JUST THREE HAIL MARY’S

Back when I was stationed in Evansville, Indiana, as a high school teacher of religion, one of my students raised an important query, which, at the time, I dismissed as the mutterings of a disenchanted youth. Now, as I can throw a stone and hit 85 years of age, that question keeps popping up. Simply put, it is “If I always get a penance of saying three Hail Mary’s as a penance the priest gives me for committing either a mortal or venial sin, can’t I get away with any sin for the price of those three Hail Mary’s?”

Wrong questions get wrong answers. What happens in the divine transaction between Christ and me in the Sacrament of Penance is a chance for me to begin again, taking Christ inside the upper room of my inner self and asking for mercy, having a firm purpose of doing God’s will and not my own, and receiving Grace (Energy) to continue to go out there and start over once more.

You can say one Hail Mary or just the name, Jesus Mercy, and, as long as your heart is humble and you know what is right and ask Jesus to help you, your sins will be forgiven. The Sacrament of Penance, unlike what we say at the beginning of Mass, or what I say over and over and over in my Sorrowful Mysteries in reparation for my sins, is a public prayer, even though we go one to one. Do the penance the priest gives you and convert your heart once again to love as Christ loved you.

Think about conversion morae (conversion of the way you live) and how Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, gives you the energy to continue in this quagmire of original sin.

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