26th Week, Friday, Oct 6
Baruch 1:15-22 / Luke 10:13-16
The people confess their guilt; "We have sinned!"
Keith Miller makes a revealing statement in his book The
Taste of New Wine. He says that as a Protestant he was reluctant to confess his
sins to anyone. He believed confession to be something private, something
between God and himself. At one point Keith discovered that even though God
could forgive him, he couldn't forgive himself for some sin. He anguished over
this situation for months. Then one day he was praying with a friend. He
writes: "In prayer I confessed this sin aloud to God before this friend. And
within a few days I could accept God's forgiveness."
***
How do we seek God's forgiveness after we have sinned in a
serious way? "When we are honest with another person, it confirms that we
have been honest with ourselves and with God." Alcoholics Anonymous
Manual
***
The reading
from Baruch is not from the hand of Baruch, who was the secretary of Jeremiah.
It dates from the time of the Maccabees and is like a penitential celebration
deploring the sins that had led to the present calamities and oppression.
Modern means
of communications have brought the world more closely together and shown us
more clearly too, the presence of sin and evil in the world; more than half of
the world is hungry and exploited, the world economy has gone out of hand
notwithstanding dole-outs for development aid and whole nations are not free
from inside or from outside. And in our own little worlds, there is repeated
selfishness, pride at the expense of others, suspicion... While condemning the
sins of society, let us not lose our personal sense of sin in the process; let
us not forget our solidarity to sin, and at the same time, live better our
solidarity to love and life on account of Christ. Sin is a rejection of Christ
and his message.
***
When things go wrong, there is the tendency to pin the blame
on someone or something. But this tendency also reveals the self-defence
mechanism of avoiding any blame on ourselves, especially when it seems that
there is no involvement on our part. And even if we have some involvement in
it, we would want to point fingers at the main culprit. The last thing that we
would do would be to point fingers at ourselves. In the 1st reading, the book
of Baruch states this: We have sinned in the sight of the Lord, have disobeyed
him, and have not listened to the voice of the Lord our God telling us to
follow the commandments which the Lord has ordained for us. Baruch goes on to
say that the disasters and the curse that the Lord pronounced through Moses
have sized up them, disasters they had experienced one after another. Baruch
and his people could have succumbed to the tendency of pushing the blame to
everyone else, God included, for these disasters. But as Baruch acknowledged,
integrity belongs to the Lord God, and to them the look of shame. Pushing the
blame around is not going to help them; they need to repent in humility. Similarly,
for us, when problems and bad things start to happen, let us not look around
for scapegoats to pin the blame on. In one way or another, we have a share in
contributing to the problems when things go wrong. Let us listen to the voice
of the Lord who calls us to repent. Rejection of His voice and denial of any
wrongdoing will lead only to disasters.
***
Opening
Prayer
Lord our
God, merciful Father, it is easy for us to condemn wars, civil strife, corruption,
exploitation, slavery of any kind. But we ask you, Lord God, though very
timidly, to open our eyes to the evil in us. Make us see Lord, that we are
doing on a small scale, in our own little worlds, the evil for which we blame
the big world. Make us see that we too, are sinners in need of forgiveness brought
us by Jesus Christ, our Lord.
***
Saint Bruno
Feast day October 6
Bruno was an 11th-century theology teacher who taught for
more than 18 years and headed schools. He wrote essays on the psalms and Saint
Paul’s letters. Bruno risked his reputation by opposing Manasses, the
archbishop of Rheims in modern-day Germany. Manasses had acquired this position
unfairly by buying it, which is known as simony.
When Manasses was removed from his role as archbishop, he
confiscated Bruno’s property. Bruno hid in an associate’s house where he was
joined by two friends. One day, Bruno left his post as a teacher and joined six
companions to go to a hermitage and live a life of prayer. On the way, Bruno
stopped to see an old friend, Hugh of Grenoble. Hugh greeted him with
amazement. The night before, Hugh had dreamed of seven stars settling on the
Chartreuse Alps, which he interpreted to mean Bruno with six companions. So
Hugh took the group to the mountains, where they built a chapel.
Six years later, Pope Urban II called Bruno to Rome, where
Bruno influenced the pope on Church matters. The pope offered to make him a
bishop, but Bruno declined. He agreed to found another hermitage in Italy,
where he died in 1101. Bruno was never formally canonized. In 1623, his feast
was put in the Roman calendar. Though Bruno wrote no rule and never intended to
start an order, he is considered the founder of the Carthusian monks.
