Guilt

Someone, probably a clever TV evangelist, coined a quirky definition for the virtue of trusting in God: he calls it the “bathtub of the soul.” There’s nothing like a bath or shower to restore a soiled body with refreshing cleanliness; yet, a sense of absolute cleanliness of one’s soul is even more refreshing and delightful. Of all the faces of trust (such as trust in answer to prayer, trust in his provision for one’s financial security, trust in healing from the Lord, and so on), there’s none more fulfilling than trusting in God’s mercy to cleanse us totally from sin. That’s why Jesus, in an apparition to St. Faustina, commissioned her to propagate devotion to divine mercy through the devout use of a simple and trenchant phrase: “Jesus, I trust in you.” In affirming this trust in his mercy--the kind of trust Jesus responds to most eagerly--the petitioner implicitly affirms trust in all of its other expressions.

Every thinking adult, civilized or savage, has a consciousness of sin, whether confessed or unconfessed. This is the quasi-universal experience of guilt (see Rom 3:23). It carries with it some intuitive dread of punishment or retribution.

In multifarious ways humankind has always attempted to cope with real or imagined guilt. People have tried self-flagellation, sleeping in coffins, spilling out their innermost humiliating secrets to psychiatrists, engaging in psychopathic masochism, starvation-like fasting, anorexia or bulimia, submitting to ceremonial crucifixion, engaging in endless hours of self-focused meditation, making arduous pilgrimages and crusades, and imagining that they’re called to become hermits. The attempt to erase guilt, motivated either consciously or subconsciously, has taken literally thousands of forms over the centuries. None of these humanly engineered forms of guilt erasure has been found to be truly satisfactory. Only persons who rely trustingly on God’s method of sin dissolution, as delineated in both the Old and New Testaments, have found success in this otherwise futile venture.

All sin, even that which offends our fellow humans, is ultimately an offense against God--a violation of his will as perceived (often inadequately) by the human conscience. It is therefore a rupture in a relationship between a rational (conscience-responsive) creature and its Creator. A conscience is either well formed or malformed, and consequently can either accuse or excuse any given person, as Paul states (see Rom 2:15). In its accusatory form, it operates either as prior conscience, reining us in (“Don’t do that!”) or posterior conscience, spawning an anguished guilt feeling (“I told you not to do that!”). In the first case we should trust God to help us avoid sin, and in the other case we should trust him to forgive us as we repent (see the next chapter in this book).

Because it is a personal relationship that is ruptured by sin, the restoration must be a very direct one-to-one personalistic act; after all, we can’t relate personally to some impersonal or subpersonal cosmic Force or entity. Divine revelation shows us that our God is a personal God, incredibly loving and merciful, and far more eager to forgive us creatures than we are eager to be forgiven. Yet he requires us to be open to his proffered loving forgiveness; the faith act of accepting it is precisely an act of trust in his mercy.

All of this makes it consummately easy, even in a flashing moment, to be relieved of all guilt. No self-scourging or other self-imposed hardships are required. It’s simply a matter of surrendering to God’s forgiving love, made meaningful for us by the love-motivated sufferings of his Son, Jesus. In this context, trust is the most beneficial act of personalized faith possible--it redounds to one’s very salvation.

It’s heartening to know that something so necessary (salvation) is something so easy. All that is necessary is a simple trust in God to manage our sins, just as we trust him to manage the supply of the air we breathe, the movement of atoms throughout the cosmos, or the rising of the sun. Of the thousands of ways of attempting to attain freedom from guilt and authentic peace, the only workable one is total trust in the Lord to dissolve our sins in his merciful love, like tissue paper in a blast furnace.

“If a wicked man turns away from all the sins he has committed and does what is just and right . . . none of the offenses he has committed will be charged against him. . . . Am I not pleased when they turn from their (wicked) ways?” (Ez 18:21-23). When one’s trust is a reliance on Christ’s sin-atonement, it brings about a Christic peace--one that transcends any ersatz worldly tranquility: “My peace I give you . . . not as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled” (Jn 14:27). The moment we stop trusting him, we are left to drown in a sea of guilt.

This excerpt is from the book Pathways of Trust, by John H. Hampsch,C.M.F., originally published by Servant Publications. It and other of Fr. Hampsch's books and audio/visual materials can be purchased from Claretian Teaching Ministry, 20610 Manhattan Pl, #120, Torrance, CA 90501-1863. Phone 1-310-782-6408.