There Is No Small Sin

"Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments

and teaches others to do so

will be called least in the Kingdom of heaven.

But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments

will be called greatest in the Kingdom of heaven."

When we think of Jesus we most often think of Him as kind, loving, gentle, and meek.  This is good because He is all of these things.  In today's Gospel reading we catch a glimpse of another facet of Jesus.  We see what I call Jesus the Prophet.  Today His words tell us that we are God's children and we are called to obey and he tells us that there are consequences when we disobey and commit sin. 

Sin happens anytime when we place our will above that of God's. Our Church wisely classifies sin into two types which are venial or less serious sin and a mortal sin which is a sin that does just what it says, it destroys the relationship between the person and God.  Praise God that all sin is forgivable through the sacrament of reconciliation which we can use to express our sorrow and receive assurance that we are truly forgiven for what we have done. 

While I agree that there are two types of sin and that every sin, no matter how grave can be forgiven, I want to talk a little about the nature of sin itself.  Father Larry told this story.  He was driving to work one day and a person cuts him off.  He lost his temper and mentioned things about the other driver's ancestry that would have amazed the driver had he been able to hear them.  This act of cussing out the man that offended him was, of course, a venial sin.  He did not know the person in the other car and he did not really mean the things he said so it was not a grave sin.  Now imagine the same circumstances but the other driver happened to be his mother.  He has the same reaction.  The sin would be greater because of the dignity of the person he was sinning against. 

This is why I say that there is no small sin. There are sins that are milder than some but every sin, no matter how small, no matter how venial, is an offense against God and it is no small thing. The wonderful thing about sin is that it always can be forgiven. God is always there with His arms outstretched waiting to hug us back into His family. 

So today, I challenge you to stop and think before you consider committing even the smallest sin and remember who it is you are offending.  I challenge you also if you haven't taken advantage of the Sacrament of  Reconciliation in a while, even if it has been years or decades, to consider swallowing your pride and approach the throne of grace to be received back into God's family.  Sometimes love does mean we have to say that we are sorry. 

Knowledge Ain't Enuf

I often have to remind myself that knowledge about God is not the same as a relationship with God.  I have a good knowledge about the things my church teaches about God.  I was involved in RCIA, that is the training of people looking to join the Church after they have become adults so I have had to study and learn about my religion.  This is certainly okay as far as it goes.  This knowledge was hard won and certainly useful for the people I imparted it to.  Take for example the simple Bible verse, "God is love."  To teach that to someone coming into the Church is a great good.  If I leave this nugget of truth about God in someone else's heart and do not take it into my own, then it does me no good. 

Paul tells us this in 1 Cor. 1 -3.  He says that no matter what if we do not have love in our heart, we are nothing more than a noisy gong or a cymbal making a senseless racket.  In other words, without taking the scriptures to heart, they do us no good at all.  We can memorize the whole Bible but if we do not put the knowledge into practice, it is useless to us.  So it is with God.  We can know all about Him, we can preach His wonders but if we do not have an intimate relationship with Him, well, then, so what?

For us Catholics, we have so many opportunities to unite ourselves with Christ.  Think about what you do every week at mass.  You worship God publicly and you receive God Himself into your body in the Holy Eucharist.  Is it just bread you eat?  If so, I can tell you where you can get better tasting bread and in a larger slice.  No, it is the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ Himself that you receive.  Do you take the host, return to your place and read the church bulletin or talk to your spouse?  Don't waste the chance to pour out your heart to the One who loves you. 

We Catholics can also meet Christ in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Christ wants us to trust Him and He also wants us to come to Him and relate to Him where we have failed so he can cure us of our spiritual ills and make us stronger in the faith.  This sacrament scares many people because they think that the priest who is acting in persona Christi will remember what they confess and hold it against them somehow.  We also think that our sins are somehow unique, that father has never heard someone confess what we did before.  Do you want to bet?  Reconciliation is an opportunity to begin a relationship with Christ even before you enter the confessional because you can prayerfully examine your conscience after asking the Lord to help you recall your sins.

