Lent, an opportunity for transformation

When I was in second grade, I knew I wasn’t Catholic because I could have a sticky bun before going to church while my best friend Peggy could not. Peggy told me it was a sin to eat a sticky bun before church. She wasn’t sure if it was a mortal or a venial sin, but it was sin nevertheless, and there were serious consequences.

Years later, when Peggy and I were in high school, she was in a terrible car accident on a ski weekend with friends. Peggy and I weren’t best friends anymore. She had joined the cheerleaders and wore a new white gym suit, while I was not a cheerleader and still wore an old blue gym suit. I heard through the grapevine that Peggy believed the car accident was God punishing her for the sin of missing Mass on the ski weekend. When she came back to school, with her leg in a cast and her jaw wired shut, I wanted to tell her that God would not have done that to her, but I didn’t think that the opinion of a girl in a blue gym suit would matter much to her.

After high school, Peggy had a difficult life. I have often wondered if it would have helped if I’d told her.

Now, as a Catholic myself (as well as a seasonal Episcopalian, and an occasional Presbyterian) in my 70’s, I know my sin to be something other than eating a sticky bun before church or missing an occasional Sunday liturgy. I have made a myriad of mistakes, coughed up countless apologies, collected a few regrets, and am keenly aware of personality flaws that limit my generosity of time and treasure. I recognize my complicity in societal sin, and confess my slowness to act for the welfare of suffering persons across the street or across the globe who are my neighbors, my kin, and if I believe the words of Matthew 25, the Lord himself. Still, I am put off when at the Roman liturgy, I am asked to thump my breast (three times) and confess “through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.” Darn it. I am trying my best. I know I often list far from center. But does beating myself and groveling achieve anything besides making me feel wicked and unsalvageable? Instead, I will remind myself, with words I wish I could have spoken to Peggy so many years ago: The Lord is kind and merciful. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so deep is God’s love. As far as the east is from the west, so far will God remove our transgressions from us (rf. Psalm 103: 11-12).