SIN, REPENTANCE, AND MERCY.
June 9, 2024.
Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time – B.
“Amen, I say to you, all sins and all blasphemies that
people utter will be forgiven them. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy
Spirit will never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an everlasting sin.” Mk
3:29
A Yiddish proverb says: “No man suffers from another's sins
- he has enough of his own.” A Sicilian proverb adds: “Who sins and then makes
amends, trusts in God.”
God's mercy is beyond limits. This truth travels the whole
Scriptures, from the Old to the New Testament, from the book of Genesis to that
of Apocalypse (Revelation). The entire mystery of Salvation is a story of God's
mercy. This mercy, however, gets its meaning in front of the reality of sin.
God is merciful because mankind is a sinner. It is because sin entered into
creation that God showed his mercy to bring his creature to restoration and
life. As to say, without sin, God's mercy is non-lieu, meaningless.
The readings of this 10th Sunday in Ordinary Time B lead us
to reflect on three intrinsically interconnected realities: Sin, Repentance,
and Mercy.
When God created the world and man, he made all things good.
Man, through his personal decision and freedom, disobeyed God's order and
through that disobedience, sin entered into the world. God saw the disobedience
of man and wanted to punish him. But when man repented, God showed him mercy
and forgave his sins.
The Catechism, in its articles 396 to 401, speaks of the
Original Sin. It says that man's freedom was put to the test. He fell into the
first sin, and from that very moment, man has become a sinner. "The
harmony in which they had found themselves, thanks to original justice, is now
destroyed: the control of the soul's spiritual faculties over the body is
shattered; the union of man and woman becomes subject to tensions, their
relations henceforth marked by lust and domination. Harmony with creation is
broken: visible creation has become alien and hostile to man. Because of man,
creation is now subject "to its bondage to decay". Finally, the
consequence explicitly foretold for this disobedience will come true: man will
"return to the ground", for out of it he was taken. Death makes its
entrance into human history." CCC 400.
Where does sin come from? Did God create it? How does he
react in front of man's sinfulness and disobedience?
To talk about the origin of sin, we have to reflect on the
Original Sin or the sin of our origins. Traditionally, the origin has been
ascribed to the sin of the first man, Adam, who disobeyed God in eating the
forbidden fruit (of knowledge of good and evil) and consequently, transmitted
his sin and guilt by heredity to his descendants. The doctrine has its basis in
the Bible. And that is today's first reading. It is the original disobedience.
From that Adamic disobedience, we all have become sinners.
One part of the original sin that is quite surprising but
ever actual is the rejection of personal responsibility in front of sin. We
read that Adam ate the forbidden fruit. When God asked him what he had done,
Adam answered: “The woman whom you put here with me—she gave me fruit from the
tree, and so I ate it.” He threw the guilt on the woman. When the woman was
asked, she replied: “The serpent tricked me into it, so I ate it.” We are truly
children of Adam and Eve. It is never our mistake. It is always the fault of
others. We always victimize ourselves even when it is obvious that the action
was done by us.
God, however, is not short in mercy. Even though we are
sinners, he does not get tired of forgiving us. We read in the Gospel the Lord
Jesus saying: "Amen, I say to you, all sins and all blasphemies that
people utter will be forgiven them." He, however, warns us: "But
whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never have forgiveness, but is
guilty of an everlasting sin.”
To sin against the Holy Spirit is to deliberately reject
God's love and mercy. It is to lose hope of our salvation and, so, abandon
ourselves to evilness.
About sin against the Spirit, Thomas Aquinas summarized the
Church Fathers' treatments and proposed three possible explanations:
1. That an insult directed against any of the Three Divine
Persons may be considered a sin against the Holy Spirit.
2. That persisting in mortal sin till death, with final
impenitence, as Augustine proposed, frustrates the work of the Holy Spirit, to
whom is appropriated the remission of sins.
3. That sins against the quality of the Third Divine Person,
being charity and goodness, are conducted in malice, in that they resist the
inspirations of the Holy Spirit to turn away from or be delivered from evil.
Such sin may be considered graver than those committed against the Father
through frailty, and those committed against the Son through ignorance.
God is mercy and eternal love. He does not get tired of forgiving us. Through his Son, we read that he opens us to his intimacy and family bond. Nevertheless, he wants us to return to the lost obedience and truly trust in him rather than in ourselves and our earthly possessions. "For we know that if our earthly dwelling, a tent, should be destroyed, we have a building from God, a dwelling not made with hands, eternal in heaven." Sin has entered the world and perverted everything, even our relationships with others. God's love and mercy, however, are beyond our sinfulness.
Comments
Post a Comment