To confess, or not to confess...

Often, there are statements we hear that stay with us a long time. One of those for me is from my moral theology professor at the Seminary. He said "never underestimate the ability of God's people to screw up there lives." It was not a joke, but more a commentary on who we are as sinners struggling to cope in this world and where we more often show the inability to resist temptation. I also like the title of a priest friends talk that he titled "confession - its not just for the elderly." While the sacrament is largely ignored due to a more protestant view that my confession is between me and my God, it does have many of the young giving it a chance.

Some of the most profound confessions I have heard are from the high school age students and I could not help but think back to what my seminary professor had said as I watch it being fulfilled. I hear and see some battered and bruised sinners in tears looking for reconciliation from the God that is there to restore. Many young adults also bring battered and broken lives to the sacrament and seek us to show them God's love. Reconciliation is one of the most rewarding aspects of the priest's life. It is an uncomfortable thought to share a persons failings with another, but the sacrament asks a demonstration of what Jesus asks and showed Himself, which is the ability to humble ourselves. Most priests go to confession at least once a month to remind themselves of what it is the Church asks of all of us a minimum of once a year.

It is our conscience that we have lied to and ignored when we make excuses and list numerous justifications to ourselves for not making use of reconciliation. If we are truthful with ourselves, (and the conscience will tell you in the depth of your heart) it is not because we don't believe in reconciliation as a discipline, but we do not want to subject ourselves to a perceived humiliation or embarrassment. As a priest, I think one of the graces of ordination is to see sin and sinner with the eyes of Jesus. To be able to see through sin and see the human being as God sees us in Christ. After all, as human beings, we all seek reconciliation with God...we as priests are no different. If the priest is not as gentle as a lamb in the confessional, he has strayed to far from what he was taught.

Need proof?

Aristotle, Aquinas, and philosophers throughout history have tried to rationalize through their writings that the existence of God can be proved not from a source of divine writings alone, but from our very existence itself. Most people cannot or do not want to think past their everyday lives. It has been the philosophers throughout history that could not leave the hows and whys of what is seen to chance and had to explore the possibilities.

Last week I talked about the conscience. To me, the conscience is a proof of God. How does a conscience evolve into a mechanism that can know right from wrong, or bring a response of remorse? The animal and insect world is focused on a fight for survival. Human beings are also, but we are rational beings purposed to go far beyond the realm of just surviving. Civilizations generally had laws that upheld the Law given to Moses before God ever revealed the Commandments to Israel. I think the Apostle Paul sheds some light on this in his letter to the Romans (2:14-15) Paul tells us that even the Gentiles do by nature what is in the Law even though they do not know the Law. Paul tells us that God has written His law in our hearts and the conscience bears witness to it. God's Law is in our hearts when we are born.

Our conscience can be trained to be silent and we can ignore it entirely given the right attitudes and behaviors. It can be shut off as a tool in our moral behavior when our emotions drown out the voice of our conscience. The new enlightenment in society is called moral relativism. A worldview where one believes that anything goes. What I judge to be moral is good and you have the same right, even if we conflict. The good part is, we will not confront because we respect the other person and their opinion. Moral relativism is a way of life on college campuses and denies that there is an eternal law from God. If you question a person about this belief, especially if they believe that anything goes, you can ask if they believe murder is acceptable if someone wants it to be a part of their lifestyle. The answer is most likely well...no...in which case you can accuse them of being a moral absolutist. Either God's Law is 100% accurate or none of it is. There is no pick and choosing of God's Law. More next week.

Let your conscience be your guide

Let your conscience be your guide...NOT!! Hold the phone here. It is a good line and a nice rule, but that assumes our conscience has been properly formed. In the filth of the world, it is entirely possible that the conscience has been contaminated and is feeding you wrong information. We continue to educate ourselves our whole lives with Scripture and Magisterial teachings of the Church to help us make the best decisions possible. We read the Word of God so we get to know the God of the Word.

Our conscience has most likely been infiltrated with the values and norms of our culture, which often run opposite to the Word of God. Pick your poison...abortion, the death penalty, stem cells, euthanasia, drug legalization, legalizing prostitution, illegal aliens, etc...the list is endless. All of these issues have strong secular support and a strong voice against them. Perhaps we favor some and not others. Perhaps we have just heard too much about them and we just don't care anymore. Has society beaten you down to the point that you are apathetic to the causes and we do not even want to form an opinion.

If we are weary from the world, we must pull ourselves up because God wants a decision from us on where we stand and will our voice be heard. In my first few posts from last year, I defined where the Church makes decisions on such issues and how it rules. First and foremost, the Church asks
1) Will an action promote, protect, and defend the dignity of a human being based on the fact that we are created in God's image.
2) Will an action glorify Christ, who became a human being...one of us created in God's image.

We can allow our conscience to be our guide if those two principles are a part of our being. If we don't see the human person like that, we need to continue to form our conscience with the Word of God. We must continue to learn from the Master and become like Him if we truly want to be guided by our conscience.

Let your conscience be your guide

Pick up your cross and follow me. How hard can that be, right?! The Christian journey can be a difficult road because if we do it right, we plow head-long into a culture that defies the truths of Christianity at its core, even though most profess Christianity as their primary belief system. This weekends Gospel reading found Jesus on the mountain of transfiguration. Jesus was being affirmed by the Father and we experience a slight bit of the glory to come. However, Jesus was sent back down the mountain without the brilliance and radiance accompanying Him and He was sent on His journey to Jerusalem...to be led up a different hill, Golgotha.

Lent is about following Jesus to Golgotha in many ways for us. It is to experience what it truly means to be a Christian. Jesus doesn't ask us yet to be martyrs in this country as of today, but Jesus does not want us making bee-lines around Jerusalem and coming out the other side of glory with Him without us making the same trip to Jerusalem He did. Making a trip to Jerusalem can mean so many different things for so many different people. Deep in all of our hearts, is a knowledge about our wrongs that we justify to ourselves as being o.k. so often. The TV we watch, our sexuality, our spending habits, the time we spend on entertainment, any of our vices, etc. can lead us off the road to Jerusalem.

Lent is the time of year where we must come face to face with our interior and spiritual lives. We can at any time, but as a Church, we focus on it these six weeks to do it as a people. The road to Jerusalem is a personal journey, but it is nice to have fellow travelers on that road with you. We pray for the grace to discover those crosses Jesus wants us to consider partaking of in our own particular lives.