Thursday of the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time
Today's gospel is one many of us know well. We have heard this teaching often - that there is more rejoicing for a sinner who has repented and enters heaven than for a righteous man who enters heaven. And yet we are also taught that we are all sinners. Some sins are more public than others - but we are ALL sinners. When the two truths are factored together it changes the way we understand this gospel.
Because we are all sinners, we must all be working for repentance. We must examine our conscience, find our sinful nature and repent for it. Living a life of constant examination and repentance an more than living life righteously, believing we are as holy as we can be.
There will be rejoicing when we enter heaven if we are able to see our sinfulness every day and repent from it. Both Saint Pope John Paul II and Saint Teresa of Calcutta went to confession weekly. When I look at their lives, it is hard to imagine what they could have to confess. I know I could improve in this area. The beauty of this is that if we are regularly confessing and repenting we are also regularly examining our lives and hopefully growing closer and closer to Christ.
When I examine my life I often see one sin over and over again - pride. It is one of the sins I daily have to work on repentance for. And today's first reading helps remind me of the need to turn away from pride. No matter what gains we have made on this earth, in the flesh, they should all be considered a loss because they are nothing in comparison to knowing and loving Christ. My pride should be rooted in the fact that I know Christ, not in the good things I have done, the things I have or the decisions I make. Paul is reminding us, and the Philippians, that at the heart of all we do, we must be focused on the love of Christ.
The refrain to the song, We are the Light of the World by Jean Greif, goes, "that they may see the good that we do and give glory to God." And that is what all of our work must be rooted in - returning the glory to God. And the way that we can help that to happen is by constant examination, confession and repentance, working to bring our lives more in union with God. When we can do this there will be great joy in heaven when we are one day brought into our Father's loving embrace.
- Amanda Grimm