This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.
There are many forms of sin. They all hinder us from following the Lord’s Great Commandment, whereby we love God above all things, and our neighbor as ourselves. (cf. Mk. 12:30-31)
Laziness keeps us from making effort to spend time with God in prayer, and serve neighbor. Gluttony turns our focus on our own pleasure–to the point of self-harm–and away from love. Lust makes objects of other human beings, and desecrates something set up by God as sacred.
Still, upon the discovery of the wonder of Christ, when one truly experiences Him, we see how suddenly these sins don’t seem so attractive anymore–they are cast aside in favor of Christ. We see, for example, how Zacchaeus the tax collector of a moment leaves his life of greed to follow Jesus, when Jesus comes to eat in his house (cf. Lk. 19:1-10).
An experience of Christ, for the sinner, is like the experience of finding that fullness of happiness that has been the object of a vain, frustrating search in all the wrong, empty places.
One of the seven capital sins, however, is actually exacerbated by an experience of Christ: The sin of Pride. Jesus’ call to obey God and sacrifice for others challenges the heart of stubborn Pride, which seeks autonomy and willful self-governance at all costs.
Thus, in today’s Gospel passages, we see tax collectors and other sinners repenting at the preaching of John the Baptist and Jesus’ preaching, but the Pharisees–whose only sin seems to be that of Pride–stubbornly and tragically resisting faith in Christ, resisting the key to their own temporal and eternal happiness.
In the first reading, too, the sin for which God sharply corrects His people is precisely that sin by which they refuse to be corrected–the sin of Pride. His remedy in the case of the Pride in the midst of His people is to remove the proud–we do not hear of conversion of their hearts.
Over and over again in Scripture, Old and New Testaments, we see Pride ending in tragedy, which becomes eternal: The tragic decision not to listen to God, or be corrected by Him, or obey Him; in the proud, we see a failure in God’s efforts to convert them.
The scary thing about Pride: It is also the most subtle sin. It seeps slowly into all of us, almost imperceptibly. By nature we want to feel powerful and superior, and so we snap up any opportunity to feel more this way.
But, God is the ally of His own. Those who ask Him for humility are not denied the gift–and protection of the gift. Sometimes God lovingly lays low those He loves to answer their plea to protect their humility, to protect them in His grace.
It is wise not to yield to the temptation to dream about feeling almighty, like the great entrepreneurs, the great barons of business, those seen by the world as the great achievers. Their belief in their greatness and their lasting-power is a mirage. Rather, we must be ready to accept continual course correction from Our Lord, and find our greatness in submitting to His glorious laws of love.
Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to grant you the precious gift that His mother possessed, seemingly effortlessly: Graceful humility, by which one is profoundly joyful and grateful because of the exaltation involved in being called to a loving relationship with Him. Ask Him to protect you from the sin of Pride, which tempts with its promise of autonomy, but in the end brings only denigration and emptiness.
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