Do those sitting around you in Mass know your story? If a soul could flush like a face, does your soul redden each time you remember your shame? You may not even be the source of your shame. It may have slid over from a loved one. That the shame has become your own shows how deeply we live in each other.

What would others think, if they knew the details? Or is that something you would rather not discover? The great sorrow is that you are never more lost and alone than when you sit in shame.

Shame is not of God. How can it be, when it assaults you, denies the very goodness God created when you were made? Shame is what isolates us, separates us from others. How can shame be an instrument of God, whose purpose is ever to love and to gather?

Shame is not of God. How can it be, when it assaults you, denies the very goodness God created when you were made?

If seduction is the word we use for losing our way, for failing to remember what really matters, it is only the prick of the sin. The death-dealing poison is the shame that follows. That is when thoughts enter our heads about everyone judging us, about how we deserve their condemnation. We tell ourselves that if we have done something bad it can only be because we are bad. It is shame that separates us from the love of the Lord and of others.

Shame settles on the soul like a moody mist. It does not allow us to see clearly. We begin to tell ourselves that we have always been a loser, a bad person, and that there is no reason to hope for change.

Mass is meant for the shamed. The shepherd calls you to come in. Do not be ashamed. Jesus celebrated Eucharist with Judas. It was shame that took Judas from the light of the table into the darkness.

The Eucharist begins with a confession of our sins. This is our great act of defiance against shame. We have committed sins; we have failed ourselves and God; but we are here because God’s mercy is stronger than shame. Shame would have us stay away, stay apart. Confessing our sinfulness immediately identifies who we are before the face of God. We are the contrite, not the contemptible.

The Eucharist begins with a confession of our sins. This is our great act of defiance against shame.

There is a reason we say “The Lord be with you” as we begin the Eucharist, as we hear the Gospel, as we enter into the great prayer of thanksgiving and as we take our leave. The Eucharist is the original A.A. meeting. We need to encourage each other, remind each other that we are not alone, that our savior has called us together. May the hidden one in our midst be our strength!

Just before we are fed with the bread of life, we confess to the Lamb of God that we have sinned; we confess to the Lamb of God that shame has isolated us; and then we ask the Lamb of God to give what he alone can, the peace that comes when shame no longer separates us from God, from the one who always loves us, who always gathers.

When we are commanded to raise our eyes and to look upon Christ in his eucharistic flesh, we identify him as the Lamb whose blood was shed to wash away sin and shame. This sacrificial Lamb is the one who will feed us.

Behold the Lamb of God,
Behold him who takes away the sins of the world.
Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb.

And then we pronounce the most audacious act of hope. We recall that the same God who created us from nothing by nothing more than a sovereign word can by speaking the saving word recreate us as though sin and shame never were.

Lord, I am not worthy
That you should enter under my roof,
But only say the word
And my soul shall be healed.

Readings: Exodus 32:7-11, 13-14 1 Timothy 1:12-17 Luke 15:1-10

The Rev. Terrance W. Klein is a priest of the Diocese of Dodge City and author of Vanity Faith.