Homily

Let us say that for some strange reason you decide that every day you are going to put a penny in your pocket. Today you put in one penny and tomorrow you'll add another one. By the end of the month you will have 30 pennies, in two months 60 pennies, and now you're starting to walk a little funny, so you get a fanny pack to carry them. In one year you are carrying seven rolls of pennies, and in two years, 14 rolls so you switch to using a small back pack to lug them around. If someone had asked you to carry over 700 pennies, you'd think they were crazy, but since you've just added one a day, every day, you've gotten used to carrying them around, and now, no matter how heavy they may be it's a weight you have gotten used to bearing.

It has an impact on your life. It's uncomfortable in the summer. It's hard to drive with that lump of coins on your back. Sometimes your shoulders get a little sore, and they're in the way when you're taking a shower. Your pennies also affect your relationships with other people who wonder why you're doing this, or why you just don't let them go. And any time anyone give you a hug, they're also hugging your pennies. You realize, sometimes, that it has become a burden, this coin carrying; but it's become such a habit that those thoughts quickly fade away and you just continue to make adjustments and add a penny every day, because it's such a habit that it would be uncomfortable to break it. It has become such a normal part of your everyday life; the truth is that you barely notice those coins at all. And you keep adding — one more penny every day.

Now I'm very aware that most people don't think they have very much to confess in their lives, only their relatives do, and they believe that is made clear because they're not murderers, bank robbers, crack whores, rock stars, or politicians. They rarely do anything seriously wrong. They just have those little sins that everyone has in their daily lives: little lies, small offenses against others, tiny transgressions, minute misbehaviors, itsy-bitsy boo-boos. But even these add up to create a burden of sin that we carry around with us, much like adding the little penny to the pile every day. Each one seems so small, why should we be concerned with it? But it is still there. It still is a weight that we carry. We can get used to the weight, we can learn to live with it, but it's still there. Even if we could say we only sin once every day, it can quickly add up to quite a load that we're dragging around, a load we may not think much about, because it's not a pleasant thing to think about. Yet it is still a load, a burden that is hampering our freedom. In the kontakion today we sang, "I have sinned more times then there are sands in the sea." That may be an exaggeration but it's an expression used by a person who is seeking freedom, who has a mind set on freedom.

Isn't it true that even if you only have smaller sins you feel lighter somehow after going to confession? When we pray and ask the Lord to pardon our transgressions, does it oppress us or help us? When, having received Holy Communion, we ask the Lord to pardon us, does that bind us or free us?

It is not just a matter of trying to get rid of the weight of sin in our lives. It is also about the freedom we have when we get rid of that weight. The freedom that makes room for grace, the freedom to grow more into the life Christ desires for us to live in peace. The freedom which releases us from the need to feel we must defend our sinful deeds or pretend by ignoring them or minimizing them that we're actually more like Mother Teresa than Don Corleone.

The paralyzed man was brought to Jesus flat on his back, but he left that place as a man who was free to go wherever he wanted to go. But the Lord wanted to show us that it is not just physical disability that hampers our freedom in life; there are other weights that can tie us down in more important ways than paralysis. If we are willing to give up even our small change, He is willing, ready, and able to change us.