“Your sings are forgiven.”

This is the response of Jesus to the woman who approached him and then, wept, kissed and anointed his feet.  Our gospel portrays this very touching incident to make us understand how great is her sins and how boundless is the mercy of God.  What she did is both an act of sorrow, recognizing her sinfulness and, at the same, an act of joy, of gratitude; knowing that her sins are forgiven.

This incident also reveals the power of Jesus to forgive sins, which such power to forgive is only accorded to God.  But Jesus, revealing himself as the Son of God and embodying the infinite mercy of God, forgives sin and calls man into repentance and conversion.  This is actually his mission, to bring God’s love closer to man, and to draw man to participate in His love.

Again, if we try to imagine and put ourselves in the gospel incident, look and feel deeply to what the repentant woman did; weeping, kissing, and anointing the feet of Jesus, with the mixed feeling of joy and sorrow, as being sinful and then, being forgiven; we can also identify our own thirst for forgiveness, that deep within our hearts there is clamour for being healed of our brokenness, for being loved in spite of imperfections, and for being forgiven of our deep-seated sinfulness.

As we see ourselves in the image of the repentant woman in the gospel, we also discover our own need for God’s forgiveness.  And to respond to this calling for forgiveness, we need to undergo the life-long process of Repentance.

Repentance comprises three important elements; first, contrition, our decision to admit our sinfulness; second, confession, our humility to ask forgiveness; and lastly, conversion, our willingness to mend our crooked ways. This is what I call the three C’s of repentance; Contrition, Confession, and Conversion.  With these three C’s our step toward repentance will be complete and more responsive to God’s call to holiness.

The first C is contrition.  It speaks of our sadness and remorse for the sins we have committed, that we realize how sin destroys our relationship with our selves, with others, and with God.  It is on the level of feeling guilty, not having peace of mind and experiencing deep sadness.  If we still experience this sadness caused by our sins, we are lucky, because this means that our conscience is still working well, that the voice of God within us is not yet silenced and insensitive.  Because there are instances that when we are committing a sin for the first time, we feel such remorse; but when we commit it again and again, we begin to be used to it, and it turns out to be a normal thing to do, it becomes a habit, then; we do not feel the guilt or remorse anymore.  This is what we call the loss of the sense of sin. 

Many people nowadays are having this kind of spiritual sickness that they keep committing sins but they do not feel and think anymore that they are sinning, it is just normal for them.  But if we really want to repent for our sins, we need to have this act of contrition, to realise how sin makes our lives miserable. This leads us to repentance, being sorry for our sins.

The second C is confession. This shows us the need to humbly admit our sins and to ask for forgiveness.  Yes, sometimes, we feel the guilt and sadness caused by sins, but we do not have the courage and humility to ask for forgiveness, and instead, we just run away from our responsibility, or we just keep blaming others than admitting our own faults.

 
Confession refers to the sacrament of reconciliation, which today is considered as a dead sacrament because not too many Catholics are regularly receiving it.  Others do not believe that it is necessary for their spiritual growth, and they might as well confess their sins directly to God than to a priest.  But we have to remember: the priests are only the instrument of God and representative of the Church, the body of Christ, whom reconciliation with community is granted to us through them.  It is not the priests who forgive our sins but God, but they are being used as a channel of God’s forgiveness and means of reconciliation with the community.

 
The last C is Conversion.  This is an important element for our repentance that after being contrite and confessing our sins, we need to do our best to correct our mistakes and to avoid those sins we regularly or occasionally commit, and put our best effort in doing good deeds.  Our feeling of remorse for sins and willingness to always ask forgiveness will be wasted and useless, unless we try our very best to change for a better and have the spirit of conversion.