Today
I would like to focus on one line of the mass that you hear every
time you come to mass. It is the prayer at the consecration, where
the priest holds up the chalice and says, ‘This is the cup of my
blood, it will be shed for you and for all, so that sins may be
forgiven.’ This phrase always strikes me when I pray the mass.
It sums up what the whole mass is about; the forgiveness of sins.
When we come to the mass we become present to the sacrifice at
Calvary. Time stands still and we are there. It is the most perfect
prayer and the most powerful prayer because in it, God the Son
(Jesus), is offered to God the Father. And the Father can not refuse
this offering. That is why it is so powerful and that is why we
remember so many people in each mass. It is an offering that cannot
be refused. The whole purpose of this sacrifice is so that sins may
be forgiven, so that everything we’ve ever done wrong can be paid
for, so that it won’t be held against us. Otherwise we could not go
to heaven when we die.
You
know how we often wonder if our prayers are being heard? ‘Does God
listen when I pray?’ The Lord assures us that He does, but the mass
is the one prayer we are absolutely guaranteed is heard and answered
and it is all done so that our sins may be forgiven.
There
is another side to this as well. It is wonderful that our sins are
forgiven, but it presupposes one thing: that we acknowledge that we
are sinners and that we ask forgiveness from God. That’s what
repentance is: acknowledging that we have sinned and turning to God.
Today there is a tendency to act as if sin doesn’t exist anymore.
We have lost a sense of sin. People have often said to me, ‘But
Father I have no sins’, ‘I don’t sin’, or in confession
people will tell me that they are really a good person and they never
do wrong to anyone. If we have no sins, then the mass is meaningless,
there is no purpose to God coming among us in the person of Jesus;
the crucifixion and death of Jesus is meaningless and there was no
purpose to all his work, or to the work of the Apostles. It is the
Lord himself who assures us that we have sinned. St. John the Apostle
says in one of his letters: ‘If we say that we have not sinned,
then we call God a liar.’ Strong language! That is why every year
we have this whole season of Lent to remind us of the need to repent
and ask forgiveness. It is a big mistake to deny our sinfulness,
because in doing so we are telling God that He is wrong and He is
lying.
To
say that we are sinners doesn’t mean that we are bad, or evil
people. It simply acknowledges that we are weak, that we have a
tendency to do the wrong thing, even when we know we shouldn’t. It
says in the book of Proverbs (24:16), ‘The just man falls seven
times [a day]’. That is a biblical way of saying that we sin
continually. St. Paul complains in one of his letters, ‘I do
not understand my own behavior; I do not act as I mean to, but I do
things that I hate ...the good thing I want to do, I never do; the
evil thing which I do not want—that is what I do’ (Cf. Rom
7:14-24).
The
mercy of God is there for us if only we would turn to it. So many of
the teachings of Jesus were about repentance and God’s mercy: the
prodigal son, the lost sheep, the lost coin. He is telling us that
God is not interested in our sins, but in our returning to him. Our
difficulty is that our pride can tell us that we don’t need to
confess, that we’re OK as we are. Satan does his best to convince
us of this too, because he wants to keep us as far from God as
possible. He knows that we will be forgiven every time we turn to God
and he doesn’t want that.
Every
once in a while, it’s good to remind ourselves what we are doing
and why. I find that I need to do it for myself a lot, because it’s
easy to forget. I am a sinner, but my freedom is found in God’s
mercy. To acknowledge our need for God keeps the balance right. We
are sinners, but Jesus is merciful.
‘This
is the chalice of my blood, [which] will be shed for you and for all,
for
the forgiveness of sins.’
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