to a five-time divorcee
“If you intentionally do not mention a sin during confession, it is a mortal sin. If you die in mortal sin, you will go directly to hell.”
Sister Veronica engraved this truth in our hearts when she prepared us for our first confession and Holy Communion.
I could not fault her for what she taught us; however, I cannot remember whether she ever mentioned God’s love, mercy or forgiveness.
What she taught us was true, but it was only half-true.
If she did mention God’s love, I did not pay attention to it. And I paid a heavy price for not paying attention.
Years later, when I was 16, the truth of her warning became a reality in my life.
There I was in the confessional, ashamed of telling a sin to the confessor.
I experienced such an agonizing fear of going to hell that I told God, “I wish you would have created me as animal, for animals have no souls.”
“What am I going to do?” I asked myself.
“How am I going to get out of this situation?” And I did not the answer to my own questions.
It was the most horrible night I ever had. In the morning, I went to a little park near a church run by the Irish Redemptorist Fathers. For a few minutes, I sat on a bench thinking about my impending damnation.
As the Ave Maria rang from the church’s tower bell – it rang every 15 minutes – tears were dripping down my checks.
“Mother Mary, help me save my soul,” I desperately pleaded to our Blessed Mother.
Then I had a “God moment”. It was an “It is the Lord” warm feeling.
It was as if Mary took me by my hand to a church nearby. I knelt in front of the Blessed Sacrament and asked Jesus to help me.
As I was sobbing, I noticed a gentle, flickering light on my tear-stained pair of glasses.
When I took my glasses off, I discovered that the flickering light came from the lit candles at the statue of the Blessed Mother in the extreme right corner of the church.
Immediately, I stood up and walked to the statue, knelt, sobbed and begged the Blessed Mother to help me get out of my hell.
When I looked up at her, I saw a red button on the wall with a sign saying “If you are in trouble, push the button!” So I did.
Almost immediately, I heard someone saying “Son, come with me” as I felt a tap on my shoulder.
When I opened my eyes, I saw a young Redemptorist priest standing near me.
He took me to a parlor nearby.
“Son, what is bothering you?” he asked.
The question was like a key that unlocked the hell in my conscience.
With tears in my eyes, I unloaded my burden.
The missionary let me talk and talk. As I was talking, for whatever reason, the sin that I was ashamed of confessing the day before, was not shameful any more.
When I finished unloading my burden, I asked, “May I go to confession, Father?”
“You already did!” he replied.
At that time, I did know that confession could be administered away from a confessional box.
“But before I absolve you,” he said, “promise God to believe that all your sins in past are forgiven; that there is no sin that God cannot forgive; and not to be afraid to go to confession when you sin again.”
After the priest made the sign of the cross over me and pronounced the absolution, peace flooded my soul.
It was as if I died and went to heaven. It was as if I had encountered Jesus in the person of the priest.
Have you ever felt that you have encountered Jesus in any way, shape or form?
What I experienced must be like what the adulterous woman experienced when she encountered Jesus at a well in Samaria.
She had been married to five men. Her life was a mess before she encountered Jesus.
On a particular day, she went to the town’s well at noon.
Why noon?
Maybe because she wanted to avoid the other women, who went to the well in the morning, or in the evening to avoid the heat of the summer sun.
Walking under the hot sun was a small price to pay to escape the women’s sharp tongues.
The woman expected silence and solitude. Instead, she found Jesus.
Jesus asked her for water.
She was too streetwise to think that all He wanted was water.
“Since when does a Jew like you, ask a woman like me for water?” she asked.
She wanted to know what Jesus really had in mind.
She was right; Jesus wanted more than water. Jesus was interested in her heart.
They talked.
She could not remember the last time a man had spoken to her with respect.
Jesus told her about a spring of water that would quench the thirst not of the throat, but of the soul.
That intrigued her.
“Sir, give me this water so I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water,” she said.
“Go call your husband and come back,” Jesus told her.
Her heart must have sank.
Here was a man with gentleness she never had seen before.
Now, He was asking her about her husband.
Anything but that!
Maybe she considered lying or changing the subject.
Perhaps she wanted to leave, but she stayed and told him the truth.
“I have no husband,” she said.
Kindness has a way of inviting honesty.
The woman must have wondered what Jesus would do next. She must have wondered if Jesus’ kindness would cease when the truth was revealed.
She perhaps wondered, “Will He be angry?” “Will He leave?” “Will He think I am worthless?”
If you have the same anxieties, pay attention.
“You are right. You don’t have any husband. The man you are living with now is not your husband and you’ve been married five times.” Jesus said.
No criticism. No anger. No “what-kind-of mess-have-you-made-with your life” lecture.
No. It was not perfection that Jesus was seeking. It was honesty.
The woman was amazed.
“There is something different about you. Do you mind if I ask you something?” she said.
Then she asked a question that revealed the big hole in her soul: “Where is God? My people say He is in the mountain. Your people say He is in Jerusalem. I do not know where He is.”
Can you imagine the expression on Jesus’ face when He heard the question?
Of all the places to find a hungry heart – Samaria.
Of all the Samaritans searching for God – a woman.
Of all women hungry for God – a five-time divorcee.
And of all the people chosen to personally receive the secret of the ages – an outcast among outcasts, the most insignificant person in the region.
Jesus did not reveal the secret to King Herod.
He did not reveal it to the Sanhedrin.
It was not in the colonnades of the Roman court in Jerusalem that Jesus announced His identity.
No. Jesus revealed Himself as a Messiah in the shade of a well, in a rejected land to an ostracized woman.
Jesus’ eyes must have danced as He whispered the secret: “I am the Messiah!”