Thoughts & Homilies

Lenten Reconciliation Liturgy
March 19, 2002

Joel 2:12,13
Matthew 8:1-4

Opening Prayer:
God of never ending mercy, you created a world that was pure and innocent and beautiful. Sin has robbed us of peace and added uncertainty and anxiety to every heart. On this feast of St. Joseph, help us to be upright and gracious.
Make us long for your peace and thirst for holiness.

An overzealous Christian felt it was his calling to aggressively "make" other people Christian as they would ride the city bus system. He would sit next to people wherever there was an empty seat and harangue them either until they accepted Jesus or got up and looked for another place to sit. One day he spotted a drunk, staggering onto the bus trying to make his way down the aisle. The over zealous Christian sprang into action shook his Bible in the man's face and yelled: "Did you know you're headed for Hell?" The drunk replied, "Oh no, I'm on the wrong bus again"

According to the testimony of scripture we're all on the wrong bus.
"We all are sinners, but we're all saved by grace.
(I don't know which of us are headed for Hell
No one, I hope…..
But in a recent article in America, the Jesuit magazine,
Fr Edward Vacek asks the question,
"Do 'good people' need to go to confession?"
He writes that he and many priests are perplexed
when people come to confession and say I have nothing to confess.
It used to be that when people had not been to confession in years,
they would have a lengthy list of sins.
or they would say, "You name it, Father I've done it."
Now, so often people come to confession for the first time in 5, 10 or 20 years
and say that they cannot think of any sins to confess.
Our church teaches
that God preserved Jesus and even his mother, Mary, from sin,
but since Vatican II,
it seems we have millions of people without sin.
I presume that all of you are here tonight
because you recognize there is a dark side to all of us.
We are sinners.
We are, no doubt, good, decent people
who do many loving things,
but most of us could do better.
We are not all that we could or should be.

We want to be better than we are,
and we need the saving grace of Christ
to heal us,
absolve us,
and help us grow.
Why do the 'good people' need confession?
So that we never forget who we are,
and what we are,
and how vulnerable and weak we can be.
This sacrament goes by many names.
We call it confession.
We call it penance.
We call it reconciliation.
In short, it is a sacrament of honesty.
We can so easily be self deceived.
There is an echo of Ash Wednesday in tonight's first reading from the Prophet Joel:
"Even now, says the Lord, return to me with your whole heart
for gracious and merciful is the Lord, slow to anger,
rich in kindness, relenting in punishment."
We are sinners and it is good that we are here.
We celebrate a sacrament - a sacrament of honesty,
a sacrament of healing and peace.
In the Gospel tonight, Jesus heals the leper and then says.
"Go show yourself to the priests"
There is a communal or social element in all that we do as Christians.
whether we wish to be healed of leprosy
or sin,
We show ourselves to the priests, the representatives of the whole church,
standing for everyone we might have hurt, including ourselves.
And even the priests must "show themselves to the priests"
for we too are sinners in need of healing.
Every sacrament is an act of worship.
Although we may think that the spotlight is some how on us tonight,
we are really here not just to confess our guilt,
but to worship,
to praise the merciful God,
to thank God for his compassion and patience with us.
And tonight we do this together.
All worship is best done together.
Together we can strengthen and encourage one another.
Together we can take from here the confidence
that God will treat us with abundant mercy and grace.
For He is
"gracious and merciful,
slow to anger,
rich in kindness.

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