Wednesday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time Lectionary: 409

Pope Saint Sixtus II, martyr

Lectionary: 409

As Israel comes forward to be given his rest,
the LORD appears to him from afar:
With age-old love I have loved you;
so I have kept my mercy toward you.
Again I will restore you, and you shall be rebuilt,
O virgin Israel;
Carrying your festive tambourines,
you shall go forth dancing with the merrymakers.

I spoke to a Veteran in the hospital once of the Lord's restoring her innocence as she confessed her sins and returned to the Church. She smiled and her face softened remembering her white dress, veil, gloves, and shoes of her first communion, more than a half-century ago. I was struck by her response and realized how it applies to each of us and to the whole Church. 

The world, which loves sin but hates sinners, has a very strict definition of virginity. It applies only to a very few; it's easily lost and never regained. But the prophets speak of Israel's restored virginity in the sight of God as her children are gathered and returned to Jerusalem. There will be universal delight on that day, even among the world's astonished nations who must surrender their captives and let them return to God. They must bow down before his sovereign authority. 

The Church also remembers that promise even as we confess our sins. We are always both sinful and innocent as the Lord sees our past and our future. 

A harsher age taught its Catholic children to fear the confessional. No one gladly approached the Sacrament of Penance, nor were they taught to ponder the Goodness of God and the Beauty of His Promises. If their initial experience of confession was a restored good-child innocence it was soon demolished, often between the church door and home. One boy returned to the sacrament three times in the same day, his sister said during his funeral, in a desperate effort to retain that illusive, illusionary state. I wonder if the impatient priest disillusioned him on his fourth go-round. 

But in fact we do see innocence and virginity restored by the grace of God in millions of Christian men and women as they practice our faith. They are glad to worship God on Sunday, and many enjoy and practice daily Mass: 

I rejoiced when they said to me,

“Let us go to the house of the LORD.”

And now our feet are standing

within your gates, Jerusalem. Psalm 122:1

They also act in a godlike manner as they practice both hope and charity while addressing this world's problems and their personal concerns. Of course they remember the sins of their youth, but they understand why they sinned and how gullible they were before the world's empty promises. They are grateful and glad that they heard the call to repentance and believed in the One who never gives up on us. And they welcome others to come join us in our restored virginity. It is very much like the innocence of angels.