Fr Peter Helman (1.31.22)

Dear beloved,

What sins beset your conscience that you would be rid of today by acknowledging before God and your fellow siblings in Christ; things done and left undone, for which forgiveness and mercy are needed from God and from the neighbor against whom you’ve sinned?

Jesus taught us to pray, “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” And elsewhere, from the epistle of Saint James, “Confess your sins one to another” (James 5:16).

This question of the confession of sin isn’t a question for the pious but rather for Christians whose fellowship is not only as believers and as faithful people but as sinners, as the impious and unfaithful and unrighteous. We must not be shocked by our sin and that of others, lest we remain hypocrites living in lies. The community of Christ’s body, the Church, of which we ourselves are members, one of another, is a fellowship of sinners, who can dare to be sinners because God has come to seek and save the lost.

Our very life as Christ’s body depends on our mutual acknowledgement that we can hide nothing from God. As someone has said, “Be glad! This message is liberation through truth. […] The mask you wear before others will do you no good before God” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together). We are fully known. And this is the good news of the Gospel, that you can come to God just as you are, empty-handed and hardhearted, possession nothing, again and again, for God desires you alone, to see you as you are, and to set you free from the sin that binds your wandering heart. What is the good of concealing our sin, when by acknowledging sin it has lost its power over us?

God wants you just as you are, and will make you into the person he has desired you to be from the foundation of the world. Be bold today. Give to God your heart and not just a portion but all of it.

Yours in Christ,

Fr. Peter