Contemplating The Forgiveness We Don't Realize We Need

Walking into church one recent Saturday afternoon for the Sunday Anticipatory Mass, I spied the confessional door open. One of our priests sat inside waiting for someone to enter, close that door and open his or her heart to God’s mercy and forgiveness.

In that moment, a thought occurred to me for the very first time.

“What about all the sins you don’t realize you’ve committed?”

Whoa.

They are what I confessed – and what I hope to remember (and confess with all my other sins) from now on.

We have so many things and people pulling at our attention these days. Family and friends seek our attention. Work often demands our intention; not in a bad way, but the demand is there nonetheless. Parish and school activities seek our attention; some of them require it.

“An average day” for many of us no longer holds many elements of the word average, which Webster defines as “a middle point between extremes.” We’re all over the place, and we have to be. We roll out of bed, get through the normal routine of starting out; heading out the door, we careen head-first into the next 12-16 hours … maybe more. Before we know it, our head is hitting the pillow as we hope for a decent night’s rest.

Weekends don’t provide much respite any more. Because our workday plates are so full, we often end up with overflowing plates of “weekend things” to get accomplished. Even the concept of relaxing can be troublesome when we have to focus on it during only two of every seven days.

How much of that sounds familiar?

If you’re thinking, “a lot of it sounds familiar,” pause for a moment and contemplate this. If we are – out of necessity – bouncing through life like a pinball in one of those old arcade machines, how in the world can we ever keep track of every instance where our acts – or failures to act – proved in some way to be sinful?

I suspect every one of us is guilty of daily sins of commission and omission that we never think about. We never realize them in the moment, and we move on to the next person or task without thinking about them.

In the confessional that day, I asked God to forgive all of the sins I never realized I committed, and to help me see them in the future so that I might avoid them at every opportunity.

In the Aug. 5 issue of The Message, in her “Wonderful Adventure” column, Kaitlin Emmert said something few people have ever thought about: “No one asked Jesus for forgiveness.” It occurs to me that in Jesus’ time, many probably didn’t realize they needed our Savior’s forgiveness.

Let’s not be those people. Let’s always remember that we do, indeed, require God’s mercy and forgiveness even when we don’t realize it; I dare say especially when we don’t realize it.

I pray for forgiveness and mercy for all the sins I didn’t – and don’t – realize I have committed.