Lent I

Lent I 2016 – Cycle C Deuteronomy 26:4-10; Psalm 91; Romans 10:8-13; Luke 4:1-13

Every day in chat rooms filled with strangers, people of all ages and walks of life share their darkest and loneliest secrets: marital infidelities, addictions, collapses of relationships with family and friends, compulsions and betrayals. Why do people reveal themselves in this way? What happened to friends, confidants, mentors, and confessors?   Is it the anonymity? Yet what anonymity, if you are using the likes of Facebook or Twitter? Isn’t there a certain voyeuristic aspect to chat rooms? And though never having been in a chat room, it has always struck me as seedy. It’s like walking into a porn shop, no one looks at each other in the eye. What are people seeking? …their five minutes of fame? …unconditional acceptance? …community? …absolution? How can you experience acceptance and community in the impersonal realm of cyberspace? Are people really looking for absolution when they have done nothing wrong but have simply “acted out” or have caught the disease ‘affluenza’ which releases the wealthy, at least, of responsibility?

Such perceived, questionable honesty is cheered by audiences on daytime talk shows like Jerry Springer and Dr. Phil. Public revelations have become the staple of entertainment news among public figures who parade their failings before the cameras: President Bill Clinton, Governor Eliot Spitzer, Senator John Edwards, evangelical preachers Jimmy Swaggart and Ted Haggard. At best, it is bad theatre and at worst, these “public performance confessions” have made sin and guilt trite and trivial. If you will, a No-Fault Morality?

Yet in all these instances, something is missing. There is a hollowness to all thissupposed honesty. Our sense of right and wrong has been dulled. The reasons are many: the deterioration of social institutions, including the church, an absence of a shared set of values, isolation, and the emergence of the individual up and against the community. We live in a period that is morally unstable and lacks cohesion. In this environment, some people want to retreat to the past and live in a black and white moral world which requires little reflection. “Just tell me what to do”. It is psychologically and spiritually immature but it works to a degree. Other people are willing to grapple with the complexity of many contemporary issues but can easily slide into relativism since few people no longer accept that there are moral absolutes and universal truths.

Not only has our sense of right and wrong been dulled but we dull ourselves with busyness, alcohol and other recreational drugs, and iPhones which we constantly check even when they do not ring, lest we miss out on something since we are the center of the universe! We overload our schedules. We are terrified of silence and so we surround ourselves with constant sound from radios, MP3s, ubiquitous televisions covering the walls of sports bars to hospital waiting rooms, ear buds sealing out the world. We accept as the norm interruptions from textings, iPads, emails, phones; anything so that we are not forcedto take stock of who we are, what we are doing with our lives, to what purpose, and where this is all going.

Self-examination resulting in confessions that have substance to change us cannot exist when we continue to have so much going on we don’t have a moment to really deeply reflect. So we fill our lives with dark chat room revelations, entertain ourselves with shallow political tears while wives dutifully stand “by their man” and apologies, offered even by Popes, for past transgressions.

None of this is self-examination or confession. Confession implies an inner change, not congratulations or applause. Confession is interior; shared with those whom we have hurt and spiritual healers. Is it no wonder that Catholics have abandoned the Sacrament of Reconciliation?

In the book, The Art of the Public Grovel, Susan Wise Bauer makes a distinction: “An apology is an expression of regret: I am sorry. A confessionis an admission of fault: I am sorry because…; because I did wrong; because I committed a crime; because I purposefully hurt you; because I did something evil; because I neglected my responsibility to you; because I remained silent rather than speaking up. Or as the Psalmist put it: “I sinned, what is evil in your sight I have done.” That can be said to any person, not just God. In the Confiteor we Catholics do both: I confess to almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters that I have greatly sinned… Have you ever reflected on that public admission? We continue: in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do. And then three times: “through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault…” There is no place to hide; not the anonymity of cyberspace or the dark privacy of our homes or the blinding light of entertainment cameras.

It is this sincere admission that is missing in today’s society and church.

But admission of guilt, confession in our spiritual understanding, implies an inner change, a new understanding of the situation and our role in it. Confession first looks backward: What wrong did I do or good did I fail to do? Why did I choose to act in such a way? There is no wiggle room for excuses or blame. There is only personal accountability. Then confession looks forward. By taking responsibility for our life and our choices we can come to realign ourselves with what is best in us and with Christ Jesus and the Christian community.

Unless we enter into this depth of self-examination and confession we will not experience real change, that is, conversion to Christ. We will be a façade of Christ to our world because we will only have put a band-aid over a gaping wound. And, as Jesus taught, our demons will visit us again, often with worse consequences [See Matthew 12:43-45].

There is a haunting line from the film Revolutionary Road about two people unable to be honest with themselves in their dying marriage: “No one forgets the truth; they just get better at lying”. Lent is a season to empty ourselves to make room not to become more practiced at lying but to reach with honesty for the truth deep within ourselves. A truth and honesty that will change us in Christ.

 “I confess to almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters that I have greatly sinned…”

[Phrases in italic and ideas are from, “the art of confession: Renewing Yourself Through the Practice of Honesty” by Paul Wilkes, Workman Publishing, New York, 2011]