In the parish house in Buckie where I happen to live there is one window extremely inaccessible from the outside. Quite likely it hasn’t been touched since it was installed. For all those years dirt brought by rains and dust raised by winds covered the glass with a relatively thin but highly noticeable layer of filth. I’m not blaming the window cleaner – all the rest of windows are crystal clean as they are regularly washed off.
John the Baptist appears in today’s gospel as the man sent by God, fulfilling old prophecies. Many of them announced punishment for sins, presenting God as a vindictive, jealous and demanding sovereign. Unfortunately this image of God, belonging to the Old Testament, for centuries is the one which has been presented by many Christian preachers. Some elderly people might remember frightening sermons with visions of hell fire. Consequently sins likened to criminal offences against God and his laws, having little or no impact on the sinner’s life. Hence for many Christianity seems to arouse a permanent feel of guilt, depriving people any joy in life. As a result many completely rejected religion or limited it to a foggy idea of God and rump traditional practises.
‘Console my people, console them’. This cry from the beginning of today’s first reading defines God’s desire concerning his creation. People heading to John the Baptist are overburdened with unanswered questions, complicated lives and unsolved problems. They come to listen to the prophet. At one point of their visit ‘as they were baptised by him […] they confessed their sins’. At first glance it seems all those people were great sinners. From other gospels we know they are soldiers, tax-collectors, and ordinary people – they ask about how they should perform their own duties to keep peace of mind and peace with others. The only visitors rebuked by John are those convinced of their purity and sinlessness.
The sacrament of reconciliation has become a forgotten or neglected one. There are many reasons for that; I’d like to address just a couple of them. Firstly this sacrament appears as a humbling procedure of presenting our dark side followed by a sentence and penalty. In fact it’s the sacrament of mercy, forgiveness and consolation. I can discard all bad things and leave them at the foot of the cross of Christ.
Secondly, some people might not like confessing their sins to a priest, preferring a ‘direct line’ with God. It doesn’t exclude the sacramental confession; actually the latter supposes the former. By the ministry of the church we gain the certainty of being forgiven. People could confess their sins at their homes, but they went to the desert to John as they needed something appealing to their senses.
The last but not least reason of avoiding sacramental confession is a belief that we haven’t committed serious sins; probably for most of us this is true. However in our everyday life there are moments we are a bit malicious, irritating, unforgiving and so on. These are like grains of dust in the air: individually unnoticeable but gradually covering our hearts with dirt. In confession Jesus reaches even to the hardest inaccessible parts of our hearts – if we let him do so.