7th Sunday after Pentecost 19 July 2009 Sermon

7th Sunday after Pentecost 19.7.09 Detesting sin

If we went for a walk one day and fell down a ditch at a certain point of the path, then managed to scramble out - would we learn anything from that? Would we be likely to fall down the same ditch again the next day, or indeed every day? No? Well, how come we commit the same sin each day?

We are not sufficiently mortified by sin. We brush it off; we accept it; we factor it in; we presume on God’s mercy. But when it comes to physical injury we take great care not to fall, not to be electrocuted etc.

We need to have a greater horror of injuring the soul than the body.
The wages of sin are death. Sin brings death. Every time we sin we die (at least a little bit). Even minor pain we avoid, but not minor sin. We think the little ones don’t matter.

So we need first of all a detestation of sin. Just as much as we detest pain we should detest sin.

In fact we enjoy it. This is another problem. Falling down a ditch hurts; but committing a sin usually brings some kind of pleasure. The pleasure is the incentive. OK, I might suffer later but now this seems a good idea.

So we have to rearrange our system of ‘pleasures’ so that the things that actually give the greatest happiness will be the most attractive to us, even if the happiness is deferred.

‘If you have it now you won’t have it later’ was a warning I often heard in my youth.
Before wolfing into a slice of cake, this would check me in my tracks and make me think of deferred pleasure.

On the same lines, if you indulge in some forbidden pleasure now you won’t be happy in a hundred years. We have to practise projecting forward to the heavenly banquet and realizing that every self-denial we practise now will be rewarded a thousand times over then.

We can also rearrange our ‘pleasures’ in the present by looking for other values.

If I steal and pillage and exploit others, then I have instant pleasure, but I am destroying the very society I need to live in.

If I do things God’s way then I am helping to build up a society where other and many more good things can flourish. So I am happier if I take the longer way round.

Penance is another example. Why fast during Lent or on Fridays? Why deny ourselves anything ever? Because we are happier if we do.

If everyone knew this, penance would take off! What are you doing tonight? Oh, more penance probably…

So the Gospel message that we should turn away from sin and live righteously, which would be received by many with great reluctance or derision, is in fact the quickest way to happiness, both in this life and the next.

Our own happiness is one motivation but there is one greater still: we should detest sin (as we say in the Act of Contrition) most of all because it offends God.
Sin doesn’t just kill us, it offends God.

It is a distortion, a defacing of His work of art, Creation. We would not throw mud on the Mona Lisa; we should not throw mud on God’s work of art, which we do in any act of disobedience to Him.

We don’t understand the full consequences of sin. People talk of a sin which ‘doesn’t hurt anyone’. In fact all sin hurts all of us, because it puts a cloud over the divine light, weakens the whole Church and thus the human race.

Sin is, from every angle, a bad investment. Especially if we are all sinning every day. So we don’t keep falling into that ditch. We walk around it, take the longer way, to a very long reward, eternal life.