Monday of the Second Week of Lent 2011

We have sinned, been wicked and done evil;

we have rebelled and departed from your commandments and your laws.
We have not obeyed your servants the prophets,
who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes,
our fathers, and all the people of the land.
Justice, O Lord, is on your side;
we are shamefaced even to this day….

Recommending the Sacrament of Penance to a group of young people recently, I told them, “This sacrament, like the other six, is a very great mystery. We have to talk about it, and yet we cannot explain it. I don’t think any words could persuade a skeptic to enter the sacrament. It is something we have to do, and do repeatedly, to appreciate.”

Penance is a great privilege that God has given to his people. It begins not with the awareness of sin but with the awareness of blessing, or grace.

Grace has many meanings and it seems they all apply. Grace is freely given, the word means free. It is graceful and bestows gracefulness upon our awkwardness. Under the tutelage of grace I learn to think, speak and act both gracefully and graciously. I flow with the air around me and the fluids within me. This is the kind of movement the martial arts pursue, to be one with motion and one with the earth beneath my feet. If it is amazing to watch it is even more wonderful to experience within oneself.

Grace understands the time of which Qoheleth speaks. There is a time for everything under heaven, and the wise person senses the time and goes with it.

Sin, then, is that awkwardness that doesn’t know the time. It cracks jokes while people weep, and provokes when it’s time to conciliate.

Sin cannot imagine freedom; it hoards during times of scarcity and plenty. It thinks only of itself and cannot see beyond its own needs.

Penance is that insight that says, “What was I thinking?” It is dismayed by the enormity of sin’s stupidity, which the Bible calls foolishness. If sin is stumbling blindly in a crowded room, stepping on unseen toes, elbowing unseen chests and gouging unseen eyes penance is watching the lights come up to reveal a trail of hurting, angry people.

But penance is also the joy of apologizing, making amends, and changing one’s ways. It is discovering the grace that floods into one’s being and connects with the hurts, hopes, and expectations of others. It is discovering I am not alone.

Finally it is acknowledging, “Justice, O Lord, is on your side.” I have no claim on God. I deserve nothing except punishment. But I want with all my heart to sing God’s praises for God is good, all good, supreme good.