Do you remember the Star Wars movies, in which the Dark Side was a symbol of evil? In our second reading Paul tells the Christians in Ephesus that they were once darkness. Paul uses darkness as a symbol of shame. Shame is not just sorrow for sins; it is the fear of being caught in sin, or of telling our weaknesses to another because we think the other will look down on us. Paul was a sinner himself and was blinded when Jesus appeared to him, asking, “Why do you persecute me?” So he knew that the only way to be free of shame is not to hide sins, but to expose them.
Does that mean we have to broadcast our sins on the evening news, or post them all on our social media pages? No; we just need to confess them to God and receive God’s forgiveness. We can do this through the sacrament of reconciliation. The priest shows that God loves sinners, no matter what they have done. If you wreck your car, you take it to the repair shop and tell the mechanics what is broken so they can repair it. In reconciliation we bring our sins to the priest so that we can experience forgiveness.
Sometimes other people try to shame us. In the Gospel, Jesus told the Pharisees that they were the sinners, because they had judged the blind man. So when we know that God forgives us and still loves us, we don’t have to fear what others might think. Let us instead hold our sins up to the light of forgiveness and be free of our shame.
Tom Schmidt, Diocesan Publications
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/031526.cfm