4th Sunday of Lent Homily

This is Academy Awards Weekend. Sunday evening the movie industry will honor the accomplishments of the best of this year’s movies. During the week I’ve read headlines and half paid attention to reports about this year’s nominees and some retrospectives on past award winners. Somewhere along the line a report brought up the 1970 film “A Love Story”. The movie was an excessively sentimental romance but a box office hit and earned several Oscar nominations. 

I was still a mere boy at the time, but I remember the movie trailer and its slogan, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” The insinuation was when people love each other, they can tell when their partner feels remorse for hurting them. Lovers it claimed can read each other’s body language and voice patterns and realize their partner feels sorrow and there is no need to put it into words. 

What a fallacy! To repair a hurt and bring healing we must express our sorrow. While yes, we can sense a loved one’s unspoken regret, but unless they tell us point blank, they are sorry a little wound always remains on our heart. An admission of remorse is necessary for real and lasting healing. A little gift as an offering of reparation for the incident doesn’t hurt either. 

I hear a similar claim when people talk about sin and the Sacrament of Reconciliation. People will say they don’t need to go to confession because they work things out with God on their own. They act similar to that Love Story trailer and claim God knows their contrition for sin and they don’t have to make any type of public gesture or offer any reparation for their failures. 

While we are only required to confess to a priest in Confession our grave or mortal sins and our smaller venial sins are forgiven whenever we prayerful recite the Penitential Rite before Mass or include an Act of Contrition as part of our night prayers, venial sins can add up. We can fall into patterns of sin that, while they are individually minor, when compounded can become a serious sin. Added up over time they become patterns of life that seriously damage or even destroy our relationship with God, our brothers and sisters, and ourselves. Consistently confessing venial sins in the Sacrament of Reconciliation is offering God reparation for all our sins big and small. It should be done on a regular basis. Celebrating the sacrament at least every few months helps us control our tendency to sin even if they are small ones. Regular celebration of the Sacrament of Reconciliation helps fill us with God’s grace to resist temptation and fall into sin. 

Lent is a season of reconciliation with God. Our Lenten homilies have concentrated on reflecting on our need for mending our relationship with God, others and ourselves. Our Lenten messages have used the theme, From Hiding to Healing. We tend to try to hide our sinfulness from God, others, and ourselves. If we want to find healing we must step out of the underbrush and shadows and confront our sins. Faithfully confronting sin will naturally cause us to set out on a journey from sin to receiving God’s healing. A journey is always an exercise that can be challenging. We will need to stop and be refreshed at times. We are refreshed when we recognize that God knows all our sinfulness. It can’t be hidden from God, yet God still wants to bring us healing.

Today we hear that if we want to be healed of sin, we need spiritual sight. In today’s gospel we are told of a man born blind, someone who never had any light in his life. Jesus cures his blindness and, in the process, gives him spiritual sight. While the blind man gains sight the Religious Authorities and Pharisees lose their spiritual sight. 

When the Apostles notice the blind man and ask Jesus the cause of his affliction. Jesus won’t blame sin, but says its purpose is to bring glory to God. While Jesus brings glory to God through the gradual healing of the Blind man’s physical sight, God’s glory is shown most through Jesus giving him his spiritual sight. That spiritual sight grows as the blindman explains his healing. He first calls Jesus the man who prepared mud for his eyes, he moves to calling Jesus a prophet, he rejects the Pharisees accusation that Jesus could possibly be a sinner, and says he knows Jesus is from God. Finally, with fully restored spiritual sight the blindman states his belief Jesus is the Son of Man. 

Meanwhile, the Pharisees slowly lose their spiritual sight. Jesus isn’t living up to their expectations for the Messiah. He is a common laborer from Galilee and not a member of the religious elites. They refuse to believe he comes from God because he has healed on the Sabbath. The Pharisees human expectations blind them from recognizing Jesus as the Messiah. 

Sin is the cause of the Pharisees losing their sight. Slowly it narrowed their vision and caused the spiritual blindness that led them to nail Jesus to the cross. If we ignore sin, it will cause us spiritual blindness. Sin gradually dims our sight and causes us to justify small compromises with sin. Spiritual blindness creeps in when we normalize our impatience with others, excuse our resentments, and defend our habits that distance ourselves from Jesus’ example of love. 

We must ask ourselves honestly: Where have I adjusted to the darkness? Where have I stopped questioning patterns in my life that diminish me? Where have I preferred control over clarity in my life? 

The Sacrament of Reconciliation is a spiritual sight examination that allows God to touch us and heal us from slipping into spiritual blindness. Frequent visits to Reconciliation moves us from denial to clarity. It shouldn’t make us feel exposed because of our sin but illuminates them so they can be healed. Reconciliation asks us if we want to see and improves our spiritual sight. It helps our faith to grow and we see more clearly who Jesus is in our lives. Confession isn’t intended to leave us feeling crushed but free and restored. 

This Lent I’ve been spending more time in the Reconciliation Room. In addition to my normal presence on Saturday afternoons from 3-3:45 pm. I’ve been setting aside Friday afternoons from 3:30-4:30, just before Stations of the Cross, for Confessions. I’m planning other times during Holy Week.

Earlier in Lent we celebrated a Lenten Reconciliation Service using the form of the Sacrament called the Rite of Reconciliation of Several Penitents with General Absolution. This rite is designed to forgive only venial sins that don’t necessarily need individual confessions with a priest. My intention was to encourage parishioners who may have been away from Reconciliation for a while, to come to what might be a less threatening service and reflect on sin and their sinfulness. I was encouraged by the turn out. We had 60-65 parishioners in attendance. Hopefully, some attendees and all parishioners have been contemplating their need for God’s forgiveness in an individual confession with a priest so they can improve their spiritual sight.

Next Sunday, March 22 @ 3 pm, we’ll have another Lenten Reconciliation Service. It will be very similar to our first one with the exception of my being joined by at least two other priests to hear individual confessions at the end of the service. 

As the Letter to the Ephesians proclaimed today through our baptism and faithfulness to Jesus, we were reborn to be children of the light. We were empowered with a spiritual sight to recognize sin and to resist it. Our spiritual sight is to be shared with our neighbors so everyone can experience healing from the wounds of sin and help others to find healing too. 

Today we stand at the mid-point of Lent. We have been called to step out of hiding, begin a journey to healing now that we have recovered our spiritual sight. We have come to realize that if we claim to love God and our neighbor we can’t miss out by not say, “I’m sorry.”