There are so many ways in the Catholic Church to meet Christ.  There is adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, there are ministries that need your particular talent.  Just seek and you shall find.  Getting to know about Christ is a good first step.  Getting to know Jesus as a personal friend should be your goal because this friendship will last an eternity.  

Hate - Why it is No Good For You

This is a true story. My mother was a simple soul. She did have a habit of analyzing people a bit too much and spent a lot of time looking for happiness to ambush her from the outside. I don't think that she ever learned  that happiness radiates from the inside of a person, that it is a seed that needs careful nurturing and by taking care of it a life takes on a glow that nothing from the outside of it will have permanent effect. She was love by myself and my three younger siblings and as we grew she taught us many lessons in life. For example, through the dark days of fourth grade where it seemed I was always in trouble with the teacher, she told me to no matter what, hold my head high and be proud of who I was. I just want to give you an idea of the beauty that was inside of the soul of my mother Violet.  

She worked as an assistant in a doctor's office and part of her compensation package was medical care. One day she showed a growth that was on her shoulder to the doctor she worked with. The doctor took a quick look and prescribed an anointment. My mother carefully followed the doctors instructions and after about six months there was no improvement. She went to visit the doctor whom she worked for previously who was in retirement and he took one look at the growth and diagnosed it as cancer. She went to another doctor who removed the growth and believed he had gotten it all. But several months later at a check up it was discovered that the cancer had metastasized to her lungs and that her condition was terminal. 

The chemo would prolong her life and she was referred to a well known surgeon in the Chicago area and he said she possibly could get more time if she would allow him to operate. Mom scheduled the operation. It was scheduled for early afternoon and it was with shock that when we arrived at the hospital we found Mom on a gurney being taken to surgery! We thought we would have had some precious time to talk with her and comfort her but a cancelled surgery meant that they could take her early.  We did get to make her feel loved as the attendant pushed her into the elevator and we began the waiting game. The surgeon eventually came into the waiting room a smile on his face saying that everything had gone good and he removed as much of the growth as he could and he estimated from what he could see that she might have a year, maybe a little more, to live.  We went into see her and she was on a respirator, but alert and able to communicate by writing on a board that the nurses provided her with.  I lived a fair distance from the hospital so the second day post-op I took the day off from visiting and went to work. The next day something had changed. Mom was no longer able to respond. If we put the pen into her hand she would try to write but the pen would slip from her hand. As the day went on she became less and less responsive until at 7:11 P.M. she passed away.

The next few days we did the needful and arranged a funeral mass at St. Joseph and St. Anne Church and laid our mother to rest.  At the wake I was introduced to her employer, the doctor that cared so little that she allowed what could have been a fixable issue to become a terminal one.  I looked at her and thought that, "This bitch killed my mother."  My heart filled with hate but I softly thanked the woman for coming to the wake. 

After all of the excitement of the wake, funeral, and the funeral luncheon there was nothing but time left. Time to mourn, time to remember the sharing of our lives with our mother. For me there was also time to hate. Now I have to say I would not in any way, shape, or manner physically hurt anyone. But mentally I killed that vile woman doctor many times. I slipped into depression but I did not recognize it for what it was. My symptoms included lethargy, lack of interest in things around me. I would read the same books over and over again and for six months I never once reconciled my checking account. 

I was working in a travel agency that was about fifteen miles from my home. I took a route through a beautiful tony suburb called Lake Forest. For months I hardly noticed the beauty of the trees. At one point I passed a Catholic Church. It was my habit to make the sign of the cross as I passed the church for brick and mortar could not separate me from the Love Incarnate in the form of Bread that was in the tabernacle. Then one day as I passed that Church and once again followed what in my mind had become an empty ritual, it came to me that as a Christian man,I could not hate, it was foreign to me. In that moment of what I believe was Christ sent inspiration I forgave that doctor, I granted her a full and complete pardon. At that moment a great weight was lifted off of my shoulders. My soul began to feel joyful again. Surely I still missed my mother, but I knew that she was with God. The other benefit I could claim from this encounter was that from that moment on I could not hate anyone else. I had forgiven my mother's killer, what could you do to me that would be worse that killing her?  

