Tag: <span>sin</span>

February 26, 2021February 10, 2021

Our Just Desserts

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

“If you, O Lord, mark iniquities, who can stand?” This is what the psalm asks today.

And indeed, Jesus is very demanding in the gospel. Even anger in the heart, even verbal condemnation of another, is enough to incur God’s judgement.

And in the first reading, we learn that this judgement is the difference between eternal life and eternal death.

So what do we do, when we are aware that we sin often? “If you, O Lord, mark iniquities, who can stand?”

The Protestants decided effectively to give up in this battle, at least as concerns its critical nature for salvation. They yield to the conviction of remaining forever corrupt, but Jesus covers them with His white mantle of salvation, thereby in effect hiding their corruption from the eyes of the Father. Thus it is that God does not “mark” their “iniquities.”

But we need not give up so fast. If we look closer, we also see in the first reading:

“If the wicked man turns away from all the sins he committed,
if he keeps all my statutes and does what is right and just,
he shall surely live, he shall not die.
None of the crimes he committed shall be remembered against him.”

Even if we sin often, if we continually turn back and sincerely repent from that sin, God does not “mark” our “iniquities,” but rather slowly works in us a profound transformation, by which even the tendency to sin is profoundly weakened. This, if we stay close to Him in prayer and in the sacraments.

Indeed, Proverbs tells us, “Though the just fall seven times, they rise again, but the wicked stumble from only one mishap.”

So what is your decision? To be just, or to be wicked? If it is to be just, then hold to that with confidence, avoiding sin and returning immediately to God when you have found, like St. Paul, that you have done what you hate. (cf. Rm. 7:15)

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Tell Jesus that your hope is not in your own virtue, but in His power, the power He exercised in saving us on the Cross. Tell Him that you embrace and accept His desire to transform you from the inside out into a profoundly holy person. Invite Him again to take over and transform your life.

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February 10, 2021January 26, 2021

Catastrophe

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

“The moment you eat from it you are surely doomed to die.” The last words from today’s reading: Words replete with foreboding.

Not having fully imbibed from the cup of Christ’s Redemption until we reach heaven, it is natural for us still to wish we could turn back the clock on Adam’s sin. What a catastrophe. From that one act of disobedience stem the twisted inclinations we all experience to the evils of which Christ speaks in today’s gospel: “evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly.”

It all traces back to that one act of disobedience. “Adam, you fool!”, we would like to say. “Think about what you are doing!”

What we sometimes fail to realize is that our own sin sends out equally powerful ripples. We sometimes think of Adam’s sin with a capital “s,” and our own with a small “s.” It is not so. Sin is sin. It is disobedience against God. We can say, “I sin because I am weakened by Adam’s original sin.” This is an excuse equally pathetic to Adam’s: ““The woman whom you put here with me—she gave me fruit from the tree, so I ate it.” (Gn. 3:12) When we sin, we ourselves are the fools.

Every day–every single day–we have the opportunity to put right Adam’s wrong, by choosing to obey God in all, rather than disobey; rather than cutting corners on His will for our own short-sighted motives.

Every day, we have the opportunity to put right Adam’s wrong through our whole-hearted “yes” to the Redemption from sin that Jesus Christ brought.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Tell Jesus that although sometimes you are insensitive to it, you accept the gravity of your own sin. Tell Him again your unconditional “yes,” that you never wish to be parted from Him or to sin again, and ask Him for His help in overturning Adam’s sin through your faithfulness this day.

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February 5, 2021January 22, 2021

Against the Current

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

How we pine for a truly Christian society, one where by and large, the powers that be favor the Christian life. So much so, that sometimes we can lose our peace when, fully or partially, we find that they do not.

It is interesting to observe the political and cultural context of today’s first reading and gospel, indeed, the overall context in which Jesus lived and died, and in which the first Christians fulfilled their vocations.

The first reading tells us, “God will judge the immoral and adulterers.” Bear in mind, the culture of the world within which this was written hardly favored this teaching. The marriage bed was not held sacred, and adultery was rampant. The Hebrews to whom the letter is addressed, in fact, had long been entirely exceptional within the surrounding world, in their striving to follow the Ten Commandments.

Nor, as we see in today’s gospel, were world powers particularly favorable to the mission of John the Baptist who, as it happens, was decrying their ongoing commission of the very same sin mentioned in the first reading: adultery. He wound up losing his head for it.

But since then, we have had a taste of a Christian society. Jesus Christ Himself, without intermediaries, converted Constantine in the fourth century. He Himself thus set in place the development of Christendom, that is, an entire European empire that espoused and favored Christian principles–even though its leaders many times strayed gravely from those principles.

