Hi, my name is Danny W. and I’m a junior in high school. Ok, so, raise your hand if you have never sinned before. Ok, perfect. We all have sinned. The woman in the gospel sinned. Even Jesus’ disciples have sinned. Victor Hugo once wrote in Les Misérables, “All earthly things are subject to sin; it is like the force of gravity.” I remember a lot of my sins. Writing this, I am having difficulty deciding which sin to talk about because we all have so many. I guess I’ll talk about one of the sins I most regret. In junior high one of my classmates had a limp. Everyone would say that he was faking it, and as some people might have done, I believed the rumors. One day the person with the limp, let’s call him Frank, was walking down the hall. Frank said “Hey Danny,” and I responded saying “Hey speedy Gonzalez.” I started to feel bad about this later that day, if you know me well enough you might have noticed how if I do something wrong like call someone a name, I start to feel guilty about it right away. Well, I never did apologize and I have no idea why. Last year, I found out that Frank actually has a brain tumor. This made me feel extremely bad for my sin. In November, I went to reconciliation. I told the priest what I had done. He thought for a while and told me that God forgave me but he also told me “You can’t unring a bell.” That really struck me. What this means to me is that whatever you say to a person, whatever you have done, you still will have done that. You cannot change your past; however, you can learn from you mistakes and become a better person. He then told me to focus on my “daily bread.” That means that I should focus in the present and realize that what’s done is done, and the only thing that one can do is ask for God’s forgiveness.

One of the most common sins for high schoolers is that we judge each other. When we look at a person, we are able to decide if they’re weird or mean or something else. We can’t judge people. It’s wrong. Our only judge is God.

Even though we all have so many sins, God will always forgive us, no matter what. Remember in the gospel when Jesus told the people that they could only stone the woman if they hadn’t committed any sin. Jesus forgave the woman. Jesus loves all of us. Jesus is our friend. In general, friends want to help each other; friends want to forgive each other.

I challenge you all to change yourself and try to get away from sin. That is a really hard thing. We will all sin, but just like Elizabeth T. once told me, “Nobody is a true Christian all the time.” Maybe, after you sin you could go to reconciliation. Remember what I said about how only God is our judge, well that’s really true in this case. The person reconciling you will not judge you, he will not yell at you. It is nothing to worry about. If you truly are worried about going to reconciliation, go to a person you don’t know, because, chances are you will never see that person again.

Nelson Mandela once said, “I am not a saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying.” Just remember, we all have sinned. Everybody. I bet even Father Terry and Father Tim have sinned. Nobody’s perfect. We just have to ask for forgiveness and pick ourselves up again and live in the light. God loves us. God forgives us. God is our friend.

Thank you.