BLINDNESS

BLINDNESS – 24^th Sunday Ordinary Time, Year C

            Personal sin is denied often in our time. Many find it hard to admit to being sinners even though they commit serious sins. At the same time, we are more aware than ever of institutional sin in politics, business, medicine, and other areas of life, which come down to individuals’ sins.

            People may feel guilty about their immoral behavior, but still not confess it or even acknowledge or recognize their sins. Even the language of sin is avoided. Sin is given psychological names like emotional disturbance or neurosis. Conscience and moral guilt are not used. Knowledge of what is sinful, and the pain of guilt, are major helps in avoiding and overcoming sin. It’s hard to fool human nature. Sin denied keeps showing up until it is dealt with as sin. It only goes away when it is acknowledged and confessed as sin. “I killed, I committed adultery, I stole, I lied.”

            The wisdom of God’s word and the experience of people down through the ages is that sin denied becomes worse. Sin acknowledged, confessed and dealt with through repentance, conversion, confession, and change of life, sets one free. The Scriptures speak frequently of sin because it is so much a part of human life. To leave out dealing with sin in our life, or in life in general, is to place a barrier between ourselves, others, and God.

            The Scriptures speak frequently of the Lord’s dealing with sin and sinners. God takes sin seriously, because sins are signs of lack of responses to Him. In the Book of Exodus, we see God’s reaction to the sins of idolatry. “They have soon turned aside from the way I pointed out to them, making for themselves a molten calf and worshiping it, sacrificing to it and crying out, ‘This is your God, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, I see how stiff-necked this people is,’ continued the Lord to Moses.”

            Paul was an example of someone who acknowledged his sin and the Lord’s mercy. “I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and arrogant, but I have been mercifully treated because I acted out of ignorance in my unbelief.” Ignorance saves people from moral guilt, but also produces much evil. Sin produces a certain blindness. If there wasn’t a certain amount of blindness in sin, there would be less sin committed. It would appear as an evil rather than as a good. Many overlook the evil or even deny or justify the evil when committing sin.

            People often look back on a sinful period as a time of blindness, and a time of not realizing the full dimension of a sinful state. The awareness of sin leads to a conversion and a new understanding and sense of God. Times of a lack of the sense of sin are also ages of a lack of the sense of God and God’s mercy. Paul’s awareness of sin lead to his sense of God’s mercy toward sinners. “This saying is trustworthy and deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Of these I am the foremost.” He saw himself as an example to give hope to sinners. “But for that reason, I was mercifully treated, so that in me, as the foremost, Christ Jesus might display all His patience as an example for those who would come to believe in Him for everlasting life.”

            The sense of God’s mercy encourages the acknowledgement of sin. The sense of sin and the sense of God and His mercy go together. Those of us who know the Lord, know ourselves to be sinners and our need for the Lord and His mercy. The Pharisees lacked a deeper sense of sin, and therefore of God’s mercy. To these Jesus first proclaimed His great parables of mercy about lost coins, the lost sheep, and the lost sons, all of whom were found. There is a joy when people are physically lost and then found. There is a deeper joy when people are found morally and spiritually.

            In His parables of the lost and found sheep and coins, the owners are joyful. The father of the two sons was overjoyed at finding his younger son, and in finding on a deeper level his elder son. “I tell you, there will be rejoicing among the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

Reflection from Divine Mercy #1507

“Let no one doubt concerning the goodness of God; even if a person’s sins were as dark as night, God’s mercy is stronger than our misery.”