Properly Understanding Guilt is Acknowledging Our Value to God
Allegory of Penance and Consciousness of Guilt by Ubekendt - efter Maerten de Vos - National Gallery of Denmark, Denmark - Public Domain.
[Editor’s Note: This article comes from a homily from the First Sunday of Lent this year. Minor edits were made to the original by the editor. Reference to scriptural passages from this day can be found on the USCCB website here.]
“Catholic Guilt.”
A common complaint, even amongst those who have long since ceased crossing the threshold of any church. I might have given up on the faith, they say, but the guilt of it remains ingrained in me.
And faith has purportedly been abandoned precisely in the name of getting rid of the guilt; of somehow exorcising the feelings associated with it, whose presence supposedly inhibits the possibilities of a fulfilled and happy life.
Guilt is simply bad vibes, a kind of illusion imposed on us by those who merely want to control us, who guilt-trip us into compliance with their wishes, with some kind of moral vision merely of their own devising.
And to be sure, this does happen; this is not a mere figment of people’s imagination. Psychological and emotional manipulation is sadly yet another feature of the fallen world, and religious life, rather than being immune to it, quite often proves to be especially fertile ground for it.
But for those who insist that this then proves that guilt is just a tool for controlling others, as opposed to something which does organically spring up from within ourselves, they have to deal with the problem of the pesky persistence of guilt; that even in our own supposedly more secular and “liberated” age, guilt seems to remain.
As if we did not need reminders of this, consider that even as vast numbers have abandoned, say, the ritual and sacramental celebration of confession, we nevertheless cannot seem to escape the verbal diarrhea of people exposing just about everything by means of social and other assorted media: a veritable torrent of information picking apart and analyzing the minutiae of one’s life to inform a global audience that did not ask for it. We have not abandoned confession but have instead become hyper confessional.
Only we prove reluctant to confess before God, to bring our guilt before him. Like our first parents, in our guilt we feel naked and exposed in his presence.
And so we put on our various fig-leaves; all the performance and bravado by which we try and convince God, the world, others, and ultimately ourselves, that everything is fine, that there is no need to feel guilty or remorse; that this is only for people with hang-ups, and we are beyond that.
Only we are not fooling anyone. And so, we remain paralyzed: stuck either with a guilt that we refuse to acknowledge and therefore will not go away; or a guilt that we are so utterly consumed by that we remain blind to the one before whom we can and should lay it down.
Because in both the guilt that I pretend is not there, and in the guilt beyond which I cannot see anything or anyone else, the common denominator is despair (Cf. CCC 2091).
I pretend that I feel no need for compunction or remorse, because I pretend that what I or anyone else says and does is in the grand scheme of things, of no consequence. Who feels bad when they smash up meaningless junk? Therefore, who should feel bad about smashing up their own life, or the lives of others, if we too are just stuff, a kind of cosmic junk? This absence of guilt is the despair of non-existent expectations.
But then there is the other apparent extreme: the guilt that is so totally crippling, debilitating, all-consuming.
On the surface, this appears utterly dissimilar from the casual brush off of the need for remorse; but it too grows in the same poisoned soil.
For while the denial of the need for guilt is despair under the form of nihilism (Cf. Fides et Ratio § 46), the all-pervasive all-consuming experience of guilt is despair in the form of a false pride. It is the implicit assertion that I am so uniquely bad, I am so uniquely malicious, that no one and nothing has the power to raise me from the mire, from the nothingness.
But to stand before God, to truly come before God and acknowledge His presence, to know Him as He truly is, and in His light to begin to glimpse ourselves as we truly are, is to face the falsity of both these forms of despair.
Because coming before God, I recognize that it is right for me to experience guilt, not only because I have fallen short of the glory of God; but because I have fallen short of the glorious creation that God has made me to be. I should lament the way in which I have smashed up myself and the world around me, because God does not create junk.
But precisely because God is the sort of God who does not create cosmic junk, because He is the God who creates in love and with purpose, I also should not allow guilt to blind me to God’s might and goodness. That there is no human power to destroy which exceeds God’s power to make and re-make; and that this is true not only for the world, not only for others, but also for myself. My sinfulness is not so great, is not so impressive, that it can take me beyond the bounds of God’s infinite mercy.
This season of Lent, beginning as it does with the pouring on of ashes, and filled as it is with penance and the constant acknowledgement of sin, functions almost as a caricature for those who decry “Catholic guilt.” There they all go again with their self-flagellation and their self-denigration.
But guilt, properly understood, is not the denigration of ourselves, but is instead an acknowledgment of our extraordinary, ultimately incalculable, value to God. Our acknowledgment of our failure is our acknowledgment of the vast chasm between what we have made of ourselves, and what we know God has made us to be.
But as the Church we have the hope rather than the despair to do this, to embrace this acknowledgment that this season forces upon us, because we live in the confidence, the expectation, that by the grace of God this chasm is overcome in the person of our savior JesusChrist. That through God’s mercy, what He is, we too shall be.
That echoing the voice of the psalmist today, we too can have the courage to have our sin always before us, but because we know the greatness of God’s compassion, and know that our pleas for Him to create within us a clean heart and a steadfast spirit will never fall on deaf ears.
Prayer for Those From a Broken Home:
O Eternal Father,
You created me in your image and likeness and you long to hold me always in your loving embrace. Your love has sustained me in my trials and struggles.
Each day, I will live as a beloved child of God, confident in your divine mercy. I will place in you all my trust and hope, for you lift my gaze from shame, fear, and the pain of division to your unparalleled love for me on the cross.
By the power of Christ’s great wounds, heal the wounds left in my life by the tragedy of my parents’ separation or divorce, or family brokenness. Help me love, despite the pain. Help me forgive, no matter how deep the hurt. Help me have peace and virtue when old and new wounds arise. Remain with me, Holy Spirit, so that I may be a wellspring of healing for others.
In Jesus’ Name,
Amen.
About the Author:
A priest who humbly wishes to remain anonymous. He prays for each person who reads this blog post and hopes that it leads to a deeper level of healing.
Reflection Questions for Small Groups or Individuals:
How has guilt played a role in your life? How has it played a role in the life of someone you know?
How have you seen a transition, in a secular sense, from confession as an instrument of healing with God to a performance done on social media? What might this mean, in a deeper sense, for us as sons and daughters of God?
Why are you more than just “cosmic junk?” What about your neighbor?
If you struggle with nihilist thought, take some time to reflect there? Where, within you and your past, might that come from?
Meditate on this sentence: “But guilt, properly understood, is not the denigration of ourselves, but is instead an acknowledgment of our extraordinary, ultimately incalculable, value to God.” What thoughts or feelings come into your mind or heart?
Healing happens when we journey together.
If this homily resonated with you, consider joining an upcoming Life-Giving Wounds retreat or support group. You do not have to carry the darkness alone.
Together, we can walk into the light.