Sermon, 4th Sunday of Advent, Dec 18, 2011

4th Sunday of Advent – December 18, 2011

 (Luke 3: 1-6)

                                    “Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of penance.” (Luke 3: 8)

          John the Baptist, the Precursor of the Lord, preached a Baptism of penance and told those who came to him to repent, and to bring forth fruits worthy of penance. This highlights the difference between Baptism and Confession. In Baptism God forgives us without requiring that we do anything to make up for our sins. In Penance, God forgives our sins and gives us His grace on the condition that we undergo a punishment either in this life or in Purgatory. The penance the priest assigns in the confessional is part of that punishment. But there is more to Penance.

          To obtain God’s forgiveness in the Confessional we must know what to do to make a good Confession. The first thing is to make an examination of our conscience, but even prior to that we should pray to the Holy Ghost that He will bring to our mind sins that we might forget once inside the Confessional. We then examine our conscience to recall our sins and how many times we committed them. The second thing is to declare our sins distinctly, that is, without exaggeration and without excuse. The third condition for a good Confession is repentance. As we finish reciting our sins to the priest we say, “For these sins and for all the sins of my life I am sorry.” This is joined with a sincere intention of not repeating them and a determination to avoid anything that might cause us to sin. This we do in the last half of the Act of Contrition that the priest asks us to recite: “I firmly resolve to confess my sins, to do penance, and to amend my life. Amen.” True repentance comes from heaven and is produced by prayers and tears. A lack of repentance has sent many souls to hell.

          There is still a fourth condition to making a good Confession, and that is to make satisfaction to God for offending Him and satisfaction to our neighbor for any injury we caused him. We make satisfaction to God by prayers of repentance, by charitable acts and by offering our life to Him every day. If we have stolen something from our neighbor, even his good name through gossip, we must make restitution to him by returning what we have stolen, or its equivalent, and by apologizing and otherwise undoing the harm that comes from slander and gossip. This is sometimes very difficult to do, but it is part of our penance, and to deliberately fail to do this is a sin itself and must be confessed.

          Lastly, there is the temporal punishment due to sin. This means that our sins require a physical punishment. It is the great mercy of God that forgives our sins, but the  perfect justice of God also demands punishment. This is the purpose of Purgatory. Since nothing imperfect can enter heaven, souls in Purgatory will be made clean and pure in order to satisfy the justice of God. Yet, in His great mercy, God also gives us a way to avoid some and even all of the pains of Purgatory. These are called indulgences.

          Indulgences come from the inexhaustible treasury of Jesus Christ, His Mother, and all the saints. Under the authority to loose and bind given to Peter and his successors, the Church establishes indulgences so we can pay our debt to God. It is not unlike someone who owes a rich man money that he cannot pay back. The rich man then opens his chest of gold and tells the man to take what he owes and pay it right back to the rich man. God does this for us. An indulgence satisfies the temporal punishment due to God because of our sins. We measure an indulgence by days or years because that’s how we live, day by day and year by year. An indulgence requires that we perform some act, usually prayers, in order to gain the benefit. Some indulgences reduce our time in Purgatory by days, some by years, and there are some, if followed through completely, remit or satisfy all temporal punishment due to sin so that we spend no time in Purgatory.

          The liturgy of the Church takes us to the desert today, to St. John Baptist telling us to prepare the way of the Lord. Let us prepare His way this Christmas season by taking stock of ourselves– who we are and what we have done with our lives over the past year. Let us resolve to come closer to God this coming year by loving our families and giving of ourselves for the sake of our family. A blessed Christmas to all! +++