Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle C

Luke 5:1 – 11

When I was much younger, going to Confession, which is what we used to call the Sacrament of Reconciliation, was a big deal. It was usually initiated by parents or our teaching sisters, and we would usually confess weekly or at least every other week. We were pretty liberal; my grandparents would not receive communion on Sunday unless they had gone to confession on the Saturday before.

To prepare for confession we would make an examination of conscience; we would go through the ten commandments or some other list of potential sins and see if we could recall where we hadn't hit the mark during that last week. Our teachers told us that we had to confess every sin we could remember and how many times, otherwise we were in danger of making a bad confession, in which case we would have to confess that the next time. So there was a lot of pressure.

“I talked back to my mother five times,” I would confess. “I may have seen part of the test paper of one of my classmates, one time”. I had a bowl of vegetable soup on Friday, but it was th kind that had bits of meat in it, which I carefully put on the napkin but I may have eaten meat. One time”. I teased my sister 29 times during the past week. And so it went. Now the subject matter of a third-grader's confession may not seem like sin to you. Oddly enough, we knew the difference between what we called “mortal sins” and “venial sins”. And we also knew that there was a category of actions which didn't even qualify as sins – we called them “faults”. But our mind set was to think of everything that might remotely be a sin and turn it over to the priest. Because with absolution, we were no longer burdened.

Somewhere along the line after Vatican II Confession became Reconciliation and the emphasis was not on how many times you had committed a sin, but rather, to try to identify the roots of your sins, so that the priest might be able to help you deal with these flaws. Confession went from a careful examination of where you had missed the mark to something therapeutic. And that was good and bad. It was good, because we used to have a problem with scruples.. “Did I remember all my sins?” There was a time in my life, mercifully brief, when this used to keep me awake at nights. Another problem was that on Saturday when confession was happening, there might be three or four priests hearing confessions. It didn't take long to figure out which priest gave the lightest penances; the length of the lines would tell you. We would select our priest based on how nice he was. Father McCoy would languish in his confessional, while Father Hartman would be there for an hour after he was supposed to finish up.

But the bad thing was that I think the new way of reconciliation eroded our sense of sin. Today we hear Peter crying out, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” Peter, who took care of his mother-in-law who lived with him; Peter, who ran a business and probably had a crew of fishermen he had to direct and pay; Peter, who as we will see in the gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, is always trying to do better, always picking himself up when he falls, admitting his mistakes. Peter, a man whom Jesus himself appoints to rule over his church. Peter, a sinful man? I guess I'm in trouble. But Peter was conscious of the fact that he many times missed the mark. It wasn't hard to sin if you were trying to be a good Jew and a good fisherman. Those purity laws were hard when you were out on the water and trying to grab a little lunch. When your feet got tangled up in the net, and you said, “Damn it!” or whatever first century Jewish fishermen said, another failure. And when you came home after a long night fishing it was hard to pray and study sometimes, especially when you missed supper and could barely keep your eyes open. And every Jewish man was supposed to study the scriptures every chance he got. No wonder Peter, whose personality comes through more than any other person in the pages of scripture, said, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”

Today, perhaps implicit in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, is the idea that if we can do something about those deep-seated tendencies that cause us to miss the mark we can save our souls. If I spend too much time on the Internet, well, all I need to do is develop some new habits so that I don't. If I am not as attentive to my wife as I should be, well, I can correct that; I'll make a resolution to make her breakfast every morning; at least I'll be slightly more attentive. And of course if I rob a bank or kill someone or commit some other serious action I'll confess that – we still think about those mortal sins.

In the olden days, when we got out of the confessional, we knew two things. We had been forgiven; every fault, every failing; God had put it out of His mind and we knew we were back in His good graces. But because we had scrutinized our lives so closely, down to even little things that no one thinks is a sin any more, we knew once again that we were sinners, and we knew that only God's grace could help us. Because next week we'd be confessing the same things.

“Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” If we do not recognize on a deep level that we are sinners, we don't really see why we need a savior. And that was the glory of the old way of going to confession and maybe we have lost something in the new way. Statistics show that the frequency in which even good Catholics take advantage of the Sacrament of Reconciliation has gone way down from the days before Vatican II. Most of us don't really believe that we are sinful men or women..

The wonderful thing about recognizing that I am sinful and in need of God's mercy, is that it's only then that I can hear the savior's words: “Do not be afraid; from now on you will fish for people.” Recognizing that I am a sinner is the best way to invite Jesus to take over my life and do with me whatever he wants to do.