By Suzanne Haugh

Staff Writer

ATLANTA—Participating in the sacrament of penance cleans the closets of our being—mind, body and spirit. Our sins are boxed up and delivered to the Father, and there is no return address needed. We are left feeling light, clean and free. We have returned to a state of grace via the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is “the master of interior life” who offers us grace, its “first and foremost gift” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1995; 2003).

“Grace is the presence of the Spirit within us,” said Father Tom Stegman, SJ, a doctoral student at Emory University. “... God is not stingy. God’s grace is available to all. The beauty of the sacraments is that they make as tangible as possible the conferral of God’s love for us.”

Father Stegman explained the gift of the sacraments, in which God communicates to us through his Son, Jesus, as a parent does to a child using simple language she or he can understand.

“(Sacraments) activate grace,” he said.

The sacrament of penance captures again for us the grace of justification, or being “dead to sin and alive to God through Jesus Christ” (Romans 6: 8-11).

“When we confess to a priest, we confess to the church and to God and the priest makes tangible the words of forgiveness. We all know the feeling of being unburdened afterwards.”

The Catechism speaks of sanctifying grace, received at our baptism, “infused by the Holy Spirit into our soul to heal it of sin” and to create “a disposition that perfects the soul itself to enable it to live with God, to act by his love” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1995; 1999-2000).

“Sanctifying grace is the grace that says, ‘If I die now then I’ll go to heaven,’” said Father Jack Durkin, parochial vicar at St. John Neumann Church, Lilburn. “You’re in a state of grace if you’re reconciled with the church.”

The sacrament of penance is “a gift to the church—it’s not an obstacle—it produces grace,” he said.

And the gift of grace demands “man’s free response,” the Catechism instructs. Created in God’s image with the capacity to know and love him, man must “enter freely into the communion of love ... (and longs) for truth and goodness that only God can satisfy” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2002).

“Sanctifying grace is the life of a Christian,” Father Durkin said. “It’s life in the Spirit. And this means you have a relationship with Jesus. You’re responding to God. He’s pouring out these gracious gifts upon you and you’re living in love, you’re living in joy ... For a Christian, nothing can conquer you, neither suffering nor death.”

The sacrament of penance strengthens one’s resolve to respond to God and, in doing so, one becomes a witness to those around him on the effects of the sacrament.

“The mark of a reconciled person is to become more reconciling in turn,” Father Stegman said. “To me, one of the questions for Catholics and non-Catholics alike is the efficacy of the sacraments—how effective are they? From one vantage point, grace cannot be quantified, ... (But one) can tell a tree by the fruit it bears ... A person’s orientation, attitudes, disposition—his basic mode or ‘fruits’—reveal the character within.”

The fruits of the Spirit manifest themselves in the lives of the saints and people like Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II. In looking at their lives one can come to understand and appreciate the workings of grace. Pope John Paul II, who has made reconciliation a key theme throughout this Jubilee year, exemplifies grace in action.

“Is the Pope joyful?” Father Durkin asked. “He’s been in a concentration camp. He’s been shot. He knows all the troubles of the church and has been involved in all the great crises of the world, and is he joyful? Yes! How can that be? The man should be exhausted. He should be retired and puttering around a golf course. But he’s going harder and harder every day. Where’s that coming from? Praise God ... He’s hard not to love.”

Through Christ’s disciples, both past and present, one sees the give- and-take between self-sacrifice and the gift of nurturing grace, all for a share in eternal life. But how does one reach the general population and move them to accept that the sacrifices today are worth the future gain of eternity?

“Things will never satisfy us,” Father Durkin said. “The Beatles sing, ‘All You Need Is Love.’ Who in this world would say that love is not what it’s all about? People will deny the truth and everything else but when it comes down to love, almost everyone is for love.”

To truly love and be loved is a decision that requires God’s grace for support. Often times, it is difficult and not always what the world markets as cool, hip or successful.

“We honor veterans on Veterans Day because of love of country. They died; they know what sacrifice is. We know there’s a cost to love,” Father Durkin said. “So what we’re saying is ‘we have a God and our God is defined by love. And our God is so loving that they are three persons who totally give themselves to each other and fully receive each other back ... We’re made to imitate that, which is to totally give ourselves to others so that we actually find out who we are, and what we are is love. We’re either that or a nothing.”

“The marketing (of eternity) to the world is that we know we aren’t defined by what we have but by who we are,” Father Durkin said. “You’re a lover or you’re not a lover. And we know that people who are not lovers are diminished—almost everyone can see that.”

Some people will never get beyond the pull of worldly desires. “They just need more and more, but someday they die and it won’t really mean anything,” Father Durkin said.

Father Durkin compared the dissatisfaction of those who rely too much on material wealth to the happiness of those whose lives are rich in the Spirit.

