The way I see it

“Every time I see her walk down the hall, I turn and walk the other way. I can’t bear to face her after what I did. There’s no point in trying to get her to forgive me. It’s better if we both just go our separate ways; life will continue. We were close before and now we’re not close anymore, no big deal. Maybe I don’t even deserve friends. She’s better off without me. I should probably just be on my own from now on. There’s no point in me making friends with someone else only for me to do something stupid and hurt that person to. I don’t deserve to have any friends. I have just one more year here; I can be fine without anybody. When school is over, I’ll move on to a new place and I’ll be better there.”

Penance is what you’ll call it isn’t it? You’ve done something wrong and you’re supposed to pay for it, no questions asked. You know what I think? You don’t have to answer that because I’m going to tell you anyway; I think it’s a load of horse manure. We all recognize when we’ve done something wrong but we’re too scared to face up to it so we carry around the guilt and a false sense of restitution which is in actuality just an escape route. No one wants to be faced with the magnitude of their sin so they don’t have to feel bad about themselves, so when we do wrong, we talk ourselves down and put our heads down in shame.

How many friendships have been destroyed because of this false sense of guilt? You know you haven’t called someone in a really long time, so you put it off and eventually tell yourself that there’s no point anymore because the person is probably to mad at you now to pick up if you call; so that’s that. You hurt someone with something you did, so you pull back from the person and convince yourself that he/she is better off without you. You’re afraid to truly take responsibility for your actions so you don’t ever make anything right, you just keep moving on, leaving a trail of broken and unfulfilled relationships in your wake. You become frustrated, unhappy and dissatisfied because you’ve broken yourself emotionally.

Even with God, the one we ALL know that forgives us ALL sins. When we sin against him, we wallow in it and beat ourselves down. We say things like, “I’ve let God down too many times,” or “if I go to Him now, I’ll still turn around and do it again.” We give all these excuses and just continue to stew in guilt, making God less of who He is. This so called penance, I read, is just a form of religious masochism whereby we inflict punishment on ourselves. You should feel bad when you’ve done wrong, but you don’t have the right to feel defeated. True remorse always brings with it repentance.

A repentant heart goes to the one wronged and says I’m sorry. Only a repentant heart can truly receive forgiveness. And only one that has been forgiven can receive strength to keep on the right track.