Thursday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
I didn’t know it at the time, but (at 14) I was attending a fundamentalist youth ministry. In keeping with the design of the ministry, I was focused on the various team competitions, upbeat rock Christian music, and self-help style messages. But all the while I was getting another message—unless you adhere to all of our rules (which trickled out slowly over time) you are not worthy of God’s love.
I got the memo. Maybe one way or the other you did too.
In my older years (into my 50’s) I knew that I really wanted to become Catholic. That had been the case for a number of years. But it didn’t seem as though I could pull that off because I was divorced. And then a friend pointed Bill and I to Immaculate Conception. We were so crazy grateful when Father Satish allowed us to join RCIA.
But then Father Satish made it clear that the rite of reconciliation was part of the process. I would need to confess my sins. To another human being. To a priest!
It’s one thing to know your many sins. It’s another to speak them. To put them into language. To speak them into the air for another to hear.
So, I made a list. Given my years on the planet, as you might imagine, the list was rather long. And despite my earnest efforts to make it complete, I knew I had committed many more sins than appeared on my list. I just couldn’t remember them all.
In Father Satish’s office, after some very helpful instruction about the rite of reconciliation—what it is about and how to think about it—I began to go through my sins. I put them into words and into the air. And he heard them.
The woman in the story from Luke’s Gospel is so much better than me. She is anointing Jesus. She is washing his feet with her tears and drying them with her hair.
I was afraid to confess my sins. I had learned from that tender age that God remembers your sins and makes you pay for them later. That’s God’s justice. And God must have God’s justice to be God.
And then, after I got through my very long list of sins, Father Satish placed his hands on my head and, by way of his sacred role as priest, forgave them. And more than that, he said God doesn’t even remember them.
This is our God. Who even while all-knowing has the ridiculous grace to forget. And in so doing to give us the chance to begin again. To be better than we have been. We don’t deserve this mercy. Yet God gives it. As Jesus did again and again, and especially with women that pure and righteous men of his day couldn’t be bothered with.
Amen and amen.
- Sue Trollinger