HOMILY WEEK 05 03<\/p>\n
The Reality of Sin<\/em><\/p>\n (Gen 2:4-17; Ps 104; Mk 7:14-23)<\/p>\n **************************************<\/p>\n A French preacher told his congregation that he was going to preach about hell \u2013 what the hell it is, where the hell it is, and how the hell to get there!<\/p>\n Understanding sin helps us avoid sin.<\/p>\n The first reading speaks about original sin as the decision to decide for our selves what is right and wrong. It is described biblically as \u201ceating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.\u201d That was the sin of our first parents in the Garden of Eden, a sin that has affected the whole universe since then. In fact, perhaps more blatantly than ever, the secular world today is sinking precisely into practicing that sin \u2013 deciding for itself what is right or wrong, what is politically correct or not \u2013 legalizing euthanasia, terminating pregnancies, deciding one\u2019s gender, what is true or not, etc.<\/p>\n In the gospel, Jesus speaks both of sin and sinfulness. Real sin is the things that come from out of our hearts and make us unclean, not what is outside of us like food. The religious leaders thought that eating pork was a sin, yet thought nothing of cheating their parents out of care by declaring funds as dedicated to God, as in yesterday\u2019s gospel. What is more sinful after all? Jesus mentions both sinful actions, or sins, and painful emotions and negative attitudes that make us sin, or sinfulness.<\/p>\n Ray Dlugos, former director of Southdown, spoke at a conference for bishops and major religious superiors, of two kinds of sin only – to try to be more than human or to be less than human. To try to avoid all pain, fear our emotions and to think ourselves better than others, to live in fear and filled with false pride, is the sin of trying to be more than human.<\/p>\n To let our selves go into dissolute living, to not care, to sink into lives of sloth and drunkenness, is the sin of trying to be less than human. These are the temptations that Jesus faced in the desert \u2013 to turn rocks into bread is to be greedy for possessions and to let our selves go into all sorts of sinful pleasure, to be less than human, while the other temptations, to jump off the temple and to have all the power in the world, is the sin of trying to be more than human. Jesus chose not to use his divine power in a selfish way, by choosing to simply be fully human, a model for us.<\/p>\n The Eucharist is our best assurance against any kind of sin. So let us avoid both sin and sinfulness, as we respond to original sin by faith in Jesus, receiving his forgiveness for sin, and healing for our sinfulness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" HOMILY WEEK 05 03 The Reality of Sin (Gen 2:4-17; Ps 104; Mk 7:14-23) ************************************** A French preacher told his congregation that he was going to preach about hell \u2013 what the hell it is, where the hell it is, and how the hell to get there! Understanding sin helps us avoid sin. The first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-homilies","category-ordinary-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2030"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2031,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2030\/revisions\/2031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}