clear out the threshing floor of all the chaff?  Where was the justice of God?  Where was the recompense due to all evil doers?  Was John wrong in pointing out this Jesus who rarely if ever spoke of the day of the Lord or the wrath of God, who instead healed the sick, forgave sinners, gave sight to the blind, and, yes, even raised the dead?  John was now in “the dark night of the spirit,” and so he sent word to Jesus, “Are you ‘he who is to come’ or are we to look for another?”

            In the dark night of the spirit all the supports that came as a package with a life of faith disappear.  There is no consolation.  There is no encouragement from within.  Even within a loving family or church community, understanding, support, encouragement can disappear, and the one in this dark night feels very much alone.  Even within one’s own soul, all looks like a mistake and a fraud.  One cannot see the good one has done.  It’s all straw.  One’s sins are as poignant as can be; one’s paltry response to God is painfully clear.  There is no reinforcement to believe that God even exists.  All supports for believing are taken away. 

The call here is a call to naked faith.  The choice before me is to see life as absurd, and the way of Christ as most absurd, or to believe because of a decision to believe in God despite all evidence to the contrary, despite all proof that my life of faith has been meaningless.  Naked faith. That was the state of soul behind John’s question, “Are you ‘he who is to come’ or are we to look for another?”

            This is not depression.  In fact, it is more like hell.  Or, better put, it is going through purgatory while yet on this earth.  It is the complete purification of the soul so as to prove one’s faith even when there is no reason to believe.  This state seems unending; indeed, Mother Teresa went through this dark night of the spirit from the time she encountered the Lord on that Indian train ride that prompted her to found her order of nuns to serve the poorest of the poor – until her death so many years later.

            Eventually one finds solace in this desert.  Though the felt experience of God is but a memory, the effect of one’s work is objectively profoundly effective.

            What would motivate a person to endure even the lesser dark night, not to mention “the dark night of the spirit.”  It has to be, it must be, a passionate love for the Lord that seeps into the very marrow of our being, deeper than our emotions, stronger than our will power, uttering “I believe” with the very fiber of our being.  Even if the whole world would abandon You Lord, even if I should fail you, and stumble and fall, I will never desert You Lord.  And if I do, because I am weak, then Lord, conquer my weakness and bring me into utter fidelity to You and Your Word.

 

"Brood of vipers!" Advent Reflections

The person of John the Baptist is the focus of these Advent reflections because he was the one who lost his head for his preaching.  What can we learn from him?  Let’s look at his preaching to see:

John had a very vivid insight into the effects of evil, particularly the evil of insincere people.  Jesus surely picks up on this insight in his coining the phrase “play-actors” (hypocrites) as the word to describe people who present a pious, appealing image of themselves to others while harboring within their souls an entirely different attitude, one of harshness towards others who do not see life the way they do.  This hypocrisy led John to name it right then and there, right in the face of the play-actors: "Brood of vipers!  Who told you to flee from the wrath that is to come?"

Insincerity is the poison in the well of us who are given the privilege of bearing witness to Jesus as members of His Church.  When we bear witness faithfully, we can be the Lord’s instrument to reach people who are starving for God -- and bring meaning to their lives and their sufferings and to bring hope in an age of fear and terror.

But if the well is poisoned by insincerity, if the well is poisoned by a preferential desire to win favor with the listeners, what will our listeners hear?  The hollow ring of a noisy gong.  They will not encounter the living God but instead a pleasing melody to occupy some time and turn the listeners’ hearts away from facing whatever in their lives is keeping them from the Lord.  An unwillingness to call evil what it really is, is that poison in the well that makes our Christian witness and words fall on rocky ground.

For instance, some progressives want to talk about social injustice and avoid the babe in the womb.  And some conservatives can see nothing but the babe in the womb.  And frequently enough, many of those who care about the plight of the poor, and have concern for the environment, care little about sexual ethics.  And how many of all of us have a stance on one issue after another but miss the beam in our own eye on how materialism has taken over our lives?

The charism of John the Baptist was to call a spade a spade; and whether it was the king marrying his sister-in-law or the soldier taking advantage of the people, he was able to put his finger on the exact issue that needed to be faced. Oh, you who pointed out Jesus as the Lamb, pray for us to have the integrity of witnessing to the full Word of God, not just the aspects that make us satisfied.