Stop Pretending You Have Time
People waste an extraordinary amount of time behaving as though repentance is something reserved for later. There will be another Sunday, another confession, another year to become serious, another opportunity to apologize, another warning after the one they ignored, and apparently another morning is so certain that today's sins can simply be handed over to the person they'll become tomorrow. Nobody owns tomorrow. If you know something is wrong today, then today is already the opportunity you keep claiming you need.
Some people will do almost anything except repent. They'll explain a sin until there is barely any sin left in the explanation, find somebody who agrees with them, find ten more when one isn't enough, change the vocabulary, blame the circumstances, blame the person who objected, decide guilt itself is unhealthy and eventually become offended that anybody still expects them to change. All that work just to avoid saying "i was wrong." All that intelligence spent constructing a place where the conscience can finally stop bothering them, and there is always somebody willing to help.
You are still alive. You can confess, apologize, forgive, return what you took, admit what you lied about, stop whatever you keep pretending you cannot stop, return to prayer, return to Mass, ask for help, accept correction and begin again. There are so many things that can still be done while a person is alive, yet people speak about repentance as though being given the opportunity is an insult. Mercy requires admitting that you need mercy, even that is too humiliating for some people. There are people whose last opportunity has already passed. Their last confession is behind them, their last chance to tell somebody the truth is gone, the final morning when they could have changed something came and went like an ordinary morning.
i have done the same stupid thing enough times to know how easy it is, i've defended what should have been confessed, resisted people who were trying to correct me, protected sins because losing them felt worse than admitting what they were and wasted time that could have been used much better. There is nothing impressive about needing to be forgiven repeatedly because you were too stubborn to learn sooner. God still allowed me more time, more confession, more correction and more opportunities to become slightly less disgraceful than i was before, and i am grateful for every one of them.
I hope He gives me more opportunities to repent because there is certainly more wrong with me than i currently recognize. There are probably faults i've made comfortable, sins i've explained so successfully that i no longer hear the explanation as an excuse, and ugly things in my character that other people can see more clearly than i can. I hope they are exposed before i die. I hope somebody ruins my peace over them if peace is what allows them to remain. Better humiliation now than a comfortable conscience built on lies
and i want other people disturbed in exactly the same way. I want people who have become comfortable with sin to lose that comfort, people who haven't confessed in years to become unable to ignore confession, people who have stopped praying to become bothered by the silence, people who owe apologies to become ashamed of postponing them, people who have spent years defending something wrong to finally become tired of hearing their own defense. I want the person who keeps saying "this is simply who i am" to ask whether that sentence will mean anything before God.
Nobody needs to be perfect before saying this. If that were required then nobody could say anything, certainly not me. The fact that the person warning you also needs confession doesn't make your sin disappear, two sick people don't become healthy by agreeing not to mention the disease. If anything, somebody who has already discovered how easily a person can waste years defending what should have been surrendered has a reason to shout when she sees somebody else doing exactly the same thing.
Repentance is still possible, mercy is the reason you can turn around now without despairing over how far you've already gone. So confess while confession is available, apologize while the person is still alive to hear it, forgive while you still have time to stop feeding the hatred, abandon the sin while you are still capable of abandoning it, and stop assuming God owes you another convenient opportunity after this one.
There is still time. Use it.
Deo Gratias.