There is a saying that "possession is nine tenths of the law."
What this means is that our laws mostly have to do with matters of who owns what; nine tenths of the law being an arbitrary number to convey the concept of "most."
What it does NOT mean is that, if you manage to grab hold of a thing it is automatically yours. There is no legal principle or law that even vaguely promotes this idea. Our society recognizes theft as something bad and punishable. Not only will the law require you return the item you have misappropriated, but it will punish you over and above depriving you of this thing that you wanted bad enough to steal.
Even if you find something valuable on the sidewalk, the law will return it to its rightful owner, if the owner can prove that it belongs to him.
People are selfish, however, and they WANT to believe that the law will support their selfishness. A character in a movie I watched recently was expounding that "possession is nine-tenths of the law." I wondered if the screen writer realized his mistake or if he was deliberately making a comment about the point of view of the character, who was a brutal thug.
I once tried to explain this to a woman who takes herself very seriously as a spiritual personality. With her nose in the air, she decreed, "This is what that saying means NOW," as if she could change the meaning of a word on demand.
Just because some people misunderstand a thing does not mean that, by the force of their misunderstanding, some principle becomes altered. No, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus. Something is not yours, just because you manage to get your hands on it. Believing otherwise will not change the law. Just rob a bank and see how much of the law protects your right to do so.
Often, it seems to me, people incorporate lies into their worldview without regard for the damage it does to their soul. People who are not self-reflective, who do not examine themselves honestly, believe and promote convenient lies that cater to their selfishness and darken their souls thereby.
The brilliance of Catholic confession is that helps us root out the darkness that takes root in us when we are not paying attention. Selfish ideas feed selfish motives, which feed selfish acts. This is why Jesus gave the apostles the ability to forgive sin, something which previously was reserved to God alone. Jesus recognized our spiritual weakness, our tendency to selfishness and sin. He loves us enough to give us a method of restoring our souls to the purity of God's original intention for us.
In the examination of conscience before confession, we shine a critical light on our actions. We have to adjust our point of view to the purity of God's perspective. If we struggle in our effort to align our beliefs with those of the church, the degree of the struggle is the degree to which we have wandered away from Him who is all Truth.
Spiritual house-cleaning is essential to our happiness. There is no deception in God and we cannot join with God, on earth or in heaven, if we have joined our souls with the darkness of deception. Lies are of the Devil, and he is the father of all lies. If a lie is coming from us, then we have Satan within us. We must throw him out.
Many people firmly believe that, no matter what they do on earth, they will go to heaven when they die. They ignore the words of Jesus:
"Not every one who saith to me, Lord, Lord shall enter into
the kingdom of heaven, but he that doth the will of my father
who is in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of heaven."
Matthew 7:21
One of the things that Protestants removed from the faith was formal confession. They believe that you do not need to get forgiveness from "a man" of the church. You can go to God directly. If that was all one needed to do, Jesus would have decreed it. He didn't. He had a reason for giving the apostles the ability to forgive sin. He breathed upon them, giving them the Holy Spirit, and said:
"Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them;
and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained."
John 20:23
The brilliance of the Catholic faith is manifest to a great extent in the opportunity of confession. Jesus was the best psychologist we could ever have, in my opinion. He provided a prescription for the reparation of our souls - a divine "do-over," if you will.
Many people do not believe in hell or the Devil any more. I assure them that the Devil certainly believes in THEM. Even if one has managed to reduce God and Satan, heaven and hell, to abstract principles of good and evil, one cannot dispense with the necessity for goodness within ourselves in order to reside with goodness in the hereafter.
Even if you can't make yourself go to confession, or if finding the time or opportunity is difficult, I recommend the process of regular self-reflection, as it has been very helpful to me. If you can keep yourself on the right track by daily self-correction, you'll have less to confess when you finally make it to a formal confession.
It has been my experience that, if I incline my mind toward God, the rest of me follows suit. Here, on the verge of the celebration of Pentacost, I ask for your prayers, that I may grow closer to the Lord. I will pray the same for you.
God bless us all.
Silver Rose Parnell
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