(Third Sunday of Easter (C): This
homily was given on April 14, 2013 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr.
Raymond Suriani. Read John 21: 1-19.)
[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Third Sunday of Easter 2013]
John steals $25 from his brother,
Michael. The next day John feels guilty
for what he’s done, and he tells Michael that he’s sorry. Michael says to John, “I forgive you.” John says, “Thank you, Michael,” then turns around
and starts to walk away.
If you were Michael, what would
you do at that point?
I’ll tell you what I would do. I’d yell out, “Hey, John, where are you
going? Come back here right now and give
me my $25!”
And I’d have every right to do
that.
12-year-old Tim is told by his
dad not to play baseball too close to the house. Well, Tim doesn’t listen to his father, and later
that day he hits a long fly ball through the living room window.
Sound familiar to anyone?
Tim immediately regrets what he’s
done and goes to his dad to apologize.
If you were Tim’s father, and you
really cared about the moral and spiritual development of your son, what would
you do at that point?
Once again, I’ll tell you what I
would do. I’d say, “Apology accepted;
but you can forget about getting any allowance money for the next several
weeks. That cash will be used to help
pay for a new window to replace the one you just broke!”
Those two little stories, my
brothers and sisters, illustrate the idea of “reparation.” Catholics used to talk about reparation—and
specifically about “the need to make reparation”—all the time. However, nowadays you rarely hear the concept
even mentioned—although the Church still teaches it, and most people (even
non-religious people) believe in a form of it, as those two stories make clear.
Even non-believers would agree that John should give the $25 back to his
brother, Michael, and that Tim should use his allowance money to help to pay
for the window he broke on his house.
That is to say, they would agree
that these two boys need to repair the damage they caused by making some
concrete acts of “reparation.”
If you are a member of AA
(Alcoholics Anonymous) or some other 12-step group, then you are definitely
familiar with this idea and practice.
For the benefit of those who may not be aware of it, Step 8 of AA’s
recovery program reads as follows: “Made a list of all persons we had harmed
[through our abuse of alcohol], and became willing to make amends to them all.”
And then we have step 9, which is: “Made direct amends to such people wherever
possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.”
That’s reparation.
The need for reparation also
explains why we are asked to do some kind of penance after we go to
confession. In paragraph 1491 of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church it says this: “The sacrament of Penance is a
whole consisting in three actions of the penitent and the priest's absolution.
The penitent’s acts are repentance, confession or disclosure of sins to the
priest, and the intention to make
reparation and do works of reparation.”
During a confession, when I give a
penitent prayers to say for his or her penance, I almost always tell the penitent
to pray those prayers for specific people—usually the people (or at least some
of the people) who were mentioned during the confession (people, in other
words, who were hurt by the sins the penitent committed!).
That’s one way they can make
reparation for what they’ve done: by praying for the people they’ve sinned
against.
Here it’s important to note that
reparation is rooted in justice, and is different from forgiveness. Michael, for example, forgave his brother
John when John said he was sorry for stealing Michael’s $25, but John still
needed to give that money back to his brother—out of justice. In the same way, Tim’s dad forgave his son
immediately when Tim apologized for breaking the living room window. But, out of justice, Tim still needed to help
with the cost of getting the window fixed.
The Catechism puts it this way: “Many
sins wrong our neighbor. One must do what is possible in order to repair the
harm (e.g., return stolen goods, restore the reputation of someone slandered,
pay compensation for injuries). Simple justice requires as much. . . . Absolution
takes away sin, but it does not remedy all the disorders sin has caused. Raised
up from sin, the sinner must still recover his full spiritual health by doing
something more to make amends for the sin: he must ‘make satisfaction for’ or
‘expiate’ his sins. This satisfaction is also called ‘penance.’” (CCC, 1459)
I mention all this this morning because
we have, in today’s gospel reading, a biblical precedent for this idea of
reparation. It comes from Simon Peter’s verbal
exchange with the risen Christ at the Sea of Tiberias. As we heard a few moments ago, three times in
this post-resurrection scene Jesus says the same thing to Peter.
He asks him, “Do you love me?”
Now Jesus was (and is!) God, so
he obviously already knew the answer to that question! He knew the love (and the repentance) that were
in Peter’s heart—so why did he ask the question at all, let alone three times?
It’s because, only a few days
earlier, Peter had denied three times
that he even knew Jesus! You remember
the story, I’m sure; no need to recount it here.
That means the questions were for
Peter’s benefit; they were not designed to enlighten Jesus as to
how Peter felt about him! The three
questions of Jesus at the Sea of Tiberius gave Peter three separate opportunities
to make three separate acts of reparation
for his three terrible sins of Holy Thursday night.
And make no mistake about it, answering
those questions was definitely a penance
for Peter—especially after Jesus said, “Simon, do you love me?” for the third time! In fact, the text explicitly tells us that
Peter at that point was “distressed”. He
was visibly upset. He was also probably more
than a little bit embarrassed at having to answer the same question three times
in front of the other apostles!
I ask you this morning to think
of the people whom you regularly hurt by your sins—starting with the people in
your family: your husband, your wife, your parents, your children, your
brothers and sisters, your co-workers, your fellow students, your friends—and
the many other people with whom you share your life.
How often do you think of making
reparation—through prayer or through various acts of charity—to these individuals
for the sins you commit against them?
Hopefully you think of it
often—and hopefully the thought often leads you to prayer and to some kind of concrete
action.
Because remember, if we don’t
make reparation for our sins here on this earth, we will need to do it after death—in that place we call
purgatory—before we will be able to enter the kingdom of heaven.
