Repent

Second Sunday of Advent Year A

Every Advent, we are treated to gospel passages stretching across two consecutive Sundays where the spotlight seems to be on the precursor of the Lord, His cousin St John the Baptist. The prominence of St John during this season is understandable. Both he and the Lord preached the same message: “repent, for the kingdom of God is close at hand.” It is thus no accident that John and Jesus suffered the same fate. John is beheaded and Jesus crucified by those who refused to accept their message- they refused to “repent.”

Let’s be honest, repentance isn’t easy because admitting or confessing one’s sins isn’t easy. In fact, many people resent the Catholic faith because they think that Catholicism, and especially the clergy, take great pleasure in making them feel guilty and rotten to the core. Even though you would hardly hear any priest rail against you as St John the Baptist did against the Pharisees and Sadducees in today’s passage, just speaking of sin and repentance is offensive enough. Many believe that the only way to get rid of guilt is to turn your back on the very institution or person that reminds you of your guilt. But this is as ridiculous as killing the doctor who tells you that you have a terminal illness. They fail to recognise that the only real way to get rid of the guilt is through repentance, just as a person after having accepted his diagnosis, would submit himself willingly to the hands of the doctor who is treating him.

In all my years of hearing confessions, the confessions of sin-deniers can be quite amusing as well as saddening. The excuses range from the blatant lie, “Father, I don’t have any sins,” to blaming others, “he made me do it,” and then the penitent (if you could even call him one) starts listing out the faults of others. The irony of it. The so-called penitent goes for confession thinking that he or she has no sin and leaves without being reconciled but instead carries the additional burden of at least four sins: lying, self-righteousness, blaming and complaining.

Someone once said that, “he who excuses himself, accuses himself.” To the Christian, however, the opposite is true. He who accuses himself, excuses himself. When we acknowledge our guilt before God, He removes that guilt forever. He blots out our sins from the record of eternity. The confessional used to be described as a sort of courtroom, but the strangest courtroom ever conceived. For it is the only courtroom in which a guilty plea is always met with complete pardon, and the prisoner set free.

So, what does it mean to be repentant? The Greek word we translate as “repentance” is metanoia (the verb “to repent” is metanoeo), and it means “to change your mind.” Metanoia’s Hebrew counterpart is tshuva, which means “to return.” For example, God told the people of Israel, “Repent and turn away from your idols; and turn away your faces from all your abominations” (Ezek. 14:6). So when Jesus says, “Repent and believe in the gospel,” He is basically saying: change your mind about sin, and return to God by believing the Good News! So, in order to be saved, we must repent. Repentance means not just running back to God, but running away from anything that would keep us from God.

Repentance helps us recognise that we are lost without God. We cannot be good independently of His grace. The Christian faith isn’t a kind of “self-help” programme that makes you feel “good” about yourself. But the problem is that most people would rather look for a feel-good religion than a religion that actually makes you good. And we cannot advance in spiritual progress, becoming good and even better, unless we are willing to repent. The good news of salvation will make little sense if we did not first understand the bad news of sin and how it keeps us from God and being good. Repentance is the sine qua non, the absolutely necessary condition, for salvation.

According to the early Fathers of the Church, all true repentance must begin with humility and humility is merely acknowledging that we are sinners. It is pride which makes us blame others and give excuses for ourselves. But to take our eyes off others’ sins and instead to admit our own — this is only possible through humility. To take our eyes off ourselves and look to God is also an act of humility.

Advent is a season of new beginnings and for this reason it must also be a season of repentance. Likewise, the Christian faith is the religion of beginning again, for it is the religion of repentance and restoration. Even “as the axe is laid to the roots of the trees, so that any tree which fails to produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown on the fire,” we are promised that “a shoot springs from the stock of Jesse, a scion thrusts from his roots”, once thought to be dead, but now alive once more. The old self must die so that the new self may be reborn. And even when all hope seems lost, when things appear to have come to a dead end, let us place our trust in the One who has baptised us in the Holy Spirit and fire, and who can even raise children for Abraham from stones. So, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand.”