SINCERITY: THE FIRST STEP TOWARDS REPENTANCE AND CONVERSION.

If we wish to take advantage of this season of Lent to heed God’s call for conversion, we must first humbly and sincerely acknowledge our sins and be repentant, before we could ask God’s forgiveness in the sacrament of Confession and atone for them.

• The Second Book of Samuel narrates that King David, forgetting that all his glory came from God’s graciousness and not from his own human strength, gave in to vanity and ordered a census of all the tribes of Israel.
• But David’s heart smote him after he had numbered the people. And David said to the Lord, “I have sinned greatly in what I have done. But now, O Lord, I pray, take away the iniquity of your servant; for I have done very foolishly.”

God wants us to acknowledge our sins and not hide our iniquities from him. Sincerity is the first step towards repentance.

• We cannot forget, St. Josemaria says, that original sin makes us proni ad peccatum, prone to sin. We are of the same stock as that first fallen couple. We have a great propensity to fall. We still have a lingering taste in our mouths of the inheritance they left us. Propter peccata, on account of our sins – original sin and our personal sins – we experience all those feelings that are not feelings of peace; all those errors: because human nature is very prone to error.

We have all sinned; and we all have faults and imperfections that distance us from God.

• If you step slightly off the straight path, says St Jerome, it doesn’t really matter whether it is to the left or to the right. What matters is that you have left the true path.
• And so we should acknowledge our contrition, together with David: I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.
• In thinking of all the things we have done wrong, we should bear in mind our own particular circumstances, because God has given us so much, and he is going to demand a lot of us.
• St John Chrysostom tells us that if a person favoured by the Holy Spirit and abundantly gifted by God falls into sin, it is not the same as when a person without such privileges commits the same fault. Given that God’s faithful love for us is so very great, so superabundant and generous, no infidelity on our part can be considered small. But we mustn’t be afraid to call sins by their name, however many years we may have spent serving God. As St. Josemaria wrote:We must have clear ideas and a clear conscience. We cannot allow ourselves to do things that are wrong and say they are holy.

SOURCE: Excerpt from the Book of Meditations (private collection).

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