Fr. Cyril Vojtěch Kodet, O.Carm.
(Excerpt from the lecture on the Sacrament of Reconciliation for priests at the formation meeting of priests on January 22, 1999, in Želiv.)
We usually narrow daily reflection to an examination of conscience, or rather to searching for sins in our lives. In connection with what has been said (in previous parts of the lecture - note by the editor), we can already suspect that it is not primarily about settling accounts with God and compiling an exact list of offenses, weaknesses, and that it does not even concern settling accounts with oneself in order to close the day and feel at peace. It is not about tallying our external manifestations, while forgetting our fundamental life relationships, the causes, and motivations of our actions.
A person who conducts a daily reflection is usually no longer someone who would want to voluntarily commit serious moral offenses. And if a person truly sins, when living with God, they know immediately at that moment that they are doing wrong. Daily reflection is something that should help us maintain and renew our relationship with the Father. That is why it is so important to start this daily contemplation with listening rather than our own thoughts. This is a great problem in our spiritual lives because we are men and we are active people, and through this activity, we often mark our contemplation, our inner prayer, our reading of Scripture, our liturgical celebrations, our service. We bring this human activity into everything, which – on the one hand – is of course excellent because if one were not an active and creative man, then who would be creative and active? But there are situations in which we need to completely open ourselves to God's voice and to God's vision of ourselves and let our activity be silent at that moment.
The first step of reflection is to quiet oneself before God and renew one's relationship with the Father. To realize that I am a son, not a slave; as a son I am also an heir, that everything belongs to me – regardless of whether I have sinned. I have my place in the Father's house, He is waiting for me and wants to celebrate with me. He is someone who deeply cares for me and who gives me the identity of my own life.
Then I can reflect on how I listened to the Father today as such, to His calling and His voice. If I perceive God's action in my life, then I can respond to it. Then my whole life and my service is a genuine response to God's guidance, and not an arbitrary choice, as often happens in life. I can only perceive disloyalty to God's guidance if I am aware of this guidance at all and if I take it into account. This assumes that we are convinced of God's daily action in our lives, that we are convinced that God intervenes in our lives, that He calls us daily to conversion, that He wants to encourage us and lead us in our service.
In reflection, we thus learn to find traces of God in our lives daily and to thank for them. The second step after listening is gratitude. We praise God for all the undeserved gifts He has showered upon us today, regardless of whether we have sinned or not, whether we have been idle or done something, whether we have succeeded or not. Through gratitude, we learn to uncover God's action in everything that happens to us daily, not only in what we directly influence but also in what affects our lives without our will and what sometimes poses such great difficulties for us at the beginnings of spiritual life: when everything is suddenly completely different from what we wanted. To see in all of this God's gift and God's care for us, we can truly do only from the perspective of great love and faith towards the Father, and we must learn that.
We need to learn to read God's signs, and then we can also listen. To know God's language, to perceive how God works around us, in our lives and in the lives of others. This gives us tremendous hope that God's work, even through us – such ordinary people – can succeed in this special world in which we live. This gives us hope that even our sin cannot thwart God's plans for those whom God has entrusted to us. We need to experience this inner certainty daily. Otherwise, we might completely collapse under our weaknesses, just as the Holy Spirit gradually reveals them to us. And so, in reflection, we learn to perceive daily specific manifestations of love towards ourselves, which presupposes earlier experiences of love.
We need healing of memory. We are very forgetful, especially towards God, who is faithful. When a person does not stop recalling the great deeds of God in their life and does not cease to give thanks for them, it makes them open and capable of perceiving specific divine interventions hic et nunc in their own life. Experience with this divine care and love also presupposes faith that God is truly in love with man, that He has united His life with ours. Even though we wander somewhere in the world, in the Father's heart we still have our place, and the Father will not be happy and will not rejoice until we rest on His chest.
So, in reflection, we first feast on God's loving attention. We admire His faithfulness, His mercy, we thank Him for the gifts we have received. And from this arises spontaneously the question of our love and our faithfulness. A person in connection with this perspective towards the Father quickly realizes that they have sinned, that they have been entangled in themselves. "Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son." This attitude arises from the thought of the Father, not from the thought of oneself; sometimes we approach examination of conscience as if we need to examine ourselves even more. Yes, but only under the Father's gaze. Surrendering to the Lord, surrendering to the Father, renewing the covenant, renewing the relationship, reconciliation, rest – all of this follows and reunites us with God.
Saint Augustine says: "When God is in the first place, everything is in its place." And when we manage to place God back in the first place of our lives every evening, we also align ourselves. After all, what makes us fragmented is usually not the excess of our work or lack of time, as we excuse ourselves, but rather the psychological tension caused by our unresolved internal conflicts and our unwillingness to surrender to God.
(In the full text, the lecture was published along with other contributions presented at the mentioned formation meeting by the Pastoral Center of the Archdiocese of Prague in the proceedings of The Sacrament of Reconciliation .)
