I give thanks for the Sacrament of Reconciliation. For this is surely, like the doctor of my soul…
The other day, my poor eldest son dislocated his shoulder.
I had never seen a shoulder dislocation previously. But when I saw this dislocation I was horrified at how awful it looked. His arm bone simply did not fit neatly into his shoulder joint and he was in too much pain to be able to move his arm into position so that he would be able to move his arm as usual.
When this happened, I was required to call an ambulance so that we would be able to help my son to move his arm into position and then be transported in safety to the hospital. In order to move his arm, the paramedics were required to give him very strong pain relief and call an expert in who would know how to re-position his arm for him without causing any further damage. Once he was positioned and strapped back together, he was then driven in the ambulance to the hospital so that we would be able to get to the hospital and have the doctors work on his arm to reposition it correctly into the shoulder joint.
Once we arrived at hospital, my son was seen immediately, and a doctor and two nurses had the injury x-rayed and checked and then – after more pain relief – repositioned so that my son’s arm was back in place. However, because of the damage already done to the joint, my son was not allowed to move the arm for a few weeks (and had restricted movement for several months afterwards). In fact, after the shoulder was repositioned, the doctor said, “Now, don’t you move that or it will pop straight back out.”
And I have been thinking about that today, because that experience was pretty much the same as the experience of sin.
You see, when a person sins, it is like the dislocation of a shoulder. Sin disturbs the plans of God and the natural order of things. And when a person sins, what we are doing is dislocating God’s plan for our lives. And when that happens it causes pain. Now, in this Earthly life, that pain is masked, just as my son’s pain was masked by the pain relief administered to him. And because the pain caused by sin is masked, we can continue to move around and think that we are not really doing much harm. But in reality, we are causing damage to our souls just as my son’s shoulder was damaged. And this results in pain – lots of pain for God (and for us in eternity if we die without offering penance for our sins).
And I have been thinking about that today – because the more we sin, the more we sin, just as a dislocated shoulder makes it more likely that the same shoulder will dislocate again in the future.
And so, as I reflect on the experience of my son and his shoulder, I give thanks for the Sacrament of Reconciliation. For this is surely, like the doctor of my soul…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
Comments