The Evil Done On My Behalf

I love the familiar liturgy from the Book of Common Prayer, but my priest likes to mix things up once in a while, so sometimes we use alternative prayers. It’s sort of like hearing the same service in a different language. The gist of the prayers are the same, but the phrasing is different, invoking different imagery and shining a new light on familiar themes.

We recently started using a different version of the “confession” prayer we say before Holy Communion.

Here is our usual prayer, from the Holy Eucharist, Rite II service:

Most merciful God,
we confess that we have sinned against you
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done,
and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you with our whole heart;
we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.
For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,
have mercy on us and forgive us;
that we may delight in your will,
and walk in your ways,
to the glory of your Name. Amen.

The words are meaningful, but the enumerated “wrongs” are pretty benign. Yes, I don’t always put God first like I should; yes, I don’t always treat my “neighbor” as well as I should, and yes, there are things that I did that I shouldn’t have done and things that I didn’t do that I should have done, but in my mind all these things are easily forgivable.

Here is the prayer that we are using now:

God of all mercy, we confess that we have sinned against you, opposing your will in our lives.
We have denied your goodness in each other, in ourselves, and in the world you have created.
We repent of the evil that enslaves us, the evil we have done, and the evil done on our behalf.
Forgive, restore, and strengthen us through our Savior Jesus Christ, that we may abide in your love and serve only your will.

Almost every phrase of this prayer makes me stop and think, but I was particularly struck by the reference to “the evil done on our behalf.” The phrase makes me think of the wars fought halfway around the world to protect my freedom, of child labor and oppressive work conditions that make the products I buy so affordable, of the animals raised in conditions that I can’t bring myself to think of so I can enjoy my “balanced” diet. These “evils” loom much larger in my heart and I am truly sorry for them.