Sense of sin
By Fr.
ROY CIMAGALA,
roycimagala@gmail.com
March 25, 2014
IT is inherent in our
rational nature that we develop an idea of what is right and wrong. As
soon as we are old enough to use our reason, aside from perceiving and
knowing things, we start to distinguish what is good and evil.
Obviously, our capacity to
distinguish good from bad starts in a primitive stage, kind of shallow
and very limited in scope, based solely what we see and feel, and not
much more. But with time, experience and education, this capacity
grows and hopefully matures.
It is for this reason that
we all have the need to base ourselves on the very foundation of
reality, the very source of what is moral and immoral. This is none
other than God, the author and creator of the universe.
Grounding our capacity to
distinguish between right and wrong on another basis would set us on
the offside. Sadly, this is what is happening these days. There seems
to be a systematic distancing from God and a growing dependence on our
own ideas, ideologies, philosophies, and other methods that
practically ignore or are even hostile to God.
We need to remind ourselves
strongly these days that we need God for us to know and judge
properly. We just cannot depend entirely on our legal and
technological systems, for example, no matter how sophisticated they
have been developed.
For this to happen, we need
faith to give substance and direction to our reason. Reason cannot
stand on its own. It is incomplete without faith. In practical terms,
this means we need to overcome our tendency to make ourselves the
standard, the ultimate lawgiver.
It is God who is all of
these, and we need to enter into an intimate relation with him to know
and judge things properly. Thus, we need to pray, to talk to him and
get to know and love him more and more. We need to study his teaching,
now the doctrine of the Church. We need to develop virtues, have
recourse to the sacraments. Only then can we be intimate with God, and
live and work always with him.
One big problem that the
world today faces is the loss of the sense of sin. Many people do not
anymore know what sin really is. Many think sin is only a matter of
what is legally prohibited, socially tabooed, politically incorrect,
or what is unpopular, what turns out to be a failure in some sense,
etc.
This loss of the sense of
sin, greatly lamented by many saints and popes, is mainly due to our
drifting away from God. Thus, we are now even legalizing what are
actually outright sins like abortion, contraception, many forms of
sensuality and corruption, etc.
These developments reflect
what St. Paul once said: “For many…are enemies of the cross of Christ,
whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is
in their shame, who mind earthly things.” (Phil 3,17)
To have the proper sense of
sin, we need to meditate on the passion, death and resurrection of
Christ. There we can see both the ugliness of sin as well as the
unending mercy of God, since as St. Paul also said, “where sin has
abounded, grace has abounded even more.” (Rom 5,20)
Yes, it’s our faith more
than our reason alone that captures the true essence of what is
sinful. It’s also our faith that gives us hope where reason tends to
plunge us into despair whenever we consider our attitude toward our
sinfulness.
Our faith teaches us how to
deal with sin. It tells us that whenever we are tempted, let us be
tempted always with Christ and not simply by ourselves, so that we
would know how to overcome the devil with Christ also. We cannot do
this just by ourselves.
Let’s be convinced that in
this life we cannot avoid temptations. But as St. Augustine once
expressed it, if we are with Christ, the temptations can serve to
occasion spiritual progress, since “no one knows himself except
through trial, or receives a crown except after victory, or strives
except against an enemy or temptations.”
As St. James said in his
letter, we are put to the test to make us patient, since patience
would make us “fully-developed, complete, with nothing missing.” (1,4)
We just have to humbly
accept our guilt, but neither should we forget the unfailing mercy of
God. We should not be afraid or ashamed to acknowledge our sin. But we
should neither be despondent of God’s mercy. His delight is to forgive
us!