Happy New Year! It’s time for some new liturgical year’s resolutions.
Top of your list should be to go to confession more often – especially if you haven’t been since Easter this year.
And as usual, I’m going to spend the first Sunday of Advent reminding you of why.
Dear People of God – It’s high time you went to confession. Most of you haven’t been for ages, and that’s a real shame.
I can hear you saying that you don’t do anything worth confessing. I’m here to tell you that you’re wrong.
Let’s go through the seven deadly sins and see how you scored this year!
Pride: You held grudges and refused to apologise. You assumed the worst about people. You were vindictive.
You expected everyone else to pick up after you. You interrupted, talked over people, snooped, interfered, and generally made a pest of yourself.
You made yourself unbearable to people who once loved you. You told untruths and manipulated them.
You have been rude to “unimportant people” and sucked up to “important people”. You used people up and discarded them.
You’ve been living in a fantasy world where everything is someone else’s fault. You created dramas to remain the centre of attention.
You betrayed confidences. You made promises you didn’t keep. You constantly (and rudely) came late to everything.
You always had to be right. You never said “thank you” and you took the good people around you for granted.
Anger: You started neighbour disputes over petty things and made everyone’s lives unpleasant.
You hated your former spouse so much that you defamed them to others. You perjured yourself to cut off money, property, or custody from them.
You were a careless, scary, angry driver. You bullied your co-workers.
You trolled and picked fights on social media. You fed your pet hatreds with online conspiracy theories.
You damaged other people’s property and possessions and made no effort at restitution.
Envy: You took pleasure in other people’s misfortunes. You gossiped and made rash judgements.
You borrowed and spent thousands of dollars on things you don’t need.
Avarice: You fudged your tax returns. You pilfered items from work. You left debts unpaid.
You ignored homeless people – but you did paid work on a Sunday without real need.
You lied on insurance claim forms. You underpaid your employees.
You wasted money on gambling. You hoarded your possessions.
Lust: You used porn way more often than you’ll admit.
You are married, and you’ve flirted. You are a priest or religious, and you’ve flirted.
You strung someone along in a relationship to bolster your vanity. You deliberately dressed and behaved to attract maximum attention.
Gluttony: You haven’t done any penance on any Friday, except possibly Good Friday when you were absolutely cornered.
You ate and drank to excess. You drove home over the legal limit.
You inflicted crank diets and imaginary allergies on your family and friends and made yourself sick in the process.
Sloth: You wasted hours of time on social media. You neglected to discipline your children.
You slacked off at work and distracted other people. You ignored your spouse and children at home to zone out in your own personal dream world.
You don’t pull your weight around the house that you share with other adults.
You missed Mass for no good reason (which is a mortal sin), or came late, or left early, or talked all the way through.
Above all, you’ve made the most pathetic litany of excuses when you do any of the above.
So do you think you might make the effort to go to confession before Christmas this year?
Do you think you might have a few things to tell the Lord who has loved you patiently throughout all your stupidity and malice and carelessness?
When you put these failures in love before him, you will see them for what they really are – awful, petty actions that injured others and took away your dignity as a child of God.
You are so loved by God. You are so precious in His sight that He spent thousands of years carefully preparing the entire planet for His arrival in human form, just to save you.
Show him the things you’re ashamed of. Let him fix them up for you.
It will take time and effort because you didn’t get into such a bad state overnight. Lots of bad decisions got you here.
So the first good decision you can make is to go to confession before Christmas.
And then you will make the best possible start to the new liturgical year!
