bearing blog: Sightseers.

A little background, first.

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One of the things I took away from my in-depth reading of Introduction to the Devout Life was the importance of making a distinction between sins and weaknesses. I wrote here:

Sin and weakness are distinct problems, and so Francis means to give distinct advice about them.

Perhaps five hundred years ago people made more careful distinctions among the categories of sin, temptations to sin, and weakness. They are not the same. A sin is a specific act; a temptation to sin is an internal or external urge toward a specific act; weakness is, I would venture, a tendency to be assuaged by and easily overcome by temptations of a particular sort. The more I read this book, the more I come to believe that our attempts to reform ourselves are seriously muddied by treating weakness as sin and sin as weakness.

For example, lots of people write about their weaknesses (vanity, laziness, impatience, selfishness, gluttonous tendencies) with a distinct tone of guilt. But guilt or compunction is entirely inappropriate towards weaknesses. It's appropriate towards sin, towards sins -- towards instances when our weaknesses made it easier for us to be overcome by temptation, and so we committed sins against charity or whatever.

I wrote more specifically about the distinction between gluttony-the-weakness and gluttony-the-sin in the comments here. I wrote some here about the replacement of the weakness of gluttony with the weakness of vanity. And, pointedly, I came away from Francis's writings with the distinct impression that, in the confessional, confessing weaknesses as if they were sins is to accuse yourself of generalities, almost as good as making no confession at all.

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That's one of the most fruitful ideas that I inferred from Francis's work: that guilt or compunction is inappropriate response toward your own weakness. (Just as condemnation would be an inappropriate response to someone else's). Since I took that in and understood it, the sacrament of confession has been wonderfully simplified for me and -- I believe -- more honest.

It is so, so easy to hide behind a screen euphemisms and generalities. If you forbid yourself from confessing weaknesses, you are left only with your sins. Not: I was impatient with my children, but this: I struck one child in anger and yelled hurtful things to another. Not: I keep getting distracted in prayer, but this: I deliberately passed up opportunities to pray when my mind was clearer. Not: I am still struggling with gluttony, but this: I ate the last of the cookies, the ones that were supposed to be saved for the kids' tea time, and lied about it later.

You see how that works.

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During Lent I finally found a good time and place to go to confession frequently, and I've been returning monthly ever since. And I have been marveling at the quiet but forceful effects of confessing regularly.

It works, I now see, because I found a time and place that's convenient to my schedule, not necessarily to my tastes. I make my confession on a kneeler before a screen, in a "reconciliation room," off a small, modern chapel, deep within a large, old church near my home. For privacy's sake, the sign requests penitents to refrain from occupying the small modern chapel; we wait in line in the hall outside, and after absolution we may go upstairs to the vast, high-ceilinged church. This is what I do, partly because of the sign, and partly because the vast, high-ceilinged church is to my taste. I kneel in a rear pew and say my penance, taking in the view, of the marble crucifix, the glittering tabernacle, the domed altar canopy, Mary's stone mantle spread over all.

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This church is large, old, beautiful, and important. And so, among the booklets of prayer devotions and flyers for crisis pregnancy centers, its keepers stock on the tables behind the rear pew many helpful information sheets detailing the history of the building, and also brochures explaining the points along the self-guided tour. Sightseers take the brochure with them and make their own stations, audibly appreciating the quality of the historic art. Today there are several different small groups milling about the church as I say my Our Fathers and my Hail Mary and my Act of Contrition. A woman walks up to a stone confessional, unhesitatingly swings open the wooden door and peeks inside -- it's empty, I'm glad she chose that one, instead of the one on the other side of the church that I happen to know is used for storing cleaning supplies -- before she turns and moves on to look at something else. The sightseers do not disturb me -- they are probably checking out the church before they leave to get ready for the lovely wedding that will surely take place here in a few hours. I say a prayer for the unknown couple, that they will be and remain in God's friendship.

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I do, however, feel a stab of selfish desire to be sightseen, even though I do not appear in the self-guided tour. I have a dollar in my pocket, that today no panhandler asked me for; I get up and carry it to the corner where only two or three of the votives are yet lit.

Here we have the high altar, 24 feet square. And here we have the bronze doors, added in 1955. And here, before the chapel of the Immaculate Conception, we have a woman on her knees in tears.

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The statue in the chapel of the Immaculate Conception is tall -- life-sized, or larger, I don't remember. The statue is unpained stone, pale, perhaps faintly rosy. Pale Mary crushes the pale serpent's head, and she wears a crown of pale flowers. I have taken my sins to confession and received absolution for them; but the weaknesses remain, they ought not be confessed, and they cannot be absolved. Only burned away. Still, here is a place, it occurs to me, where I can ask for help with them, beg prayers -- that God will -- what? Break, blow, burn, and make me new. O Lovely. O Beautiful. O Immaculata. Here is beauty, bare and silent stone.

The Immaculate Conception receives all graces.

One of these days I will remember to bring tissues.

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The sightseers are still here, watching with interest as some staff member fiddles with the candles on the wide bronze chandelier, which has been lowered by a pulley to within reach of a ladder. I leave my one-dollar votive flickering before the Immaculate Conception and cross the aisle. The striking of my heeled sandals echo in the hollow space as I cross to the chapel that is its left-hand mirror image, before which many more candles glow.

Which is it? Ah yes: the Virgin of Guadalupe. I kneel before the mosaic, which is a very recent addition to this church, but a faithful representation of the image, and a beloved one, to judge from the candles.

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I feel emptied out from my time before the chapel on the other side. I can find nothing more to say to the Virgin or to ask from her. I study the glittering chips that make up the picture. I open my eyes and study the picture. This Virgin is colorful, even gaudy. This Virgin, it seems, answers back.

Her hair, her skin, her clothes are a message. You know the story, don't you? Her dark skin and black hair reveal her as a mother of the Americas. Her clothes reveal the Savior. The jewelry at her throat bears a cross. The arrangement of the floral pattern on her dress means she, a woman, is the mother of God. The black belt announces that she is pregnant. Her mantle is the color worn by queens. It is strewn with stars.

The Virgin of Guadalupe answers all vanities.

One of these days I will remember to bring tissues.

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I came to the church as an adult, not a child -- well, really, somewhere in between. Catholicism remains for me strange and exotic even at the same time as it is my home. I have never really been able to tell the difference between what is for all the natives, what is for the sightseers, and what is just for me.

Perhaps there is no difference.