46. Patience and Forgiveness

When a person comes looking for a priest, it is usually to confide to him a distress or an unhappy situation. The penitent is first of all somebody who has had a rift with others and consequently with the living God, and who has come from a distance after much suffering.

Sin of course comprises a variety of actions, but first and foremost, sin is a state. What the sinner is acknowledging then, is not a series of deeds or actions, recounted in detail, but primarily, the fact that someone appears to be calling and inviting; someone who is not asking for excuses or justifications; someone who does not ask for pardon, but who desires to be welcomed for who he is, in short, someone who is asking to be taken seriously.

He does not ask for pardon, for that cannot be purchased. On this level, pardon is something wholly unsuspected, wholly gratuitous, unimaginable, unheard of. The Prodigal Son thinks he will be treated as a slave; he does not return expecting to be forgiven! Such treatment would not even have entered his head! He returns to confess his fault: Here I am, a good-for-nothing, lost, broken, ruined! But he had hardly begun to speak when he discovered that he had already become someone else and that he is speaking in the past tense. The source of the word once freed, causes tears to flow as it were spontaneously. Light inundates and cleanses his eyes and a taste of salt appears on his tongue. Everything takes on meaning and life, while his ears are conscious of a new word, a creative word never heard before, a word that creates, that re-assembles and causes the ruins to sing as they are caressed by the rising sun, the word of Jesus Christ, the word of the living God...a word spoken by the mouth of a brother who as a fellow traveller on the road, and conscious of his own unworthiness, is witness to the wonders of God's pardon.

In the well-known story of the Pharisee and the Publican, the troubling thing is that it functions backwards! The good man has got everything wrong, and the lost one is saved! And the worst part of it is that they are ignorant of it all. Why? Perhaps because they did not have the chance of going to confession. Each of them is alone with the idea he has of himself. They look at themselves in the mirror of the Law. The Pharisee's image is to his advantage, but that of the publican is a real catastrophe! Their fatal error: the most important Person is absent. Now Jesus tells us that God sees things differently. Who then can warn them, who can speak to them with authority?

For we rarely know where our real sins are hidden. I feel guilty because I did not do what I knew I should have done. But perhaps that was exactly the thing which I ought to have done in spite of everything, because it was a bearer of life, even if taboos, the twisted morality I received and the wounds which were my lot, prevented my assuming it! How many adolescents remain adolescents and at the very moment when they should be free in their budding adulthood, see guilt all round them instead! What is taken for granted in certain societies, can be lived out in tears and dramatic situations in a family that is over traditional or hemmed - in. One day at Cuzco, I said to a twenty -five year old woman, who blamed herself for making her mother sad because she no longer wished to live in the same house as her parents: "Not only is it not a sin, but not to live elsewhere would be a sin against your own life!" There are certain precise cases where not to take certain risks, would be to behave like a good-for-nothing. One can have clean hands, and yet "have no hands" "I didn't do anything sir!" You didn't do anything! precisely!

Jesus ate with all kinds of people, as would a drunk or a glutton, says the Scripture. He disobeys the all-holy precept of the Sabbath; allows himself to be touched by a prostitute, ridicules the Temple, insults the philosophers and the wise men, but he cures people, forgives the condemned woman, preaches truth. He bears witness to a different kind of God. "I refuse to accept pardon for what I did according to my best endeavours" wrote Andre Malraux one day. Perhaps what we perceive as a transgression and which gives us cause for fear today, will on another day appear in a different light, transfigured! There are bad consciences which are sick and erroneous, just as there are so called "good consciences" which have gone terribly astray. David experienced no remorse for what he had done with Bethsabee, until the prophet told him the bland story of the sheep that had been stolen. David is furious and the prophet administers to him these simple words: "That man is you!"

That is why it is good to be able to confess our sins, to find someone to whom we can talk. I'm only a poor wretch I know, but here I am, quite simply, before the grace of God. I try to throw some light on things, to clear my conscience, having nothing but this little compass to guide me. It will take a long time, a whole life and more, to refine it and put it in order. For the moment, here I am, just as I am, before my God, in front of the priest, who can guide me at least for a few more steps of the road., so I come along to confession and to bare the secret places - good or bad- of my being, just as they are.

One day, I heard a poor fellow's confession. He doubted and trembled all over after he had confessed what he had done - I've long forgotten what that was - and he put to me this question of fire, a direct question which I shall never forget: "Do you think that God could forgive as far as that?"

I knew immediately that there would be no point in my saying anything to him. As for trying to answer his question in my own words, they would have been foreign to him, superficial, mere external sounds, so instinctively, I began to prepare the ground with another question: "Why not?" The placing in doubt of the very doubt itself! A deeper dig! Into the why he came along to me in the first place, and if possible into the subterranean depths of his being, so that water might gush forth, muddy at first, but then crystal clear as from an artesian well. Lots of silence. Few words. That man believed in God, a God who was judge, who took what he did seriously, an all-powerful God. So then if God is all-powerful, how could he be limited in his power to forgive?

He went away happy, and I left him...exhausted!

The priest who is witness, calls for an act of faith. Above all, it is a question of confessing one's faith in God's forgiveness, manifested in Jesus Christ. When I set out to confess my sins, it is not a question of once again having a good opinion of myself. The priest calls me to certain forgetfulness of self, to the leaving to one side excessive introspection, in order to encounter the God in whom I believe. He is there, he sees me and he knows me. And even if my conscience condemns me, God is greater than my conscience. He knows more about me than I know myself. I look at him, and I forget myself in him, renouncing an evaluation of myself or the comparing of myself to the ideal person I dream of each morning, the idol to which I am attached. I abandon everything, and close my eyes to open them in that same regard which the living God has for his poor creature. And suddenly, "it is not I who live, it is Christ who lives in me!"

I come back to it again: what can I possibly know about the seriousness of my case? There is an unhealthy probing which consists of endlessly asking if I am obeying the rules or not, but without ever questioning the real harm that I may have caused to others. If I tread on your toes, is it up to me to ask if I hurt you or not? Would it help if I were to tell you my weight or how big my feet are? It is not my business to revel in a narcissistic evaluation of the gravity of my transgression. It is up to the victim, to the one offended, to say if he/she has or has not been hurt in any serious way. Instead, I admit my confusion, express my contrition, and ask for pardon for everything which I do or do not remember. What happens afterwards, i.e. the moment immediately following on the risk I took to present myself does not belong to me. Nothing is obligatory or automatic here. I leave myself totally in the hands of that mysterious Other. I entrust myself to his good will, because it was he who in the first place, gave himself up for me. I have confidence in him that he will make me whole again, in whatever way he wills and in relation to him. Before sin is this or that, it is primarily a wound, a rupture in a relationship. It turns me in on myself, and makes me wallow in my ego as though one obsessed. Pardon on the contrary, is an Easter experience! A death to oneself, so as to rise by the power of Another whose desire is that we be living and free.

Historically, the word "confession" comes from confession of the faith. Its initial meaning is not riming off a list of sins committed. It signifies confessing the faith! The priest in front of me is also there to lead me on to believe, to believe that I have been forgiven, that I have been lifted up, that I am loved and loved truly in spite of everything.