“The whole problem is that people are just trying to run away,” he said. “They’ve got this giant house. It’s empty; there’s nobody in it. They’ve got their crystal. They’re in their gated community. They’ve got everything, but what are they? Totally unhappy ... And here Mother Teresa was, in the totally ungated community of Calcutta, and no matter what she saw she could still love somebody, whether he was a leper or a diseased person not of our faith ... How could Mother Teresa be joyful? She was around a bunch of sick people. Why are her sisters happy? They don’t have anything. They’re not going to get married and people around them are dying. It’s a complete antithesis to the world ... There’s no reason to be joyful when you’re looking at a person by the side of the street with maggots crawling on him unless God is there and says, ‘He is made in my image and likeness. Feed me because I am suffering.’”

Mother Teresa was, and her sisters continue to be, like many others, Christ among us, Father Durkin said.

“They’re responding to the grace of the Holy Spirit poured out by Christ. He didn’t say, ‘you’re just going to carry on my mission.’ He said, ‘you will do greater things than I’” through the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

That comes through a relationship with Jesus, and is the beginning point of returning to a state of grace and leading a life of true Christian discipleship.

“The relationship always is, of course, that he loves us first,” Father Durkin said. “Do I respond to his love? Do I embrace the cross of my suffering? There’s no love without sacrifice. The relationship is ‘I give up myself totally—mind, heart, body—to somebody else.’ We’re always defined by our conformity to the image of God, and God has been defined as a totally self-sacrificing person.”

Love of self comes first: honestly discovering one’s unique identity and conforming oneself to the truth.

“Human beings, each one, are created in God’s image,” Father Stegman said. “... We all believe this with our heads, but think of its ramifications. We understand that in each one of us—in our particular ways, particular talents, the circumstances of our lives, in the relationships that we have—each of us is capable of reflecting, through our own being, a unique aspect of God’s goodness. God gives life. He redeems and creates. Not that we create and redeem, but we cooperate in his work as stewards of creation ... This is true of every person.”

Father Durkin explained the connection between love of self and discipleship.

“To love yourself, the cost is to be free from your sins ... So you can totally give yourself to something else. That’s why the identification of sin is a gift, a gift of the Holy Spirit. You have judgment and know what to do ... It leads you to deeper waters.”

As distinct persons of mind, heart and body, we are made for communion, offering ourselves to others.

“You either do that in the married state, saying, ‘I offer myself to this other person exclusively,’ or ‘choose a life of celibacy,’ (saying,) ‘I offer myself to the community.’ It’s a total self-offering.”

Ironically, by giving up ourselves we discover and become who we truly are. But sin detracts from one’s gift and Satan cleverly “uses good things to tempt us,” Father Durkin said. He gave an example of how sex is often portrayed and appreciated only in the context of bodily pleasure and not as a gift that encompasses the mind and spirit as well.

“Sex is good ... it’s sacramental ... it’s participation in the creative act of God. But its good is diminished significantly when Satan takes it and puts it in the wrong context.”

It’s the Holy Spirit who nudges us to reflect on the areas where we’ve sinned.

“The problem is grave sin, right?” Father Durkin said. “So the question is ‘When did I reach the point where grace wasn’t flowing?’”

Mitigating circumstances can lessen the severity of one’s sins, but forming one’s conscience is an important step.

“The starting point is ‘I have to get rid of all sin. I’ve got to let Jesus in. How do I let him in?’ Well, there are Ten Commandments. (Let’s say,) ‘I can obey eight of these fine, but two of these I can’t. I can’t obey those without (God’s help)’ ... That’s good. We have a relationship. In other words, you pray, you gotta pray.”

The sacrament of penance wipes clean the buildup of sin.

“People who go to confession accuse themselves of sin; they name their sins,” Father Durkin said. “What is Satan? He’s the accuser. You take power away from Satan when you say ... ‘I am a sinner. I claim it. Jesus died for me, and here are my sins, right here.’”

A spiritual person always sees things in relationship to being his brothers’ and sisters’ keeper, Father Durkin said. When we fall short of loving, we have somewhere to go to restore our spiritual health.

The effects of confession and the other sacraments support a life lived in the state of grace. Father Stegman said, “The sacraments in the life of the church offer a way of perceiving. It’s a direct way of thinking and behaving and giving a lens through which to view God, others and ourselves.

Father Stegman views the act of confession not only as a time to ask for pardon of one’s sins, but also to share, as St. Augustine pointed out, what God’s grace has done in one’s life, as Mary does in the Magnificat: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord and my spirit exults in God my savior because he has looked upon his lowly handmaid ... Holy is his name” (Luke 1: 46-53).

Mary emptied herself to house the Savior. For us, uncluttered by sin through the sacrament of penance, we have room to receive the graces of the Holy Spirit, sent priority mail, same-day service: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5: 22-26).