Wednesday, Advent I: “My heart is moved with pity"

Physical healing is a promise of the power of God's love to heal our nature wounded by sin. Physical wholeness is a powerful sign in this world of God's promise for each of us of life completed because an eternal gift. The light which symbolizes the advent of Jesus Christ during this season promises healing for hearts which have known the darkness of sin. The "lame, the deformed, the mute" all are signs for us of our own present need for healing which can come only from God through Christ with us. Great crowds came to him, having with them the lame, the blind, the deformed, the mute, and many others. They placed them at his feet, and he cured them.

-- Mt 15:29-37

"Individual, integral confession and absolution remain the only ordinary way for the faithful to reconcile themselves with God and the Church, unless physical or moral impossibility excuses from this kind of confession." There are profound reasons for this. Christ is at work in each of the sacraments. He personally addresses every sinner: "My son, your sins are forgiven." He is the physician tending each one of the sick who need him to cure them. He raises them up and reintegrates them into fraternal communion. Personal confession is thus the form most expressive of reconciliation with God and with the Church.

-- CCC 1484

Photo source: Vatican Radio.

“Take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that people may see them"

When you give alms, do not blow a trumpet before you...When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites...When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites."

-- Mt 6:1-6, 16-18

The interior penance of the Christian can be expressed in many and various ways. Scripture and the Fathers insist above all on three forms, fasting, prayer, and almsgiving, which express conversion in relation to oneself, to God, and to others. Alongside the radical purification brought about by Baptism or martyrdom they cite as means of obtaining forgiveness of sins: effort at reconciliation with one's neighbor, tears of repentance, concern for the salvation of one's neighbor, the intercession of the saints, and the practice of charity "which covers a multitude of sins."

-- CCC 1434

Art: Antonio Canova, Repentant Magdalene