Perfection is unlikely, so we should try something else

By Lou Occhi

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/110621.cfm
Romans 16:3-9, 16, 22-27
Luke 16:9-15

Today’s readings begin with an excerpt from Romans 16 followed by the gospel from Luke 16:9-15. Most of the reading from Romans consists of the names of people that Paul is thanking for their hard work and support of his mission. Paul and his supporters are evangelizing at the risk of their lives. Often I think of these early Christians as bold saintly people since the work they were doing was certainly following the will of God. What I frequently fail to remember is that they were also normal human beings with fears, anxieties, families they loved and, like everybody else, weaknesses and faults. We know Paul went through a miraculous conversion. Still, in one of his epistles Paul states that he has one fault that he asked God to take from him and was turned down. We don’t know what that fault or weakness was, but he was left to struggle with it for the rest of his life.

The Gospel reading from Luke tells the parable of the dishonest steward. Caught cheating his master, he goes to his master’s debtors and begins forgiving some of their debt. He does this for his own benefit. He believes that in this act of false kindness the debtors will take care of him once he is unemployed. Here Christ is teaching that our time is better spent preparing ourselves for our future life than in our temporal life. At the same time, He is making a parallel between the Pharisees and their love of wealth.

At the end of the Gospel reading Jesus says “You cannot serve God and mammon.” Mammon is an Aramaic word meaning wealth. I always thought of mammon as the devil. In a way, the word can be interpreted as being that which separates us from God. Which brings us to sin.

Since we are all imperfect human beings we are all subject to sin. Only two were sinless from conception to death, Jesus and Mary. Paul had to struggle with his weakness, and so did all the apostles. The Gospel is ripe with the failings of the apostles. Peter was trying to dissuade Jesus from going to Jerusalem. Here Jesus tells Peter to “Get thee behind me Satan.” Of course, Judas betrays Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. And, finally, all the apostles except John flee when Jesus is arrested. Each of these failings is followed by repentance. Peter falls down crying over his failure. Even Judas repents.

In these acts of failure Jesus never stops loving all of them and forgives them. There are many different opinions on the fate of Judas. In spite of his repentance, it appears that he believed his sin was unforgiveable. This might be an example of denying the Holy Spirit. After the crucifixion of Jesus, his apostles and disciples were at a total loss. Even though Jesus had told them what was to happen they did not believe. Still Jesus never stopped loving them.

Fortunately Jesus knows that we will fail and sin and has provided us the sacrament of confession. Through that sacrament not only are the sins we confess forgiven, but also all sins we have ever committed are forgiven. When I was a youngster a long, long time ago in a lifetime now far, far away the nuns taught us how to confess. When we went to confession, we should start with an admission of our sinfulness and our repentance followed by how long it has been since our last confession. Then, and this is the hard part, we had to enumerate our sins. That is, how many times we fibbed to our parent, how many impure thoughts we had, etc. They were really big on the impure thoughts. Then they would tell us that an impure thought was only a sin if you entertained it. However, if you didn’t mention it and you actually did entertain it then it was unforgiven. On top of that, there were sins of commission, omission, and occasion of sin. Commission was the easier one. If you lied then it was commission. Omission was something you should have done but didn’t. That was confusing enough, but then they threw occasion of sin on top of that. Occasion of sin, as I understood it, involved placing yourself in a sinful situation even though you did not actually commit a sin. Finally, it was a sin if you caused someone else to sin by something you did either intentionally or accidentally. Gaaaah! I was convinced I was going straight to hell.

I know the sisters had all the best intentions and I still think fondly of them. The nuns I knew were sweet, loving, innocent women who gave their life to serving God. It was what they were taught and how sin was looked at during that period of time.

If you really want a look at God’s love and forgiveness, you can look at the parable of the prodigal son. As the son was returning home he was rehearsing what he would tell his father and how he would beg for his forgiveness. The father spots him a long way off and runs to greet his son. He does not grill him and ask him to enumerate his sins of commission, omission and occasion of sin. Instead, he embraces him and rejoices that the son he thought was dead has come back to life.

Another example is the good thief crucified next to Jesus. The ‘good thief’ rebukes the ‘bad’ thief and tells him “We are getting what we deserve but this man is innocent.” Then he asks Jesus to remember him when he comes into His Kingdom. Jesus tells him, “This day you will be with me in Paradise.” You might call this interchange the first confession. Notice that Jesus does not say, enumerate your sins quickly because we are about to die. Jesus knows the man has repented for his sins and is instantly forgiven. 

So, what do we confess when we go to confession. If you are like everybody else you confess your weaknesses and where you may have fallen short since your last confession. You can also ask advice on how to handle problems in your life or how to better handle your weaknesses. Priests are generally great spiritual advisers. If you committed a grave sin then you should definitely tell the priest what you have done.

Sometimes we are told that we should strive for perfection. Sounds good but it is not going to happen in our lifetime. Even the saints had their failings and went to confession. In time, striving for perfection is exasperating and we can give up. A better approach is to strive to be better each day. We will have our ups and downs in our life. If we go with the ‘be better’ approach, we gradually become better over our lifetime. At the end of our earthly life we will finally attain the perfection we have worked so hard for.