Scripture Daily

Context No. 1865 of 4322 · Sirach

Context · Reflection

Sirach 34:17-26: in context

17He raises up the soul, and enlightens the eyes. He gives health, life, and blessing. 18He who sacrifices a thing wrongfully gotten, his offering is made in mockery. The mockeries of wicked men are not acceptable. 19The Most High has no pleasure in the offerings of the ungodly, Neither is he pacified for sins by the multitude of sacrifices. 20Like one who kills a son before his father’s eyes is he who brings a sacrifice from the goods of the poor. 21The bread of the needy is the life of the poor. He who deprives him of it is a man of blood. 22Like one who murders his neighbor is he who takes away his living. Like a shedder of blood is he who deprives a hireling of his hire. 23When one builds, and another pulls down, what profit do they have but toil? 24When one prays, and another curses, whose voice will the Lord listen to? 25He who washes himself after touching a dead body, and touches it again, what does he gain by his washing? 26Even so a man fasting for his sins, and going again, and doing the same, who will listen to his prayer? What profit does he have in his humiliation?

Sirach speaks bluntly about worship that is contradicted by how we live. God takes no pleasure in offerings drawn from ill-gotten gain, or from robbing the poor; such a sacrifice is a mockery. And he presses the point with sharp images: what use is it when one builds and another tears down? When one prays and another curses, whose voice will the Lord hear? And this: one who washes after touching a corpse, and then touches it again, what has his washing gained? So too a man who fasts for his sins, and then goes and does the same again, who will hear his prayer?

The last image cuts to something we all know the temptation to: repentance that is not matched by change. Sirach pictures a man who washes himself clean after touching a dead body, and then goes and touches it again, undoing the very cleansing he sought; his washing gained him nothing. And that, Sirach says, is like the person who fasts and prays for his sin, is sorry for it, goes through the motions of repentance, and then goes right back and does the same thing again. Such repentance accomplishes nothing; the cleansing is undone as quickly as it is sought. The point is not that we are hopeless if we ever repeat a sin; we all stumble. The point is about a repentance that never intends to change, that is sorry for a sin we fully mean to keep committing, that confesses and fasts as a kind of ritual while planning to return to the very thing we confessed. That is like washing after the corpse only to touch it again; it is repentance without repentance, sorrow without turning. True repentance is not merely feeling bad about a sin, or performing the acts of penance; it is a turning away from the sin, a real intention and effort to forsake it. Whoever confesses and renounces his sins finds mercy, the proverb says; the confessing and the renouncing go together. To confess a sin while cherishing the intention to keep it is to wash and touch the corpse again. This searches our own repentance. When we are sorry for a sin, is it a sorrow that turns us from it, or a ritual regret we perform while fully intending to return to it? Godly sorrow, Paul says, produces repentance, a real change of direction. The washing that is followed by touching the corpse again is worthless; and the repentance worth anything is the one that actually forsakes the sin, not the one that mourns it and returns.

When I am sorry for a sin and repent of it, is it a sorrow that actually turns me from it, or a ritual regret I perform while fully intending to return to the very thing I confess, like washing after a corpse only to touch it again, and does my repentance include a real turning away, not just a feeling that changes nothing?

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