Vestiges of Christendom persist until our day. But as the world around us becomes more and more secular, it recognizes those cultural pillars for what they are: They are structures based on Christian principles and philosophy. Even though ultimately they are discoverable through the natural law written on every heart, their value is difficult to discern, except with the help of Christian revelation. Thus, the secular mind feels free to dispense with them–even though they were held non-negotiable as recently as a generation ago.

It is good, even important, to work for a society that favors Christian principles, because indeed in doing so, one is working for the common good. But when their deterioration threatens our peace, we must hearken back to the cultural context of Scripture–and realize that the world at large need not favor Him, for Christ to work in it with His grace.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus how He managed to work good in the world in the midst of a society of evil. Ask Him what His plan is for grace to prevail in the hearts of people, even in the midst of evil realities in our society. Pledge to Him once again your trust in His sovereign power and loving will toward us, and offer your life to Him to help Him realize His plan of good.

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January 9, 2021January 1, 2021

The Spectrum

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

John the Baptist bears witness to Jesus, not only as the Messiah of Israel, but also the one whose presence is the source of joy and happiness, He who is personal fulfillment–in fact, his own personal fulfillment. And He does it in today’s Gospel passage, in one of most beautiful testaments to Jesus in the entire Gospel: “The one who has the bride is the bridegroom; the best man, who stands and listens for him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. So this joy of mine has been made complete. He must increase; I must decrease.”

For the Baptist, Jesus is not just the object of his special mission. He is the source of John’s personal joy.

John the Baptist is a beautiful example of what John the Evangelist speaks of in today’s first reading: “We know that anyone begotten by God does not sin; but the one begotten by God he protects, and the Evil One cannot touch him.”

The joy that John the Baptist derives from Jesus, and his focus on Him as his reason for being, makes it much more unlikely for the Baptist to offend God by breaking the Commandments than, for example, a mediocre Christian whose focus is on worldly self-gratification and whose attitude toward the Commandments is bare-minimum compliance.

In the first reading, John the Evangelist bears unequivocal evidence to the doctrine of two tiers of sin–those which are deadly, and which remove the life of God from the soul, and those which are still sin but are not deadly. For those we observe committing latter sort, John encourages us to pray, that God may infuse His life into them.

When John says he is not encouraging prayer for such an infusion for those we observe committing deadly sins, he is simply observing that God is being chased out of that person’s life and therefore–due to His respect for human freedom–He has no “foothold” from which to infuse an increase of His life within the soul. Now, John is not discouraging us from praying for the conversion of sinners who have committed grave sins and are spiritually dead. But when we pray for such persons, we are, as it were, begging God to knock (and knock hard) at the door of their hearts, and ask for admission–we are not asking to infuse life from the position of one already dwelling within their hearts.

When we read through today’s first reading and through today’s gospel, we observe a dramatic spectrum of souls in relationship to God: Everything from those who have ousted God from their lives, and who can only receive an infusion of His life again if they accept His solicitations of readmission, to souls like John the Baptist, who live habitually from Christ as a source of happiness, and could not imagine seeking happiness anywhere else.

Where lie we on this spectrum?

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to infuse you with His life; ask Him to make Himself more and more your sole focus in your quest for happiness. Ask Him to infuse His life likewise into your loved ones who are living the Christian life. And regarding those–your loved ones and others–who have effectively dismissed Him from their lives, beg Him with all the zeal of which you are capable to continue knocking at the door of their hearts, trusting that when He does so, His offering is always compelling in its attraction.

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December 15, 2020December 10, 2020

Even God Cannot Sink This Ship

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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December 13, 2020November 29, 2020

Remember the Darkness

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

Advent readings like today’s first reading go well with our external preparations for Christmas–with trimming hearth and tree, and baking Christmas cookies. There is such a warm beauty to them: “I rejoice heartily in the LORD, in my God is the joy of my soul; for he has clothed me with a robe of salvation and wrapped me in a mantle of justice, like a bridegroom adorned with a diadem, like a bride bedecked with her jewels.”

“He has sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners, to announce a year of favor from the LORD and a day of vindication by our God.”

These are the sorts of readings that get us excited again about receiving the gift of saving and sanctifying grace with the Incarnation of the Word of God at Christmas–when God breaks into our dark lives like the dawn.

Think, though, what it would be like live before Jesus’ birth, when the world was shrouded in sin and there was no option for salvation. The world had rejected God definitively, and all there was to do was to repent and try to offend him less. He still merited a life of dedication, for He was the good God, our Creator; but the door to eternal life stood shut, due to our own definitive option for sin.

From this perspective, think of how much more still these words from the first reading hold hope and beauty. We know not how it will happen, but from the prophets we know that God has a plan to burst back into our lives and rescue us…

Today, we already enjoy the ability to choose the grace of God, won for us through the Nativity and the events that followed, and we can take it for granted. It will do us well to meditate on how that was not always the case–to place our hearts in the position of those who originally hoped in a mysterious and glorious intervention of God into history.

