Repentance

A Grace for This Week. . .

To desire that God’s faithful love help me recognize some of the ways sin entices me and to feel contrition and sorrow—as well as mercy—for my sinfulness.

Repentance

Lent begins with the call to “repent and believe in the Gospel.”  These words that may accompany the imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday echo Jesus’s call to the people of Galilee at the start of his ministry and call attention to the link between repentance and belief.  Contrition for our sins reinforces our belief in the God who forgives.  More fundamentally, however, feeling and expressing sorrow for our sins helps us experience a heartfelt reorientation toward the God who loves us so much he continues to love and forgive us, always hoping we will love more and sin less.  The more we open ourselves to the fullness of God’s love, the more we desire to respond to that love by trying to avoid the pitfalls that lead us to sin.

The baptismal promises include the rejection of evil, using words such as “the glamor of evil” or “the empty promises of Satan.”  Evil entices us with the false hope of attaining something we are missing.  If we have the love of God, what could we be missing?  The attractiveness of sin points to our reluctance to give ourselves up to the love of God.  It’s hard to trust fully in the security of God’s love in an uncertain world.  Our fears and anxieties about our physical, psychological, and emotional well-being predispose us to “store up treasures on earth,” as Jesus well knew.

This affects everyone to some extent.  It is part of the human condition.  And the more, and especially the earlier in our lives, we have encountered danger, harm, or even abuse, the harder it is to believe in a loving God who is our refuge.  Particularly damaging is the sense of shame we may come to feel, mistakenly coming to believe we deserved what we got.  In response, we build walls to protect our hearts from the shame and the danger of being hurt again.  Our attempts to shield ourselves from shame paradoxically impede our capacity to give and receive freely the love that can heal our shame.

Our defensive walls both protect our wounds and hamper our compassion.  Our hearts are held hostage by a sense of unworthiness and this leads us to judge whether or not others are worthy of our love, continuing the pattern.  This is not how God loves nor how we, made in the image and likeness of God, were created to love.  Repentance, therefore, involves not just asking for and accepting forgiveness.  It includes acknowledging that we have failed to embrace fully God’s infinite goodness and love and asking for his help in recognizing how we have turned to sinful substitutes to fill the emptiness this has caused within us.  Grounded in his love, we can start to break down the walls that constrain our love.

There are sins of which we may rightly be ashamed, but true repentance entails taking responsibility for the sin and letting go of the shame.  In doing so, we are following the path Jesus forged for us.  If we turn to him with contrite hearts, Jesus, who was himself without sin, takes our sin and our shame from us so that we might more fully love both God and our neighbor.

This is the Gospel—the Good News—that Jesus preached in word and deed.  Repentance allows us to open our hearts to it and believe.

A Prayer for This Week. . .

Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and put a new and right spirit within me.
Do not cast me away from your presence,
and do not take your holy spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and sustain in me a willing spirit.

For you have no delight in sacrifice;
if I were to give a burnt-offering, you would not be pleased.
The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

Psalm 51:10-12, 16-17

Christine Szczepanowski