A story is told of a Dad who had a close relationship with his son. One day, when the son was not quite a teenager, a disagreement arose between them. Overwhelmed by anger and unsure of how to handle it, the son punched his Dad in the stomach. Horrified and filled with remorse, he fled from the house, sought refuge in the woods, and found a secluded spot to hide.

Minutes later, the Dad followed his son’s path. He had a good sense of where his son might be. Arriving at the thicket where his son often hid, he sat patiently on a wooden log and waited.

In time, the boy emerged to find his Dad there, waiting patiently. He ran to him, they embraced, and the boy, choked with emotion, apologized for his actions, expressing regret for causing his Dad pain. His Dad accepted his apology, but then shared his own remorse.

The Dad expressed sadness that his son feared him, that his son believed his Dad’s anger could ever extinguish his love for him, and that there was nothing the son could do to make the Dad not love him. 

If you’ve ever been a parent or even a child, this story, or one like it, may resonate with you. It’s a tale as old as humanity itself, beginning in the Garden of Eden. Because as we heard in our first reading, Adam and Eve also ran and hid in fear after disobeying God.

Their disobedience led to their estrangement from God, as well as ours. For the first time, humanity experienced the loneliness and disorientation that comes from turning away from God. This is evident when Adam confesses to God, “We heard you in the garden, but  we were afraid and so we hid.” This pattern of offending God and then running and hiding in fear and shame is so prevalent in our history and began so early that it might well be termed a prime consequence of a fallen world.

It so often happens that, finding ourselves in sin and separated from God, instead of turning back, we double down and dig ourselves deeper into darkness, turning further from the Lord. It is our own fault when we become disoriented and lonely. We find ourselves so deep that it seems that the hole is our entire world, and so difficult to get out.

These depths of our causing are what the psalmist means in today’s beautiful Psalm, Psalm 130, when they say: “Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD; LORD, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to my voice in supplication. And then the beautiful antiphon: “ With the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption.”

So why then, do we so often, when finding ourselves in sin, continue further in sin instead of turning back? Maybe it’s because our shame makes us despair of God’s love. Perhaps we believe that God no longer loves us, even sees us as disgusting. Maybe it’s because we find ourselves so unworthy that we can never return to the presence of God.

None of these statements are true. None reflect the mercy and redemption of God. In fact, those fears are illogical, unworthy of your human intellect.

We know there can be eternal consequences of sin, but there are also immediate consequences. Because of sin, our conscience becomes dimmed, even warped. The deeper we go the more difficult it becomes to recognize the path back. 

These effects of sin, inherited from our first progenitors, can be summed up in a simple phrase. “Sin makes you stupid.”.

Now, I’m not calling anybody here stupid, except perhaps myself. But we cannot deny that the act of sin and remaining in sin dumbs down our intelligence. Sin clouds our intellect by obscuring the truth and allowing our often irrational desires and fears to override reason. Sin clouds judgment and blunts our conscience, resulting in a diminished grasp of moral reality. It impairs the ability to reason to proper moral conclusions.

Feelings of unworthiness or shame might prevent many of us from seeking the healing that Jesus provides through the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Jesus calls us to himself and if we don’t answer because of shame, it is a tragedy. Essentially, you are rejecting the belief that ‘Mercy and complete redemption are found in the Lord.’ The feeling of shame and unworthiness that made both Adam and Eve and the young man in the story want to hide clouds our vision and makes it harder to perceive God’s love.

We are after all not that different than the woman at the well in the Gospel of John, the good thief in the Gospel of Luke, or even St. Peter who knelt before the Lord and said, “Depart from me Lord for I am a sinful man”. Each of these encounters ended in mercy. Jesus’ response to Peter was “Follow me.’  Peter felt unworthy too. The Lord called him anyway. Peter followed.

When we hide, God waits patiently for us to emerge from our burrow, see Him, and approach Him again. Just like the Dad in the story.  God’s love for us is infinite and unchangeable.

After their reconciliation, the boy and his father grew even closer in mutual love. Isn’t that what we want in our relationship with God?

Brothers and sisters, in the moments when we feel ashamed before the Lord, in those moments when we are disorientated or unsure, and even in moments when we feel unworthy and rightfully so, when the Lord calls our name, it is never in our best interest to hide in shame. It is better to turn our gaze to the face of Jesus, accept his grace, and remember that  “With the Lord there is mercy, and fullness of redemption.”