Sunday, July 29, 2007

The Womb of the Confessional













"For a priest to restore a soul to grace from mortal sin in the sacrament of confession is a greater miracle than the creation of the world at the beginning of time." St Augustine



The death of a soul is a horrible thing. We act in ways which are "unbecoming". We regress into an endless cycle of self, solipsism ad nauseam. We literally turn away from God and try to run to whatever will satisfy the whim of our appetite next.

If you want to see the effects of sin: on your soul, and consequently on Jesus Christ, look at a Spanish crucifix that shows every stripe, wound, and drop of blood. It resembles an abortion, which is what mortal sin does to a soul--it aborts the soul. There is a miscarriage of innocence, goodness, truth, beauty, and justice.

"Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all" (Is. 53:4-6).

Only by the one acceptable sacrifice of the perfect, unblemished, pure, Lamb of God, can our sins be taken away. Jesus Christ came that we might have life and have it to the full. He came to give His life as a ransom for the many. Through His Life, Death and Resurrection we have Eternal Life and share in His Resurrection.

In the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, God became a man. In that Holy of Holies was formed the marriage of God and Man. Once more God and Adam walked and conversed in Eden without shame between them. The radical friendship of God to man His creation was restored in the Incarnation, Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus.

Jesus was first born of the Womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Next He rose from the dead and was born from the Womb of the Tomb. Now especially in the Sacraments of Reconciliation and Eucharist, He rises in us as He raises us from the life of sin we led (or death of grace in our souls). Jesus calls to our inmost selves and cries in a loud voice stricken with grief over what has happened to us, "Lazarus, Come out!"
He says to the Community of Believers, "Unbind him!" God gives us each other in the family of the Church to help one another come into the life of grace and away from a life of deadly sin.

At the Creation of the cosmos, the Spirit hovered over the waters and God spoke His Word and all that is came to be by the power of that Word. In the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the Holy Spirit hovers over us and the Father speaks His Word Jesus Christ deep within the womb of our being and we are born again in Him as He is born again in us.

"For a priest to restore a soul to grace from mortal sin in the sacrament of confession is a greater miracle than the creation of the world at the beginning of time." St Augustine

No comments: