Blessed is the one whose transgression is
forgiven, whose sin is covered.
Blessed is the man against whom the Lord
counts no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit.
For when I kept silent, my bones wasted
away through my groaning all day long.
For day and night your hand was heavy
upon me;
my strength was dried up as by the heat
of summer.
I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did
not cover my iniquity;
I said, “I will confess my transgressions
to the Lord,”
and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.
Therefore let everyone who is godly offer
prayer to you when you may be found;
surely in the rush of great waters, they
shall not reach him.
You are a hiding place for me; you
preserve me from trouble;
you surround me with shouts of
deliverance.
I will instruct you and teach you in the
way you should go;
I will counsel you with my eye upon you.
Be not like a horse or a mule, without
understanding,
which must be curbed with bit and bridle,
or it will not stay near you.
Many are the sorrows of the wicked,
but steadfast love surrounds the one who
trusts in the Lord.
Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, O
righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.
Psalm 32
Reflection – Happy Monday of Holy Week.
This is a week rich in themes—so much to ponder, so little time, really.
Fortunately we have precisely one Holy Week a year, so if we don’t quite take
it all in this year we can try again next year (not to mention that we’re
allowed to think about these things in between—encouraged, actually!).
The Monday
Psalter has brought us to Psalm 32 which focuses on one of the key themes of
this season, namely forgiveness of sin. In Madonna House we are having our communal
penance service this evening; many parishes have had similar services at some
point in the Lenten season.
In our
community this is always a night of great peace and joy—to communally,
individually acknowledge the simple, sad truth that we are sinners, that we
have sinned, that we have done what we know to be wrong and have turned our
faces from God in doing so—to be able to say this outright, publicly, with
great humility, even as we reserve the specific details for the sanctity of the
confessional, is great freedom and happiness.
To have to
either hide one’s sins away like a terrible secret, a shameful thing one must
conceal from God and neighbour, or to be so horrified or incensed at the
very notion of sin and being a sinner that we have to deny sin exists,
rationalize every choice we have made, wish away every moral law we have broken—all
of this is frankly exhausting. Our bones waste away from the effort, our
strength is dried up. It is so much easier, really, to just give in, admit one
is a sinner, go to confession and forget about the whole thing.
Some of my
anti-Catholic readers (why do they read this blog, anyway?) approach the
subject of sin and the sacrament of confession as another example of clerical
privilege and abuse. They don’t seem to realize that priests go to confession,
too, as do bishops and the Pope for that matter. Our MH communal penance
service is for all of us, as we all together acknowledge and confess our sins
to the Lord, even as the priests are indeed the ministers of God’s mercy in the
sacrament itself.
In Holy Week
all of this is especially poignant and meaningful. Jesus Christ died for
sinners, died to win us the sure forgiveness of our sins by the shedding of his
blood. We cannot really appreciate what He did for us unless we fully
acknowledge the desperate plight of our sinful humanity. If sin is not real,
and is not a very serious problem indeed for us, then Christ’s death is rather
pointless, isn’t it?
The truth
is, our unforgiven sins will pull us down to Hell and eternal death if we do
not bring them ‘under the Blood’, in that fine old fashioned phrase. And this
should be no cause for undue distress for us, because as it happens Jesus did
die for us, and so mercy and forgiveness have been made available to the whole
human race in His death and risen life. We don’t have to be sorrowful, and we
don’t have to be stubborn like a mule in finding our own path through the
world, and we don’t have to waste away. Life is given us, freely, in Jesus Christ.
Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for
joy, all you upright in heart.
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