When the Homily is about Immunology

Regrets

Whether real or imagined thanks to my very personal experience with 18 degrees at the park-n-ride earlier, the waters of Puget Sound looked particularly chilly this morning. I'm not really sure how water can look chilly (save for the presence of ice), but none-the-less this was my perception.

The M/V Hyak was my ride this morning as it is apparently going to be a longer than expected replacement for the M/V Tacoma which has recently earned the diagnosis of having a "serious steering problem." (And they were asking the Coast Guard on Tuesday if it was okay to run anyway?!?!)

But as I watch the cold water passing by I find myself thinking about regret. I can recall in ages past thinking all too often about people going to hell and how they would find themselves profoundly regretting what they did with their lives to earn their place there. Many a Christian punk or metal song would enunciate this idea as a means - I suppose - of convincing people to avoid experiencing all this terrible regret in hell.

Nobody likes regret, but it seems to me that the most susceptible people to sensing regret are not the sort of people who will end up in hell. Not that I am any judge on who ends up there...but from my perspective now, from ideas I have gleaned from Orthodoxy, it seems that regret is not the sort of thing people in the state of hell would experience. Regret is a sort of Godly thing, isn't it? A healing thing? More than just a learning experience, it is perhaps THE pivotal step in the process of repentance and purification. We regret because we have seen the error in our way...but is it ever really too late?

Yes we lose our loved ones and in that sense we may have relational regrets for which it is too late...but is it ever too late for us and God? I tend not to think so.

Regret is an emotion that I believe is utterly foreign to the person who is in an active state of rebellion against God. Not that they cannot sense it in the same "natural" way that we all do, but in the more spiritual sense of not being able or willing to see the damage they produce by sins they do not acknowledge. That being said, even in that "natural" way, I think regret is a real state of movement toward holiness, whether we see it as such or not.

I wonder if hell - as a state or condition of one who is no longer able to bear the reality of themselves or God - will be devoid of regrets. An ongoing state of denial and immersion into utter selfishness. I recall the sinners in CS Lewis' classic work "The Great Divorce" in which the sinners are utterly miserable and yet seem to have no real notion of why. Blame , for all their misery, is always ascribed to someone or something else - they are the eternal and entitled victim. That is hell.

Regret always points a finger at yourself. And that's not bad when we keep before us the Hope of our faith. Regret is a seed.