Today, I am supposed to be writing about the fourth desire in repentance – and that is the desire to be in right relationship to “the other”. This could be about lots of different people – but I think the key is that “the other” – is simply another human person. They are not me.
This is what Schmemann says about the “other”. “Christian love is the “possible impossibility” to see Christ in another man, whoever he is, and whom God, in his eternal and mysterious plan, has decided to introduce into my life, be it only for a few moments, not as an occasion for a “good deed” or an exercise in philanthropy, but as the beginning of an eternal companionship in God himself. For, indeed, what is love if not that mysterious power which transcends the accidental and the external in the “other” – his physical appearance, social rank, ethnic origin, intellectual capacity – and reaches the soul, the unique and uniquely personal “root” of a human being, truly the part of God in him?” (GL: p.23)
This desire is the virtue of love and the story is the story of the Last Judgment, (Mat. 25:31-46) where Jesus talks to two different groups of people about how they fed him or didn’t feed him, gave him drink, or not give them drink. He goes on in great detail – I was a stranger – I was naked, and I was sick, and I was in prison… And he says to the first group – you did this when you did it to the least of these… and to the other group – you did not do any of these things to me because you turned your heart and your words and your actions away from the least of these.
Today, I had lunch with my daughter and my grandsons, and we went to a restaurant we all really like. The service was horrible – I mean we waited over an hour for our food. I was disgusted, wanted to leave, wanted to somehow let the wait staff know just how bad they were at their job. We finally left and I took most of my lunch with me (as some act that might make him feel bad??). I left a really bad tip. I came home and complained to my husband, and felt pretty justified with my contempt for this really bad waiter. And then I sit down to write about repentance and mercy and love. If it weren’t for this particular story being linked to this facet of repentance, I could really concentrate on finding good things to do for people who need good things. I like showing mercy. But I missed the forest for the tree. I missed the opportunity to show Christ to another person – obviously to the waiter, but then of course to my daughter or my grandsons. Ugh.
Ironically, this ties in with the third desire or virtue which is the longing to go home, to turn back from the far country of sin, and make our way back – expecting to do penance; not expecting at all the almost embarrassing love of the Father – the lavish, generous, underserved love of our Father. The virtue that this desire points to is contrition – “which conveys a steady attitude of awareness of one’s frailty and wrongdoing before God” (psaltermark.com). And for me, today, it went deeper – to an old-fashioned word – compunction. Compunction is described as a sudden sense of shame linked to wrongdoing. It’s an experience that “cuts to the heart”. As I sat down to write – what I did today reared its ugly head and I saw my sin for what it was – not merely a missed opportunity to show grace, but a failing that made me miss seeing Jesus as the recipient of that mercy and grace.
I hesitate to even write this out because it’s so fresh that I don’t want to use it as an example in a “sermon” on mercy. I also am afraid that you, the reader, might feel bad for me (maybe I’m projecting, but if any of you would recount this experience to me, I would right away want you not to feel bad!) One of the ways we can grow in this virtue of contrition and the practice of confession – is to let each other confess, feel bad, feel guilt, and not rush in to rescue. It’s up to us if we are called to hear someone else’s confession to encourage the right kinds of guilt and discourage any deep shame that just never lets up. That is pride, and the Cross is God’s response to that kind of pride.
Our solidarity with each other allows us to truly confess and receive what Christ has done for us on the Cross. Thomas Hopko writes that “confession ‘springs from an awareness of what is holy; it means dying to sin and coming alive again to sanctity’. It expresses itself in the ‘oral confession of sins,’ accomplished ‘with precision, without veiling the ugliness of sin by vague expressions.’ It is fulfilled in the resolution never to sin again, although realizing that we will fall because we are not God. It is sealed by our subsequent sufferings to remain steadfast in our struggle against sin. Such confession is at the heart of our spiritual efforts, especially during the lenten spring. (The Lenten Spring, Thomas Hopko, p. 55-56. Hopko is quoting a Father Elchaninov and you see his words in the single quote marks).
So many emotions today. From disgust to a blatant disregard for the “other”, to compunction to contrition to confession to receiving God’s grace. Remember what Fleming Rutledge said about confession: “The grace of God prepares the way for the confession of sin, is present in the confession, and even before the confession has been made, has already worked the restoration of which the confession is not the cause but the sign” (The Crucifixion, p. 204).
Alexander Schmemann calls Lent the season of bright sadness – in part because in Lent as we become more practiced in repentance and we learn we do not have to fear our brokenness and sin, we can receive this season as a season of great joy. Amen.