It was really too bad . . . the interview had been so encouraging! The young man was sincere, intelligent and thoughtful, clearly someone who had "turned a corner" in his relationship with the Lord and had recently gone through some kind of conversion experience. He looked so promising—at least as well as I could judge. I did need to make a judgment because I was Vocation Director at the time and entrusted with the responsibility of evaluating as best I could this candidate's readiness to live in the cloister. He looked like "a keeper" as fishermen say . . . . Then, near the end of our conversation, he mentions to me, almost as an aside, that he has a student debt he hasn't paid off. He owes Vanderbilt University fifty thousand dollars. Oh my. I say to him, trying to mask my genuine disappointment, "I see . . . well, that does complicate things a bit." In fact, there is a protocol in place at New Melleray Abbey for helping a man pay off a student debt. It isn't the debt itself that is the source of my concern—it's what he says next. Looking at me like I am a little dense, he hear him say: "Father—it isn't a big deal. All I have to do is declare bankruptcy and I'm free and clear! It's done all the time." Now I'm concerned. I wonder if this young man supposes Vanderbilt routinely absorbs defaults on fifty thousand dollar loans as part of its operating expenses. He evidently feels no responsibility for the trouble and expense his default on the loan would cause others. One hears it said sometimes: "I have no regrets." This is generally said with reference to a bad choice a person has made in the past. I always wonder: "Does the person at the other end of the bad choice you made . . . have any regrets?" In the case of the man I was interviewing, I had to ask myself: "How does a man who evidently feels no personal responsibility for a fifty thousand debt, come to a deep love and attachment to the person of Jesus who redeems us from our sins? How does someone receive forgiveness who "has no regrets" for anything he's ever done? We are now in the fifth week of Lent and this story comes back to me. Lent is a time when we cultivate a certain balanced realism with regard to our sins. They are there. They are part of us and our personal history. In monastic tradition, we speak of a twofold movement in the heart that meets and comes to love Jesus: contrition for sins, (the active movement) and acceptance of forgiveness, (the passive part). You might think of these two movements as two arms that make up an embrace. A one armed embrace is, I guess, a genuine embrace. A two armed embrace is better.

Father Raphael