April 13, 2025 - Pastor Message
April 25, 2025JUBILEE 2025 THE ACT OF CONTRITION (cont.)
JUBILEE 2025
THE ACT OF CONTRITION (cont.)
“O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended you, and I detest all my sins because of your just punishments, but most of all because they offend you, my God, who are all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of your grace, to sin no more and to avoid the near occasions of sin. Amen” (The Order of Penance, 92).
Continuing our reflection on the Act of Contrition, we look further into the familiar example from the Order of Penance above. Last week, we reflected on the full-hearted sorrow for our sins that is the first necessary condition for true contrition. That sorrow manifests itself in action, the first act of which is that I “detest all my sins”. To detest something is to de-testify, to testify against something, to make a firm witness against it. It is more than just a dislike; it is a complete and total pledge of myself against this thing, that it is not what it seems and I want no part of it.
And I pledge my detest for “all my sins” - not just one or two or some of my sins, but ALL of them, which is why we need to do a thorough examination of conscience before going to confession and do our best to confess ALL of our sins. Any sin is a wedge between me and God, and I want to be in complete communion with him, so I need to reject, disown, and denounce ALL my sins. That said, we believe that God’s mercy is so great that he even forgives sins we forget to confess. But it is still important to make an integral confession and confess all the sins of which I am aware, wiping the slate clean, so to speak.
We detest our sins for several reasons, the first of which is God’s “just punishments”. When we sin, we break communion with God and sever ourselves from his blessings. This separation and its accompanying sufferings, or “punishments”, are not God’s fault or an act of cruelty on his part. It is the inevitable consequence of our own free choice to sin against God. Since the consequences of separation from God run contrary to our very being and ultimate happiness, we quite naturally are repulsed by them, leading us to detest our sins.
These “just punishments” for sin are somewhat superficial, however. Our prayer of contrition probes deeper, to the essence of it all, in the second and much more important reason for detesting our sins: “because they offend you, my God, who are all good and deserving of all my love.” We are created purely out of God’s love and goodness as a reflection of his love and goodness to love and be good to him and others. That is the very essence of our being, the purpose for our being in this world, and sin is the contradiction of that. We detest our sins because they run directly contrary to the essence of our being, made in the image and likeness of God, and frustrate our purpose in life. We are made to love and serve God, and we rightly detest anything that opposes that.
Fr. Marc Stockton
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