A few years ago, our family moved to the Rockford area. We left community, family, and everything familiar in McHenry. We were in a strange house, surrounded by unknown neighbors,
and to add to our isolation, our cell phones had no reception.
At the time, our youngest, Juanito, was still under two, but very mobile. On moving day there was a great train of children carrying boxes and moving about. Somewhere in the commotion my wife asked, “Where’s Juanito?”
I glanced around and a pain dropped in my stomach. Cecilia hurried into the house calling his name, and the other kids and I began to search the yard. As time elapsed, the anxiety rose. I ran to the end of the driveway. Had he wandered down the road? I tried to recall when the last car had passed. Fearful thoughts of someone driving off with him nagged me as I ran back to the house to help search among the moving boxes.
As I approached Cecilia, my helplessness turned to anger. I asked, “Why weren’t you watching him?,” erroneously insinuating she had been the irresponsible parent. We frantically called his name and begged him to come out of hiding.
Just as we were about to go to the neighbor’s house to call the police, our terror ended when someone upstairs shouted, “I found him.”
Hidden in the back recesses of a bedroom closet, Juanito had wedged himself behind the clothes and clutter. Chocolate was smeared across his face and clutched in his arms was an old bag of Halloween candy that he had plucked from one of the boxes.
As young as he was, he intuitively knew it was wrong to take the candy and hid out of shame. Despite our rescue calls, he resisted appearing for fear of what he had done.
It stuns me how much this is like Adam from this Sunday’s first reading. After committing the first sin, Adam’s immediate response was to hide from God. Created in the “image and likeness” of God, every person is oriented towards the good. However, the shame of sin instinctively makes us want to recoil from the beauty of God.
The devil capitalizes on this response and aggressively encourages us to withdraw from family, our faith community, and God. The only way we could expect this unfortunate strategy to work is if we were silly enough to believe we could do it indefinitely. Yet we all recognize that prolonged separation from our family is misery and eternal separation from God is better known as hell.
When hiding ourselves proves ineffective, we may attempt to hide the sin by denying it or by blaming others. After God discovered Adam in hiding, He asked Adam why he sinned. Adam then blamed God and the woman. When I felt that I had failed my son, I blamed my wife.
This particularly petty form of concealment is a favorite of the prideful. It is a desperate attempt to protect oneself at the expense of another and only causes further division. Like Adam, too often our focus is on concealing failure rather than resolving it. This approach ensures that we will live in shame and never find healing.
Jesus is calling to us by name, inviting us to be found by the love of the Father. When we found Juanito, he was scared we would be mad. To his surprise, we scooped him up, held him tight, and adorned him with kisses. So too, when we approach His mercy, God does not respond with retribution. He embraces us.
Jesus has given us the sacrament of reconciliation so that we can be reconciled with the Father. Whether it has been days or decades since you visited the confessional, God is there waiting to embrace you as His beloved child. Lent is only a few weeks away. This is a wonderful time to resist the urge to hide and rediscover the peace and healing of reconciliation.
