The people of Jeremiah’s time had become so disobedient, so
rebellious, so hardhearted, that God was lamenting that “Faithfulness has disappeared; the word itself
is banished from their speech.”
So blind to the truth were some of the people who witnessed
Jesus casting out a mute demon, that they claimed the Son of God was casting
out demons through the power of Satan.
In other words, they were saying that instead of Jesus being the
incarnation of God who is love, he was an agent of evil.
Sin clouds the mind.
It darkens the intellect. It
blinds us to truth. It closes the heart
to God’s love and truth. It is possible
for us to fall into this same sort of darkness and rebelliousness.
To have a
darkened intellect means that the truths of faith I used to see so clearly,
accept so readily and experience so profoundly become diminished, obscured and
confused in my mind.
Sin is so dangerous that it can lead to the rationalization
of evil actions. It can cause Christians
to forget about their responsibilities to be faithful to their baptismal
promises and the call to holiness, to serve and promote human life and to
fulfill their religious obligations.
Someone who
attended Catholic school for 12 years might find them asking, “Does God really
exist at all? Does it really matter if I
attend Mass? Is there really such a
thing as sin?”
One might be able to measure how quickly our world is under
the sway of evil by its understanding of the words like faithfulness, holiness,
piety, virtue, reverence.
Any sin,
even venial sin, is a spiritual disease that devastates the soul and clouds the
intellect and therefore our judgments and attitudes. The longer we let these
spiritual diseases live in us, the more damage is done. The good news is that
Jesus Christ, our Divine Physician, heals us with his grace.
Our Lenten prayer, fasting, and acts of mercy enlighten our
mind and invigorate our spirits because they bring us into contact with he who
is Truth and Light and Love. The light
of His truth eradicates darkness and casts out evil. Our faithfulness to the Lenten disciplines
are instrument Jesus uses to bring deep healing and light and love into our
minds and souls and hearts, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
No comments:
Post a Comment