Psalm 32:3-5 As long as I kept silent, my bones wasted away; I groaned all the day. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength withered as in dry summer heat. Then I declared my sin to you; my guilt I did not hide. I said, "I confess my faults to the LORD," and you took away the guilt of my sin.
Along a paved pathway deep into Pennsylvania’s farmland I walk in the midday, the sun gleaming and my heart light. It is a beautiful scene, really, early spring, immense trees kissing the sky as they awake from their winter slumber. Beside me, walls of stone line the path on which I tread, four feet high on each side. It makes me think…we are good at building walls, the stones of this wall perfectly placed and set one upon the other and where cracks and crevices were, there are several small stones and slabs situated to complete the puzzle. Yet, these man-made walls suggest to me not so much the aesthetically pleasing means by which I am kept on the straight and narrow, but rather a deterrent which does not allow me access to the world beyond these walls. What here analogously appears to be the path of the saints begins to show itself the path of sinners. I have come to understand more and more that the saints were the ones who decided to get off this pleasing path, by hopping the wall, and going out into the overbearing and sometimes belligerent world of the unknown. This is the path of the saints, if you can call it a path. I do not think it unimportant that Christ reminds us that the path that the few walk is a path that is found, in the most verb-like sense of the word. The path that leads to death is simply traveled, and by many. Seeking the path of sainthood for most of us, for me, means scaling the walls which have long kept me bound, if only I had the courage to do so. If only I had the courage to be a Christian.
There are many people who would answer “yes” when asked if they were Christian. But there are few who will tell you that they are Christian without you asking. And even fewer who would answer “yes” if threatened with death for affirming their Christianity. I do not claim to judge here that the people who do not expressly remind the world daily that they are Christian are not Christian, since for me, that very judgment would be brought against myself. (And I must hold if I look at my life from the outside that despite the sinfulness which plagues my soul and despite the many times I have failed to vocally express it, I am a Christian. I have a will to follow Him and I have taken at least, or maybe at most, one unmistakable step towards God in my life.) What I do call to mind here is the inexorable fear in my heart that makes me rather skitter around the sands of uncertainty and call it “searching” rather than proclaim my own deep belief in Jesus Christ with my mouth. There is a saying that “actions speak louder than words.” But that is not true for God. God’s Word speaks louder than any action, because his word is action. I think this must be one of the fundamental misconceptions of many people, that the “action” is louder than the “word.” But God speaks first, and then the actions caused by his word ensue. But the causal link cannot be broken or reversed; in God the Word precedes action, and is the cause and summation of all things. We call that word Jesus.
I can think of one example that hints at this. In Mark’s gospel, chapter 2:1-12, there is a story of four men who carry a paralytic to Jesus in the hope that he will be healed. They are so determined and have such faith in Christ that they stop at nothing to bring this paralytic to him. Even when there is no room in the house and people are pouring out of the door, they go so far as to break through the roof of some man’s house and lower the crippled man from the rooftop. They put so much effort (truly unmatched effort in terms of unnamed disciples in the gospels) into bringing this man to Christ. And what does Christ do first? Does he act or does he speak? Jesus speaks the words of forgiveness. “Child, your sins are forgiven.” Now these four men, and as well all of us, are really almost up in arms about this disappointing response to such great effort. We want him healed, we want action, we want a miracle! But Christ reminds us later in the passage that it is truly easier for Jesus, through whom the world was made, to perform a physical miracle and make the man able to walk than it is for him to forgive his sins. We forget the paralysis caused by our sin! The power of Jesus’ word (and hence, his forgiving action) is mistaken for the lesser of the two feats. We fail to see the spiritual miracle and truly the power of a God who forgives sins.
That is why when I put so much effort into pleasing God and serving him, I am left disappointed when he does not act, when he does not take away some sin in my life, when he fails to act in response to a desire that I have long had. That is why I am disappointed when God just says, “I absolve you of your sins.” That is why I search for love instead of accepting the words of God, “I love you.” I have got it all backwards. Words speak louder than actions. This is the true gift of the Sacrament of Confession: the spiritual miracle of being healed from the detriment of sin, a miracle that we do not deserve, merit, nor (in most cases) even recognize. We look for signs and we come to Jesus seeking so many other things that we miss the greatest of things: Jesus’ forgiveness. In Confession, we hear Jesus’ very words that he speaks to the paralyzed man, “Child your sins are forgiven.” If we could only see how our sin continues to paralyze our spiritual limbs, we would more readily recognize the miracle of the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
Who gets the glory in that story from Mark? The last verse makes it clear, God receives the glory. Not the four men who made such a heroic effort to bring the paralytic to Christ. In our Christian lives, do we not more associate with the four men, who are doing and acting and participating and serving and getting involved? And do we not also expect a reward for such effort and involvement? While we are busy seeking our reward, we fail to see that our spiritual life has been left unheeded and most of us, spiritually, are lying paralyzed on the ground. God is concerned about our soul! That is why Jesus forgives the paralyzed man’s sin before anything else. I hear God saying to me, open your ears and your heart, and hear the forgiving words of Jesus which have been so generously given to the Church through the Sacrament of Confession, “Your sins are forgiven.” This free gift of God, forgiveness, merited for us by his death on the cross, is the heart of the Gospel. Learn to recognize the miracles Jesus is performing every day in the souls of the humble who can truly see how paralyzed they are, yet have such hope and courage that they continue to drag their immobile spirits to the feet of Jesus in this simply profound sacrament.
I stop in the middle of the path along which I tread. I lift my head, making a squinted look up towards the sun, take a deep breath, and scale the wall to my right. As I hop down, I walk into the woods and find a new path, one that is difficult to see, and hard to follow.
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