This is not a drill!

It was 7:45 on a lazy Sunday afternoon in Hawaii. Sailors were either sleeping or quietly going about their daily routines. Ten minutes later the air raid siren would begin to sound and the General Quarters alarm would blare throughout the ship, causing all to wonder why. This never happened in port, especially on a Sunday. Then came the words no one wanted to hear. “This is not a drill.”

9800 feet above a squadron of ten Nakajima B5N “Kate” torpedo bombers readied to release their specially modified 406mm armor piercing artillery rounds, made into bombs. Out of the ten bombs that rained down, only four hit Arizona. One of those penetrated the armored deck between the main gun batteries of turrets one and two. The round exploded amidst one million pounds of black powder the ship was carrying. The explosion nearly tore off the bow of the dreadnaught. The fireball it created instantly incinerated men where they stood. The ship sank in nine minutes trapping more men below decks. At the end of that fateful day the USS Arizona lay at the bottom of Pearl Harbor with 1177 of her 1511 crew dead.

Why is it important that we try to stay in a state of grace? Like the crew of the USS Arizona you never know when you will take your last breath. Some that morning never even made it out of their racks. Mortal sin is like a cancer that kills the soul. It separates us from God. We are left with only the hope of God’s great mercy if we die outside of his friendship.

God does not want this for his children. He wants every one of his creation to live forever with him in heaven. Jesus gave us the cure for mortal sin. It is one of the seven Sacraments of the Catholic Church, one of two Sacraments of healing. It is the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Jesus gave the Twelve the authority to forgive or retain sin. There are some faith traditions that believe Jesus’ sacrifice alone forgives all sins no matter the disposition of the sinner. Jesus does not forgive sins. He forgives sinners. His sacrifice covers the debit the sin incurred. We all have been given free will and that free will extends to our sins as well. What is the only sin that cannot be forgiven? The only sin that will not be forgiven is the sin we refuse to let go of. Jesus will allow us to keep our sins if we wish to do so. For a sin to be forgiven a repentant sinner has to seek forgiveness. All you have to do is to have a humble heart, be truly repentant, and ask Jesus, through the proper authority he established in his Church, and you can be forgiven.

Why would God condemn someone to hell? The simple answer is that he doesn’t. God doesn’t send us to hell, he finds us there. Every person, angelic or human, is in hell because they have chosen, through their free will, to be there. They are in hell because they have been separated from the friendship of God through mortal sin that they will not seek forgiveness for. They want something more than they want the love of God.

The Sacrament of Reconciliation is the greatest thing the Catholic Church has to offer, second only to the body, blood, humanity, and divinity of Jesus in the form of the Eucharist. The Sacrament of Reconciliation cures the cancer. It forgives the sinner and restores him to full communion, full friendship with God. Those who die in a state of grace do not have to hope for the great mercy of God. They have already received it.

So why do so many look at the Sacrament of Reconciliation the same way they look at going to the dentist? Why do so many wait until their teeth are painfully rotting out of their head before they seek help? For most of us that is because of shame. We are so filled with shame over what we have done that we do not want to admit it out loud to another person. It is so much easier just to give it to Jesus in the private of our heart than to say it aloud to a priest in a confessional. What would the priest think of me if he knew I wasn’t perfect? News flash – the priest knows regardless. Another news flash – the priest himself is not perfect and also receives the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

The devil will make good use of your shame, amplifying it, to keep you from going to reconciliation. Your mortal sin is his lifeblood. Those who die outside of the friendship with God are his to consume. He will do whatever he can to keep you from restoring that friendship. He will use your unconfessed sins against you to increase your guilt and shame and to keep you as his possession.

If you were dying of cancer you would do whatever it takes to beat it and to live. The state of your soul is much more important. Do not spend eternity as food for the devil. Receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation often. Death finds most of us like a thief in the night, or in the case of the poor men on the USS Arizona, like a well-placed bomb on a Sunday morning.