Repentance is Not Enough
We’re now roughly at halftime in the season of Lent. This season began with the solemn words, “Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel.” In one way or another, the readings at Mass, both during the week and on Sundays, have reminded us of the importance of and the need for repentance.
What is repentance, though? A number of things, to be sure. In its most basic form, to repent means to change our thoughts. The Greek word, metanoia, could literally be translated as, “change your way of thinking.” In other words, as fallen men and women, we tend to think erroneously about, well, most things. We often overestimate the importance of things that, in the end, aren’t that important — like wealth, what people think of us, and who wins March Madness; and we underestimate the importance of things that are of utmost significance — like forgiveness and love of our neighbor.
Another essential part of repentance, of course, is genuine sorrow for our sins, and a willingness to turn away from them. As we begin to draw closer to Holy Week, we are brought face to face with the seriousness of sin and the price Jesus paid in His own body to atone for us. Peter puts it this way, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24). The apostle’s words call to mind those oh so familiar words from Isaiah we hear on that Friday we call “Good:” “But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His wounds we are healed” (Is 53:5). Paul puts it frankest of all, when he simply writes, “God made Him who knew no sin to be sin so that we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). We learn the seriousness of a disease by the strength of the cure proposed by the doctor. With regards to the seriousness of sin, I once heard a man commenting on his reaction to The Passion of the Christ by saying, “If that is the remedy, then how great must be the wound?!”
“It’s not enough, crucial as it is, to ‘turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel.’”
However, as essential as repentance is, it’s not enough. Perhaps the readings from the Book of Daniel in the season of Lent can help us better understand this truth (cf. Daniel 9:1-16). The people of Israel were in exile, away from their homeland, the Temple, and in bondage in a foreign land. They were in that situation because they had been unfaithful to God, forgotten what He had done for them, and turned to follow other gods. As such, they needed to acknowledge this and ask Him for forgiveness. That is, they needed to repent. But repentance in and of itself wasn’t sufficient to get them out of exile and back home. They needed someone to deliver them, to rescue them, to liberate them.
And so it is with us.
It’s not enough, crucial as it is, to “turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel.” We, our entire race, needs a liberator, a deliverer, a rescuer, someone to defeat the one who is ultimately responsible for our “exile” - from God, from ourselves, from each other, and from all of creation (cf. Rom 8:19-21). We need someone to rescue us from slavery to the powers of Sin and Death.
And we have Someone!
The First Reading from Exodus last Sunday reminded us that God is not distant, passive or uncaring towards our predicament - a predicament into which we got ourselves. We heard God tell Moses that He has “surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them” (Exodus 3:7-8). This real event, the liberation of the Israelites from slavery to Egypt and the cruelty of Pharaoh, is a type, a foreshadowing, of the true liberation that the human race needs: liberation from the cruelty of Satan and from slavery to Sin and Death.
As we enter into the second half of Lent, then, let us turn our eyes ever more intentionally to the cross of Jesus. Let us ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten us so as to better understand what exactly He was doing there. Let us pray for deeper and deeper gratitude for the One who has come to set us free. And let us strive to surrender ourselves ever more entirely into the hands of the God who rescues.