“I am baptizing you with water, for repentance…,” these are the words of the Baptist in our Gospel reading.1 All of us here have been baptized with water. If, like me, you were baptized after reaching the age of reason, your sins were washed away by the grace of God through the merits of Jesus Christ at baptism. If, like me, you have not remained sinless since your baptism, you need the Sacrament of Penance.
Even if you were baptized as an infant, God, in his mercy, restored you to the state of original grace, which is the state God created us in the divine image and likeness to live. If you remember, the original sin was seeking to displace God and to put ourselves in God’s place. The serpent asked Eve if she knew why God forbade them to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. She said apart from God telling her that if she if ate from it she would die, she did not know. The serpent told her, “You certainly will not die!”2
Rather, the serpent insisted, she would become like God and be able to determine for herself what is good and what is evil. Of course, this fruit looked tasty, indeed. So, the original sin, which is recapitulated in every sin, is a rejection of God, a rejection of your creatureliness. Of course, sin requires that you know what you are tempted to do wrong. Knowing it is wrong requires some understanding as to why it is wrong, why it is a failure to love God and/or your neighbor, even to love yourself in the right way.
From the beginning, God had a plan for our salvation: Jesus Christ. Christ is not God’s Plan B. Christ is not even God’s Plan A. Christ is God’s only plan to complete creation by reconciling all things to himself. This is why in the Exsultet, sung at the Easter Vigil, the Church acknowledges and proclaims concerning original sin: O happy fault that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer! Saint Paul confirms this in his Letter to the Romans when he writes:
Osservatore Romano/APF Photo
creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God; for creation was made subject to futility, not of its own accord but because of the one who subjected it, in hope that creation itself would be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God3The Sacrament of Penance, also called “reconciliation” and “confession,” is an extension of the Sacrament of Baptism. To say God is the God second chances is to sell God, whose name is mercy, short. In his Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis declared:
How good it feels to come back to [Jesus] whenever we are lost! Let me say this once more: God never tires of forgiving us; we are the ones who tire of seeking his mercy. Christ, who told us to forgive one another “seventy times seven” (Mt 18:22) has given us his example: he has forgiven us seventy times seven. Time and time again he bears us on his shoulders. No one can strip us of the dignity bestowed upon us by this boundless and unfailing love4We are given this dignity in baptism. It is ineradicable, nobody or nothing can take it away from us. You do not go to confession to find out whether or not God will forgive you. You are always already forgiven in Christ. Then why go, you might ask? You go to have a real encounter, to say your sins out aloud and, in your Act of Contrition, to say you are sorry. This brings closure, confidence, and assurance.
My dear friends in Christ, confession is not where you go to admit defeat. It is where you go to claim the victory that is already yours, the victory Christ won for you by his cross and resurrection. This afternoon, as we prepare for the Lord’s coming, let us return to the Lord that he will return to us and make his dwelling in us.5
1 Matthew 3:11.↩
2 See Genesis 3:1-20.↩
3 Romans 8:19-12.↩
4 Pope Francis, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, sec. 3.↩
5 Malachi 3:7.↩
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