And then, to consider that even though we live in the years after Christ’s first coming, there is no reason that we cannot hope–and ask Him–for a renewal of grace in us this Christmas so revolutionary for our sanctification, that it is almost as if we never knew Him before, by comparison.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Imagine the times before the coming of Jesus–knowing that God would do something to rescue humanity, but not knowing what. Now, think of how we likewise hope for eternal life, and Jesus’ Second Coming, even though we don’t know just what these will be like. Ask Jesus this Advent to give you the priceless gift of joy-filled, even excited, hope in Him.

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December 10, 2020November 24, 2020

Taken by Violence

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

“The Kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent are taking it by force.”

The interpretations of this saying of Jesus are many and varied.

One attributed to St. Jerome, original translator of the Bible into Latin, refers to the mortification of our own passions and inclinations. This mortification is “violent” to our fallen nature, and it is necessary for entering the Kingdom of Heaven.

Jesus is drawing a distinction between the time of the prophets, and the time from John the Baptist until His present, that is, the Messianic time.

It would seem safe to say that the difference between these two eras was not that there was more violence in one than in the other. The difference was that the violence in Jesus’ time was retaking the Kingdom of Heaven.

We would love if it were otherwise, but the reopening–the retaking–of the Kingdom of Heaven did and does involve violence. To reopen the door to Heaven shut by original sin, as St. Jerome’s interpretation indirectly indicates, Jesus had and has to do violence to the evil tendencies brought to us by original sin. But also, Jesus Himself had to suffer violence to save us–“The Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence.”

Without attempting to put fine a point on the interpretation of this passage, let us meditate on the fact that our time in salvation history involves turbulence and even violence associated with the the encounter of the Holy One, in history and in our own lives, with the evil force of original sin. And let’s get ready for constant battle.

But, the prize is worth it, as the first reading tells us. “I will open up rivers on the bare heights, and fountains in the broad valleys; I will turn the desert into a marshland, and the dry ground into springs of water.”

When we let Jesus and His Holy Spirit into our lives, this is not an entirely peaceful event. “I have come to bring, not peace, but a sword.” (cf. Mt. 10:34) But the fulfillment He brings if we welcome Him and the battle He brings into our hearts is no less than the effect of life-giving irrigation on earth parched and exhausted by sin.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Tell Jesus you understand that the transformation He brings will not be easy–but that you trust Him to give you the strength to bear it, and that you want Him and all He brings, even if that includes pain and conflict. Your trust is the greatest consolation any creature can bring Him.

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October 24, 2020December 12, 2020

The Gardener

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

Today’s readings seem to depict a flow of the potential intended by glorious, idealistic love, terrible waste, and mercy that never stops hoping or lowers the original ideal.

St. Paul speaks about the lofty ideal to which God has called us, namely, the “full stature of Christ,” to “grow in every way into him who is the head, Christ.” Jesus Christ is God, in intimate union with the Father and the Trinity, and it is right into the heart of this dynamic that He wants to take us (cf. Jn. 17:21). This ideal is so exalted, that there is no way we can attain it without God Himself taking on the role of protagonist of our individual spiritual growth, and He does this, which is exciting.

In fact, He, Jesus, is the gardener from the parable in the Gospel, who cultivates our souls actively and lovingly.

Then comes the tragic part: The fig tree, representing our soul, bears no fruit, despite all the cultivation. Sins of pride and sensuality distract us and hinder Jesus’ work of cultivation. This parable is reminiscent of the parable of the owner of the vineyard, who keeps looking for fruit at harvest but finds none (cf. Mk. 12:1-12). It is truly tragic, because to bring us to the great ideal of glory and happiness He has designed for us, Jesus has fertilized the tree with His own blood.

But this isn’t the end of the story. The owner of the garden is inclined to uproot the pointless tree, but the gardener pleads for another year to keep working it. Jesus keeps mercifully knocking on the door, asking permission to come in and bring His work of cultivation to completion.

Still, in this dramatic dynamic, it is important to note that the story ends with our freedom. If we obstinately refuse to the gardener’s overtures, the outcome in the end, like that foretold for the fig tree, is destruction.

We can draw hope in our Lord’s persistence with us, though, from the history of Israel and the Church. Despite the many horrid sins of the leaders of the People of God throughout the ages, and of the people themselves, He continues cultivating.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Reflect on your sins–the ways you simply refuse to step up to the fullness of what Jesus is calling you too. Consider how intensely He loves you, how excited He is about your destiny, and how tragic it is to disappoint that destiny. Happily, now, in prayer, is your opportunity to hand Jesus the keys to the garden of your heart. Tell Him without any reservation that you only want the destiny He has prepared for you, and ask Him to ensure that this destiny is fulfilled.