There have been disappointments in life, where friends have failed me in major ways but I could not hold anger or resentment to them. I just had to forgive! 

So the lesson I learned, taught to me by the hand of God through His Son is that hate for any reason is self defeating. It closed the universe around you. You develop myopia of the soul and risk wasting vast amounts of time seeking revenge.  This is all at great cost to your body and your soul. 

Is there anyone in your life that you need to forgive?  I don't mean you have to eat lunch with them and invite them to join you on vacation! No, I mean just the simple act of granting them mercy and absolving them from the real debt that they owe you. You don't have to tell them if you don't want to. If they are a close relative, you may approach them in time and begin to reconstruct your relationship but that is not necessary to forgive the hurt that was done to you. I can give you an absolute guaranty that if you do this in your heart you will awaken parts of your soul that go dormant when you carry hate in your heart.  Forgive and forget? I don't think that it is possible to forget an evil that is done to you. It is part of our survival skill set. But forgiving that person who hurt you the most will set you free to live and love in the paradise that God has given us. 

Remember well the prayer we say daily, the Lord's Prayer, the prayer given to us by Jesus Himself. "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us..." Do you think he was kidding?  God is ready to forgive us every day we sin against Him. He will forgive us in the same measure that we have forgiven others. 

Thank you Pope Francis for declaring this the year of mercy. May we learn to be merciful to each other. 
    

Some Strong Coffee !

There is nothing like a hot cup of coffee to get you started in the morning.  The aroma gets the blood flowing even before you get the first scalding sip past your lips.  When your body feels that first sip it recognizes its old friend caffeine and brain cells all of a sudden snap on and you are finally awake and ready to take on the day.  Well the reading at Mass today from Philippians 3: 8-14 can do for our soul what coffee does for our brain. This reading becomes a shot of espresso for our soul once we read the first few sentences and use the proper Greek translation for one word. It does not change the meaning of the text but I think that it enhances it and strengthens it.  The beginning of the reading reads as follows:  "More than that, I even consider everything as a loss because the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus  my Lord. For his sale I have accepted the loss of all things and I consider them so much rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him,,," 

The word we need to change is rubbish. The Greek word that is used here actually translates as "sewage."  The word sewage is much stronger than rubbish and I think it shows Paul considered Christ more important than anything.  Lest you think I am some sort of Greek scholar, I am not.  I gleaned this coffee bean from the homily at Mass yesterday. 

This is just food for thought. What place do we give to our relationship with Jesus in our life?  Is it the most important thing? Is it maybe in the top ten?  Or do we just think about it on Sunday morning as we sit in Church waiting for it to be over so we can tear into a jelly doughnut? 

This reading and the young deacon (man he looked young) that shared this nugget of wisdom with me has forced me to think on how much importance I place on my relationship with the Lord.  I know he is in the top ten, but if I was going to be honest I could not say that at this moment he is number one in my life.  This of course is something I will have to work on. 

I am going to challenge you today to think about the place of Christ in your life. Are the burdens of day to day life taking precedence or are we inviting Jesus into the little fiddly bits our life?  Are we letting his wisdom show us the way or are we picking and choosing? 

In this season of lent we have the luxury of time to reflect. I for one am going to examine my spiritual life and how it mates with my physical life. Where do I and Jesus connect?  Where do Jesus and I disconnect?  It's going to be a long process I am sure but in the end it will be worth while.  

God bless you today.  Catholics - here is a suggestion to get you started.  Have you been to confession lately?  Try it, taking out the garbage and receiving the forgiveness of Christ is certainly a good starting place.