Rediscover Confession: Homily for Sunday, April 7, 2024

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I don’t think Thomas was a doubter about the resurrection. I think Thomas doubted Jesus could still love him after he ran away.

Rediscover Confession

I’ve said this before, but there was an unfortunate period in our life as Catholics where the sacrament of individual confession was downplayed, if not outright eliminated. And that is tragic. It’s tragic because if we look at the things that Jesus addresses in the gospel, first and foremost, there is no aspect that Jesus addresses more specifically than the devil. That is the most common word in all of the gospels. It’s not even close.

Secondly, he often will say to people, “Your sins are forgiven,” when they can acknowledge in faith who he is and what he is about. Moreover, we live in an age, as Cardinal George has said, where everything is allowed, but nothing is forgiven. And how often do we see some public figure stand up in front of everyone with a cleverly crafted note of apology and mock them?

I want to talk on this Divine Mercy Sunday about my own experience of confession. Because far from being something we should just cast aside and not think about and not celebrate, I think individual confession is one of the most powerful antidotes to the epidemic of loneliness that the Surgeon General declared a little over a year ago.

Because I suspect if we were to look in our own hearts and to think of our own lives, there is something in us that wonders, “If people really knew me, would they love me in the same way? If people really knew every aspect of my life, would they, in fact, feel the same way about me?”

I’ve mentioned, and I don’t know if you remember, but my first confession was not a happy experience, even though the priest who was hearing my first confession is the one I would suggest inspired me to become a priest. But I was scared, I was little, it was hot, we’d never been in the confessional, I got panicked, I made up sins, I didn’t know what I was doing, it was not a happy moment.

It was not a good moment. I didn’t go for a long time after that. But then on a retreat in high school, I did. And that moment changed my life.

I began to realize that, first of all, I wasn’t the person I thought I was, both in a good way, I wasn’t as bad as I thought I was, and in a not so good way, in the sense that I had to acknowledge that I didn’t always live the way I wanted to live. But in the midst of it all, what I experienced, and what I’ve experienced almost every single time since, is the powerful love of God for me.

Not the love of God for me as I could be, but the love of God for me as I am. Right now, right here, with my faults and my strengths. See, every act of confession is not something where the important part is that we go to inform God of what we’ve done. God already knows what we’ve done.

It is rather for us to be able to acknowledge in an act of worship that Jesus can forgive our sins. That God loves us even when we sin. And that God wants more for us than what we sometimes settle for in our own lives. That’s what we celebrate when we celebrate the sacrament of reconciliation.

It has a two-fold purpose. Of course we go first and foremost to be forgiven by God for our sins. That’s why I go to confession. I know I’m not perfect. I know I’ve deliberately chosen to reject God. I have sinned. I have fallen short, not by accident, not just because of human weakness, but because of my deliberate decision to believe that I know better than God. And I choose to do what I know is wrong, even though I know it’s wrong.

But I go for a second reason as well, because the secondary purpose of the sacrament of reconciliation is to bring my sins before the church.

In the early church, this custom was such that people would stand up in the congregation and declare their real big sins before the congregation, which then in turn would impose a penance, which often took the rest of the person’s life. These were big-time sins. These weren’t minor little tiny things. These were fundamental turning of the back on the very call of baptism.

But people began to realize that they needed something that wasn’t completely tragic, something in between that as one extreme, but they also knew that they weren’t perfect. As St. John says in his first letter in the first chapter, I think it’s the 10th verse, the one who says that he has no sin or she has no sin calls God a liar, because God knows who we are.

And when we can admit who we are before God, who already knows who we are, we can then recognize and experience his deep and fulfilling love and kindness for us, each one of us. Confession then has two purposes. It is to reconcile us to God and in the minister of the church, the priest, to reconcile us to the community of faith.

Why was today’s gospel one that is so important for us to hear with the Apostle Thomas? Unfortunately, he’s remembered for his doubt, but I don’t think he doubts what we think he doubts. I don’t think he doubted that Jesus was risen from the dead. I think he believed it.

I think what he doubted was would this risen Christ, who knew that Thomas ran at the key moment when Jesus needed him the most, would this Jesus still love him? Would this Jesus still want him as a disciple? Would this Jesus still call him a friend? Or was the hurt so deep that even Jesus himself was incapable of loving Thomas?

That’s why I think he needed to be sure that this was the same Jesus he saw crucified on the cross. That’s why he needed to touch the nail prints in his hands and put his hand in his side. He needed to know this was the very same Jesus. He needed to know that this Jesus, the very same Jesus who was crucified and died but is now risen, still loved Thomas. And that’s what we too can experience in the sacrament of reconciliation.

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