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October 19, 2020October 19, 2020

Fundamental Transformation

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

St. Paul provides an eloquent name for the effect of original sin within us in the first reading when he says that we were “by nature children of wrath.” Original sin twisted our nature itself, the nature we were born into.

But he also provides a window into one of the most exciting things about Christianity: That in saving us, Jesus does not simply ignore that spoiling of our nature, but actually restores it and recreates it for good: “For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for good works that God has prepared in advance.”

The reality of Paul’s words may not be self-evident as we suffer, frustrated, the temptations and inclinations of our fallen nature, which seem no less potent than they are for the unbaptized.

The reality is that, because of His respect for human freedom, Jesus does not transform and recreate our nature from one moment to the next, when He enters our souls with His grace at baptism. Rather, He undertakes this work of re-creation in the ambit in which we dwell–the ambit of time–in a gradual manner that respects our limited capacities.

Hence the importance of collaborating with Him joyfully, actively, daily, consistently, through a committed life of prayer and the sacraments, and through a following of His ascetic teachings in the Gospel–including today’s teaching on avoiding the temptation to obsess over our material security and welfare to the point that it is a disproportionate priority in our lives.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to help you trust that He is the protagonist of your transformation, and that He has a plan for it that He will execute as long as you give your heart to Him in a real and practical way each day.

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October 10, 2020September 20, 2020

Amusement Park Lines

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

St. Paul’s juxtaposition of the Old and new Testament periods, to which in a general way he refers as the Law and Faith, is fascinating and rich, and includes many deep layers.

Today, he tells us that the Law held God’s people under discipline as they awaited liberation by faith, that is, by the unmerited and free gift of redemption in Christ, which no amount of adherence to the Law could deserve. The image comes to mind of schoolchildren on a class trip to an amusement park waiting in an orderly line for the park to open. The discipline of the line is certainly not the liberating joy of the park–but it is a prerequisite for getting in.

One fascinating layer of this is that this dynamic applies not only to the Old and New Testaments, but also to the spiritual life of each of us. In so many words, St. Teresa of Jesus, from 16th-century Avila in Spain, teaches us that as we get underway in the spiritual life, much of our focus is on the effort of clearing our lives of voluntary sin, which she compares to the clearing of a garden for planting. At some point, we have a taste of God that really turns our head around. Then, we find that in order to live a life in God, we need to change our lives. Upon which follows the arduous work that St. Teresa describes of removing voluntary sin, both big and small, from our lives.

Needless to say, the effort to avoid sin continues throughout the whole trajectory of our spiritual growth. But it is particularly central earlier in that trajectory.

This effort to avoid sin, that is, essentially, to follow the Ten Commandments, closely resembles the Old Testament rule of Law that reigned before the coming of Christ, which Paul describes. Even though Christ has already come to save us, we go through a period when we need to really focus on following the basics of Divine Law, in order to align our lives with acceptance of His free gift of salvation.

But like the Old Testament period of Law-focused preparation, our focus on avoiding sin is less like the joy of the amusement park and more like the discipline of the line to get in. Perfection in this discipline, as much as it might be the ideal we strive for, is not our ultimate destination, any more than it is in the amusement park line. As we progress in our life in Christ, and in particular, our contemplative prayer life, the experience of Jesus Himself becomes deeper and richer and eventually supersedes the experience of our own sin and the need to rid ourselves of it. We begin to experience the joy of the park that we will only experience fully in Heaven, and our spiritual life begins to focus on it.

Interestingly, St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross also describe how deeper moments of purification can follow after great periods of the “joy of the park.”

Two things to note here: 1) We must not rush the process of purification or grow impatient with it. God is very wise about human nature embedded in time, and that our nature needs time for purification and growth. The humility to accept God’s will associated with every phase in our spiritual growth itself is a beautiful gift to God and sign of a certain spiritual maturity. 2) We will never fully escape here on earth the need for great vigilance against sin and the sometimes discouraging awareness of our spiritual weakness and fragility. But if we make the sacrifice associated with this very realization our daily gift to God, he uses that gift as a great lever that brings disproportionate blessings and an outpouring of the grace He merited on the cross into our lives and the lives of many souls in need.

“Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it,” Jesus says in the Gospel. This means following God’s lead in our spiritual life–which may mean heavy emphasis on following the Commandments and avoiding sin at certain moments in our spiritual life, and focusing on simply enjoying God’s presence for a deepening of our union with Him at others.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Jesus indirectly references the Blessed Virgin Mary in today’s Gospel passage as her who “hears the word of God and observes it.” Meditate on her instruction at the wedding at Cana: “Do whatever He tells you.” (cf. Jn. 2:5) She modeled this instruction in her own life, following God’s lead without missing a beat, even when it jolted her in a moment out of one whole reality and into another at the Annunciation. Chat with her about her expertise in this area, and ask her to help you discern God’s promptings in your spiritual life.

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