Blessed are those whose sins are forgiven.
Psalm 32:1-2, 5-7. February 10, 2023 - Friday, 5th Week in Ordinary Time
Two insights from Psalm 32 are worth pondering. The first one is about unwillingness to confess one’s sins. In verse 3, the psalmist says: “For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long” (Ps 32:3). Someone drew an apt conclusion from this verse about silence that kills. This is confirmed by psychologists and psychiatrists. The pain that the unconfessed sin brought upon the psalmist was unbearable.
The second insight is about the liberating experience that the confession of sins brings to our lives. But such confessions come in different forms. Through autobiographies and memoirs, support groups and conversations with friends, and visiting counsellors and psychologists, we try to unload the painful stories of our lives to be liberated from them. However, this form of confession is often used not to acknowledge our sins but to explain them away. We try to find excuses or blame others for our sins.
The psalmist, however, does not look for a scapegoat or ask for an explanation. He takes full responsibility for his wrongdoing. Then, he confesses his faults to the Lord. And the moment he does it, he is free from it. The Lord takes away the guilt of his sin. It reminds us of the story of David committing adultery with the wife of one of his most trusted soldiers, Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite and then arranging for Uriah to be killed in a battle. When confronted with his sins, he said: “I have sinned against the LORD”. The answer he got from Nathan was: “The LORD also has put away your sin; you shall not die” (2 Sam 12:13).
Saint Paul uses Psalm 32 in his letter to the Romans to support his argument that justification of sinners comes through faith in Jesus Christ (see Rom 4:6-8). Paul’s argument follows the pattern of the psalmist. At the beginning there is the recognition that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 4:23). Only when we acknowledge that we have sinned against the Lord, we can hear the statement that the Lord has put away our sins.
In the Catholic tradition, there is one sacrament that deals with sins committed after baptism. Like David, we need to hear God’s representative pronouncing God’s forgiveness upon us. And so we come to our priests, acknowledge our sins against the Lord and hear from them one of the most powerful words that nobody else can utter: “I absolve you from your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”. Then, the priests add: “The Lord has taken away your sins. Go in peace”.