Examining our Consciences

This Sunday’s Gospel serves as a kind of examination of conscience for us, does it not?

And this is good timing, as we are coming up to the season of Lent, a time when we dedicate more effort to rejecting sin and returning to God’s ways.  I encourage you to make the time in the coming weeks to really sit down and do a thorough examination of conscience and then go to confession.  I’d recommend not waiting until “The Light is on For You.”  Later in the season – better to start off lent with a clean slate – you can go again later if you want.

Today I would like to go over how we examine our consciences, since I think we don’t talk about this enough.  It is common to just be handed a list of the 10 commandments, perhaps with some additional categories, with the idea that we can figure out where to go from there.  But if we desire a more fruitful examine, one that will allow us to enter the confessional prepared and ready, I think we need to take a step back before comparing our lives to a list of infractions or sins, and reflect on the basic disposition, or approach that Christ invites us to adopt as we examine our moral lives.  And I would like to look at a few key aspects of this Christian approach with you today.

1.    The first thing to note is that Christians can and must begin any examination of conscience with trust and confidence in the love and mercy of God, and in our ability to change and be free of sin.  If we don’t have this trust and confidence, then examining our consciences can become incredibly discouraging, overwhelming and we can begin to feel trapped.  Our failures can feel like nails in the coffin, one blow after another to our confidence and dignity in a dismal rite of self-flagellation.  This is not what Christ would ever desire for us, and it is not edifying or fruitful in the spiritual life.

In examining our consciences, it is critical for us to remember the context of our moral lives: and the context is God’s grace at work in us.  He is at work in our hearts so that we can see where we are resisting him and help us to heal those areas and find new freedom to follow him and find peace and happiness.  We must start from a place of optimism, hopefulness.  Even sins and flaws that seem deeply rooted in our character or relationships that seem hopelessly mired in baggage can be healed and restored.  Jesus asks us to place everything before him with trust and confidence.  Even if we can’t see a way out, he can.  Grace can always find a way.

2.    With this confidence and trust in Christ at work in us, we are led to a place of humility as we examine what has happened and is happening inside and around us.  This means with the deep recognition that when I examine my conscience, it is not I who am the judge or the law giver, but that I am looking to Christ and asking him to help me understand how I am doing according to his judgement, not mine.  Often in a confessional a priest can hear when someone is simply not ready to allow Christ to be the judge.  They either want to condemn or to justify themselves.  They want to decide what is right and wrong.  Sometimes they carve out areas in the teaching of the church that don’t suit how they want to act, and try to excuse themselves.  Sometimes they  exaggerate areas of the Church’s teaching and condemn themselves on trivial grounds.  These are all traps laid for us by pride, when we are trying to take the place of God. 
Instead, a healthy examination of conscience starts with the recognition that there is a God, and it is not me.  He decides what is right and wrong, and he has revealed his wisdom in Christ, a wisdom that has been handed on to us faithfully by the Catholic and Apostolic Church.  Am I really willing to turn over the judgement to him?  Or am I trying to put myself on the judge’s bench?  What is keeping me from letting God be my judge?  Is it pride, unhealthy attachments, fear, anger or resentment?

3.    And this leads to a third element required for a fruitful examine: courage.  No one likes standing before a judge or being evaluated.  There is a deep vulnerability.  We know that we can be deeply hurt.  Our natural impulse before a judge is to defend ourselves, to play down our faults, to blame the other guy, to make excuses.  It requires incredible courage to stand before a judge and not only admit the contradictions and flaws in our lives, but to list them out and to make the case against ourselves.  Yet that is what confession asks of us, isn’t it?  Not only that we plead guilty, but that we take up the role of prosecutor and list out all the charges.  We need to be honest about how hard this is and how unnatural it is. 

Especially when we have really blown it, I think we can say that it is only by God’s grace that we find the strength to really and truly confess our sins with trust and humility.  Yet let us remember that there is great dignity and strength in such a confession.  By stepping forward, before the judge, and speaking the wrong we have done, we are given a deep and abiding peace and strength that we could not receive if we were simply judging ourselves.  And think about how this affects us over time – month after month, year after year.  After 30 or 40 or 60 or 70 years of this routine of placing our lives before the judgement seat of God, we gain an incredible amount of confidence and strength in our connection to God.  Coming to the end of life and our final judgment will not be anything new if we have been examining our consciences and going to confession for years. “Here we go again.”  We know the judge and we know his mercy.  We’ve been standing before him our whole life.

4.    Finally, as we examine our consciences, it is so important to do so in the awareness of a deep and abiding love for God and one another.  For this reason, it may be helpful to begin the examine by first thinking of all the ways that God has loved us and all the grace that surrounds us in the people and events of our lives.  As we survey this incredible canvas filled with good things, from the gift of life itself to the many blessings that continue to unfold each day, we are given the proper perspective to see our sins and weaknesses for what they are.  Seeing the invitation of God’s love for us reveals where we have grown weak or lazy, or where we are running and hiding, or resentful or destructive. 
Far more than fear of hell or guilt, the knowledge of God’s loving care for us gives rise to the desire to love in return: to get rid of the aspects of our lives that are destructive and impeding the love that is shown us and to instead return good for good.  Love for God and gratitude toward him is the strongest and most dependable foundation to build our moral lives upon.  This love and gratitude is what gives us the strength to stand before the judgement seat of God again and again, examining where we are resisting his will and or have grown tepid in following him.  Our knowledge of his love and goodness is what makes us what to come back, to set things right, and to stay close to him.

When we examine our consciences regularly in a healthy way: with trust and confidence, with humility, with courage, and with an awareness of God’s great love, our inner lives and connection to God grows and matures.  Over time, this routine changes us and transforms us.  We do not see ourselves or live like those who look to the world for judgement, or who place themselves in the seat of judgement.  Others can tell in small unspoken ways that we hold ourselves accountable to something, or rather, someone else.  Perhaps one of the most defining things for a Christian is that he or she acknowledges the full divine authority of Jesus Christ as lawgiver and judge, over and above any other power or force in this world.  This deep experience that God alone judges us, reinforced through years of examining our consciences before him, is at the source of what gives joy and freedom to the Christian heart.  For we know that our judge is a just and loving God, full of mercy and compassion, who comes not to condemn but to save.