The Church has a name for my peculiar way of passing the time while stuck in traffic: sin. We sin when we imagine ourselves to be the sole character in our story. We sin when we reorder the world according to our own desires, requiring that everyone’s wills bend our way. Be more like me, we claim. Think more about me, we say to ourselves. We make ourselves into gods through sin, living no longer as creatures but creators of our own meaning.
Because we are sinners, we stand before God during the introductory rites of the Mass and acknowledge that we often make ourselves into gods rather than worshippers. We acknowledge before God and each other that we are sinners and thus creatures in need of God’s grace to perfect us.
Sins of the Eyes, the Mind, and Pride of Life
There is something highly counter-cultural in confessing our sins to one another in a public setting. Those of us reared in modern American society are reluctant to even talk about sin. We know that we can do better. We know that we make mistakes. We know that we can try harder to love. But there is an optimism about American culture that makes it difficult for us to say, “There’s something wrong with me.” That I need help to become who God intended me to be.
I often find this kind of attitude operating among my students. They are unwilling to acknowledge that they need help. I host office hours for four or five hours every week. When students fail, they rarely come to see me without an invitation to do so. They think they might be able to correct all their mistakes on their own. That if they work harder, they’ll do better. Sometimes you just need help. Sometimes you can’t fix yourself. This is the case with sin. This is the case when our desires become disordered and we worship ourselves rather than God.
The Catholic theological tradition talks about three ways that our desires are disordered, leading to sin. Concupiscence (a word meaning desire or lust) of the flesh is a disordered attraction that we have to material goods. This kind of sin occurs when find ourselves staring at an attractive person, thinking about them as an object meant to satisfy us. It happens when we go out on a weekend, longing to forget the difficult week that we had on the job by getting as drunk as possible. It is not the possession of the object that is the problem in most cases. Sex can be a good. Drink can be a good. Clothing can be a good. Rather, the problem is the elevation of the material world to a god that we adore.
The second dimension of concupiscence is that of the eyes. This kind of false desire is far more spiritual (and can be more difficult to deal with) than the disordered desires of the flesh. We see someone with a beautiful home and we make a decision that by whatever means necessary we will achieve this good. We purchase clothing or technological gadgets that make us seem beautiful and successful, regardless of the cost. We fall in love with football, bending every aspect of the Sunday Sabbath to watching the NFL. Again, the problem is not with creating a beautiful home, being a successful person, or enjoying leisure. It’s that every aspect of our lives must bend to our desires, becoming more central to us than love of God and neighbor. Sin has become so essential to our identities that it occupies our thoughts all day long.
The final dimension of concupiscence is pride of life. Here, sin is at its most radical. I no longer worship a God outside of myself for I have become my own “god.” This kind of sin is one that lurks around the corner for every person, especially we Catholics who are actively involved in religious practice. We may see ourselves as religiously complete, no longer in need of God’s grace. We may peer upon the rest of humanity, judging our brothers and sisters as the lowest of sinners (while seeing ourselves as the height of sanctity). Pride of life is the sin that constantly tempts us. To free ourselves from it requires God’s persistent gift of love.
The Penitential Act as Medicine for Disordered Desire
While there are various options for the penitential rite, each of them intends to heal us of our disordered desire. We stand before God and admit that we have adored at altars of our own creation: of food and drink, of ambition and consumption, of a love of self that is forgetful of the other. We pray together:
I confess to almighty God
and to you, my brothers and sisters,
that I have greatly sinned,
in my thoughts and in my words,
in what I have done and in what I have failed to do,
through my fault, through my fault,
through my most grievous fault;
therefore I ask blessed Mary ever-Virgin
all the Angels and Saints,
and you, my brothers and sisters,
to pray for me to the Lord our God.
This prayer, the Confiteor, is not about self-hatred. It is instead an act of praise in which I acknowledge before God that I am not the creator of the world. I have sinned. I have said hateful words against a coworker, against a spouse, against a child. I have grown addicted to staring at images of half-naked men or women, treating the human body as a piece of meat for me to consume. I have failed to enter into relationship with the poor, with the suffering, with all those on the margins of our society. I avoid prayer because I am too busy, quickly turning my work and my family life into an idol. I have chosen to do this. Me. Not because I was poorly parented or because my friends are insufferable or because no one supports me at work. I have sinned: My fault, my fault, my most grievous fault.
It is only through this disposition of acknowledging our faults that God can act. In Catholicism, when we confess our sins, we are not dwelling on our misery. Rather we are already praising the God who always forgives us, the God who seeks to pour out a new supply of grace to heal our wounds of sin. In the Penitential Act at every Mass, we anticipate singing out: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to people of good will.
A Cultural and Cosmic Restoration
Because at every Mass we acknowledge our identity as one sinner among many within the community of faith, we come to terms with the fact that we all have sinned, harming the Body of Christ and thus the human family. For the Catholic, there is no such thing as private sin. Our individual disordered desires have created cultures oriented around a lust for domination. As Pope Francis writes in Laudato Si’:
When we fail to acknowledge as part of reality the worth of a poor person, a human embryo, a person with disabilities—to offer just a few examples—it becomes difficult to hear the cry of nature itself; everything is connected. Once the human being declares independence from reality and behaves with absolute dominion, the very foundations of our life begin to crumble, for “instead of carrying out his role as a cooperator with God in the work of creation, man sets himself up in place of God and thus ends up provoking a rebellion on the part of nature.”5
Every sin that we commit harms each one of us. Catholics must not support abortion. But we may find ourselves judging unwed mothers, making it difficult for these women to choose to carry the child to term. We might not pollute entire rivers. But we may foster in our children habits of productivity that are harmful to the world. We might not force the immigrant to cross a desert without food, clothing, or water. But we may have grown cold to the plight of those on the margins, happy to live our lives isolated from those who hunger and thirst for food and drink. For love itself.
All of this is not to make us feel bad about ourselves. Rather, it is to recognize that sin has a real effect on the world and our relationships with one another. Accordingly, to confess our sins before God and one another, to ask for the prayers of the saints, to pledge to live a life of worship rather than self-adoration—this is the first step of our healing. It is the first step in acknowledging that we are creatures and not God. In this acknowledgment, we already begin the praise that will restore creation to its vocation of praise.
Lord, have mercy on me, who fails to love those on the margins of our world.
Lord, have mercy on me, who prays so little and worries so much.
Lord,