Lord, blot out my sin
Friends in Christ, in the first reading today, God speaks through the prophet Ezekiel; the Lord says that if the wicked man turn away from his sins, none of his crimes will be remembered. This seems to imply that not only can sins be forgiven by God, but that he will forget them?
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The saints tell us, that on the day of judgment, for those who are destined for hell, God will make known even their most secret and shameful sins, of which they never repented or confessed. St. Basil teaches, that with a single glance, everyone will see all the sins of the damned.
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But according to St. Alphonsus and many holy men, for those destined for heaven, the sins they have confessed in confession will not be made known.
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It is common knowledge, that if a priest is going to attempt an exorcism, he will always beforehand make a thorough confession, why? Because the devil will often try to intimidate the priest, by speaking his sins out loud, to his face. Experience has shown however, by exorcists, that the devil is not capable of speaking the sins which have been confessed. They seem to be gone.
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When a child does something wrong, the child sometimes runs to his parents to openly admit his guilt. The parents are pleased by this admission, and usually punish very little. St. Augustine says that we should submit ourselves to judgment now, going to Confession, admitting our faults now, so that at the end of our life we will have already been judged.
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At the Judgement, at the trial of our life, Satan is the accuser, showing the faults of a person’s life. But confessed sins, he is not able to use as evidence in the trial. What happened to those confessed sins? God says today that he forgets those sins, for it is written: ‘None of the crimes he committed shall be remembered.’ And through Isaiah, God says, ‘I will remember your sins no more.’
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If God forgets our sins, that means they don’t exist. St. Peter Damien taught, that God can actually erase parts of history if he wishes. Let us therefore, confess our sins, that the Lord will erase them from our history.
