I confess...what I have done and what I have failed to do!

Mat 11:20-24

20 Next Jesus let fly on the cities where he had worked the hardest but whose people had responded the least, shrugging their shoulders and going their own way. 21 "Doom to you, Chorazin! Doom, Bethsaida! If Tyre and Sidon had seen half of the powerful miracles you have seen, they would have been on their knees in a minute. 22 At Judgment Day they'll get off easy compared to you. 23 And Capernaum! With all your peacock strutting, you are going to end up in the abyss. If the people of Sodom had had your chances, the city would still be around. 24 At Judgment Day they'll get off easy compared to you."

Food for soul!

When John came to the end of his gospel, he wrote a sentence in which he indicated how impossible it was ever to write a complete account of the life of Jesus: "But there are also many other things which Jesus did; were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written." (Jn.21:25). Today's gospel is one of the proofs of that saying.

There is no record in the gospels of the work that Jesus did, and of the wonders he performed in these places, and yet they must have been amongst his greatest. A passage like this shows us how little we know of Jesus; it shows us--and we must always remember it--that in the gospels we have only the barest selection of Jesus' works. The things we do not know about Jesus far outnumber the things we do know.

What then was the sin of Chorazin, of Bethsaida, of Capernaum, the sin which was worse than the sin of Tyre and Sidon, and of Sodom and Gomorrah? It was the sin of indifference. These cities did not attack Jesus Christ; they did not drive him from their gates; they did not seek to crucify him; they simply ignored him; Jesus did not mean a thing to them. Neglect can kill as much as persecution does. Being ignored or unnoticed or disregarded by the people that should, can morally kill even the strongest of us. Just like all of us, Jesus wants to be noticed too!

The sin of Chorazin, of Bethsaida, of Capernaum is also a sin of doing nothing. There are sins of action, sins of deed; but there are also sins of inaction, as we say in Mass when we confess our sins ... sins of omission. Sin is not only doing evil; sin is also not doing good, when we could. Many of us will be condemned, not for doing bad things, but for not doing good things to others. The sin of Chorazin, of Bethsaida, and of Capernaum was the sin of doing nothing. Whenever we stay indifferent, whenever we refrain from doing good to others, we sin.