It is far easier to point out another’s faults than it is to notice and claim our own; even more difficult is to do something about them. We are ashamed to look at ourselves; it is a level of vulnerability and nakedness that many of us fear more than the nakedness of our own bodies. But we are nevertheless quick to strip off the garments of another to point out their own flaws, or perhaps we do so only in the privacy of our own minds, condemning them for the things of which we assume they are guilty. We turn up our noses at the person dressed a certain way at Mass, at the ignorance a person shows of their faith on Facebook, at the choices a person at work seems to me making. In the sanctuary of our hearts and minds we very easily build ourselves up as gods sitting on our own thrones of judgement, looking out upon the world through the stained glass windows of our own pride, for it is quite comfortable to look down on another, more so than to look inwardly upon ourselves, for that means bowing our heads, chin to chest, in humility. And humility is quite detestable.
Thus today we come to the next thing we must give up if we are to follow Christ faithfully as His disciples: our sins. This can be very difficult, because it is not so much a matter of letting go of this or that, or saying ‘no thank you’ to an otherwise good thing, but it requires a level of humility that can only be gotten by the grace of God. Every Christian, on some level, wants to serve God, wants to give Him the best that they have to offer. The very thought of handing our sins over to Him, on the surface, is revolting; I may as well give a bowl of dung to my beloved spouse! Why ever would God want my sins?
Because, little soul, He wants to destroy them. He wants to take the poison from your heart, to pull the splinter from your eye, to break the chains around your soul, and God would it be so much simpler were He to do these things for us! If only He would, like a good parent, pull the dangerous thing out of our curious mouths before we swallow it! Alas, for love of us and to honor our radical freedom, He permits us to sin if we so choose it, and He eagerly awaits our equally free choice to rid ourselves of the same. Yet we so often make excuses so that we needn’t have such an encounter with Him! We pretend to honor Him by keeping His hands clean of our filth, “Oh, I don’t want to trouble Him; surely others need Him more than I.” We don’t want to pollute the purity of His sight with our sins, so we think, “I’ll be fine; I’ll just try to do better.” We think we will spare Him some heartbreak or shock by not going to confession, thinking to ourselves, “He could never forgive me for what I have done.”
Ha! Do you think so little of our Almighty God? Do you think the hands that fashioned the universe cannot grasp your sins and crush them? “I have brushed our offenses away like a cloud, your sins like a mist; return to me, for I have redeemed you,”He says(Isaiah 44:22). You think that when you present your sins before Him, He will be offended, He who beheld the rebellion of Satan, and has seen every sin mankind has ever committed: your own sins will stain His sight? Rather, He says, “…you are precious in my eyes and honored, and I love you…” (Isaiah 43:4). You think He cannot forgive whatever it is you have done, that the God who moves worlds with but a word cannot, too by a word, remove your sin? “Come now,” He says, “let us set things right…though your sins be like scarlet, they may become white as snow…” (Isaiah 1:18).
Our saint today, St. John Chrysostom, says this: “Have you sinned? Come to Church. Tell God, ‘I have sinned.’ I do not demand anything else of you than this. Holy Scripture states, ‘Be the first one to tell of your transgressions, so you may be justified.’ Admit the sin to annul it. This requires neither labor nor a circuit of words, nor monetary expenditure, nor anything else whatsoever such as these. Say one word, think carefully about the sin and say, ‘I have sinned.’” Come to confession. Stumble to the Church, blind for the great beam in your eye, coming to the One who heals the blind (Mark 10:46-52), He who is the very light of the world (John 8:12). Come to the one who took the great beams of sin from the eyes of the world and fashioned them into the Cross, that the same world might clearly see the love of God at last. Give God your sins and watch as each charge against you is consumed in His love like a dry leaf in a raging inferno: it is gone before it even touches the flame.