26th Week, Friday, Oct 3
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 communication 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 a tendency to pin the blame on someone or something. But this tendency also reveals the self-defense 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.
