12 Hours of Grace

Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Lent, Year C
Joshua 5.9a, 10-12 Psalm 34 2 Corinthians 5.17-21 Luke 15.1-3, 11-32

There is a story is told of St. Damian of Molokai. Born in Belgium, Fr. Damian was sent to Hawaii to serve as a missionary in the 1860s. He spent 16 years on the island of Molokai, a leper colony. For most of that time, he was the only priest on the island. Because many people were fearful of contracting leprosy, the residents of Molokai were never allowed to leave the island, and the only way to visit the island was to promise to never leave. In his journals, Fr. Damian wrote about the struggles of ministering on this island of disease and death. But his greatest personal struggle had nothing to do with the lepers in his care, the rejection by the local government, or the danger that he might himself contract leprosy – which he did. Fr. Damian’s greatest personal struggle was that, since he was the only priest on the island, he did not have the opportunity to celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation very often. Whenever a ship would come toward the island, Fr. Damian would run to the shore. As the ship passed by or threw boxes of supplies into the sea for the residents of the island, he would shout to the ship, asking if a priest were on board. On the rare occasions that a priest was on board the ship, he would ask if the priest would hear his confession. With the priest standing on the deck of the ship, Fr. Damian would shout his confession from the shore, with the priest shouting back his penance and absolution. This sacrament gave him the strength to minister to an island of dying people. And St. Damian’s greatest struggle on that island of death was that the Sacrament of Reconciliation was an infrequent grace.

Too many of us live almost in fear of the sacrament we call Reconciliation or Confession or Penance. We are afraid of what the priest might think of us, we are reluctant to admit our failings to another person, we don’t know why we can’t just go directly to God and bypass the ministry of the priest confessor. But the Sacrament of Reconciliation is not really about sin – it is about love. Look at the different reactions by the father and the older son in the familiar parable we heard today. The older son is fixated on his brother’s sins, swallowing up their father’s property with prostitutes, among other things. From his perspective, it is the sin that determines how his brother should be treated. He is angry at his father who sees things from a very different perspective. The father never once mentions the sins – he knows what they are, he knows that his younger son has come to him in humility to beg forgiveness. But the sins are not part of the father’s vocabulary. Instead, he shows unconditional love and compassion; he rejoices that his son who was lost has returned home. Their relationship is based on love, not on sin. And that is what we experience in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

There are two things that happen in this sacrament: God forgives our sins, first of all, but he also gives us grace. And how we need that grace! The only way we can be the holy person we are called to be is with God’s help. It is impossible to be patient all the time with a 2-year old or a 17-year old without God’s help; most often, they would say the same thing about their parents. It is impossible to be faithful to a life of prayer and service without God’s help. It is impossible to rid our lives of the Big Seven, the Seven Deadly Sins, without God’s help. In the Sacrament of Reconciliation, God has promised the grace and strength we need to overcome our sinfulness and to serve him with all our heart, our mind, and our soul. Remember, it’s not really about sin, it’s about love. God loves us so much he forgives us whenever we come to him. God loves us so much that he wants to help us love him back. And as we are reminded by a priest would spend up to 18 hours a day hearing confessions, St. John Vianney: “The good Lord knows everything. Even before you confess, he already knows that you will sin again, yet he still forgives you. How great is the love of our God: he even forces himself to forget the future, so that he can grant us his forgiveness!” Truly, how great is the love of our God!

This Thursday, here in this church, we are offering an unprecedented opportunity to celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation. We’re calling it 12 Hours of Grace. From 9 am to 9 pm, two priests will be available constantly for this Sacrament. Short prayer services will be held three times during the day, but the church will be open and the priests available for all of those 12 hours. Come when you can – come as you are – to receive the healing grace of forgiveness and love. If you celebrate the Sacrament of Reconciliation every month or each year during Lent, join us sometime on Thursday. If it has been 30 or 40 years since your last confession, join us sometime on Thursday. You will find that there is no judging here, no confrontation, no fixation on sin – only peace, love, and joy in the great gift that God is ready to give us. We all need God’s love, we need his help and guidance to follow his light in a world of darkness. This Thursday will be a day of great rejoicing, because the old things will pass away, and God in his love will make everything new. Through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, whenever we celebrate it, we come to God as sinners, we leave as saints.