Pentinence

I am on the parish RCIA team, so I have the privilege of helping new Catholics come into the Church. We have both "candidates", those who have been baptized outside the Church, and "catechumens", those who have never been baptized.

Lent is a busy time for us, as we guide these soon-to-be Catholics through the final stages of their preparation to enter the Church at Easter.

Right now, the candidates are about to make their first confession, or Sacrament of Reconcilitation, as it is properly called. Working with these candidates reminds me of the value of penitence, especially the Rite of Penitence within the Mass.

You may know that the words "Mass" and "mission" come from the same root, meaning "to be sent". We go to Mass not to end our week, but to start it--we are sent forth at the conclusion so that we can "love and serve both God and our neighbor."

Within the Mass, the pentitential rite is our way of looking back at the past week so that we can make adjustments to our behavior as we move forward.

Look at it this way: if you are flying an airplane cross-country and your instruments may not be working perfectly, you'll need to periodically check where you are so that you can be sure you'll get where you want to go, and not end up wildly off-course and out of fuel.

Pentitence is our way of looking back at where we've been, seeing where we need to make corrections to get back on course, and also examining what we can do differently going forward to keep from getting lost again.

(Let's take a moment and state that the penitential rite is not about feeling guilty or wanting to punish ourselves for being imperfect. We're all human, and we can take it for granted that that means we have our imperfections. But we need to acknowledge our shortcomings, in what we have done and what we have failed to do, so that we can keep from straying further off course.)

Yes, sometimes these corrections can be difficult or embarrassing. No one likes to admit that he has gone off-course, and sometimes we can be way off.

So let's remember where we are supposed to be going, and use the pentitential rite as a way of checking our course. If adjustments are needed, major or minor, it's better to face up to them than to end up exactly where we don't want to be.