Over the years I have come across a number of people who
state their opposition to the reality of sin. When I served as an Anglican
clergyman various parishioners said that they didn’t believe in sin. When asked
to explain this, they said that “sin” was so negative and that talking about
sin just made everyone sad. When pushed further they agreed that this meant
there was no real need for salvation, and that they believed everyone went to
heaven.*
Resigning from the Church of England and entering the full
communion of the Catholic Church was motivated not least by the lack of
consistency in doctrine in the C of E and so being received into the Catholic
Church, I accepted joyfully its Magisterium (teaching authority). Yet I have
come to discover a similar problem in the Catholic Church! Many Catholics do
not believe sin is 'as bad as all that'. Many do not really think there is mortal
sin, or sin that is unto death. One reason why almost everyone who goes to Mass
receives the Blessed Sacrament is because many don’t really believe in mortal
sin. They just think God is a nice chap and of course He wants us to receive “communion”,
no matter what state our soul is in. This diminishing of sin in people’s minds
is extremely dangerous and is of course exactly what the Enemy wants us to
think.
If we want to know how dangerous sin is we simply need to
consider the Incarnation and today’s gospel reading (Matt 1:18-24). The Angel said
to Joseph in a dream, “You shall call his name, Jesus, for he will save his
people from their sins.” The very reason for the Incarnation, the reason that
God became man, is because of sin. Out of His great merciful love, God desires
to save us from our sins, and in order to do so, condescended to become Man. In
the Blessed and Immaculate Mary the divine and human nature were united in this
child, who was to be called Joshua,
or Jesus. His name means ‘God saves’, which is not only His mission but also
His identity.
Why on earth would God become man if sin were not serious?
Why would God condescend to unite Himself with our human nature, if sin were ‘not
that bad’ or ‘did not exist’?
The truth is sin is deadly. Sin causes disintegration. Sin
causes disintegration between our relationship with God, between our
relationships with fellow human beings, between our relationship with the whole
of Creation, and even the relationship between our body and spirit. Sin
is a comprehensive disaster! There is nothing else that does such a
comprehensive and damaging job as sin!
By saying this I am not being negative! By saying this, the
Church’s magisterium is not being negative! By saying this Christ is not being
negative! The first words of Christ’s first sermon was “Repent and believe!”
This was the proclamation of Christ after His Baptism, at the beginning of His
public ministry. And Christ went all the way to Calvary to definitively and completely deal
with sin.
Sin is immensely serious and comprehensively disastrous, but
we have the Good News that Christ has completely and entirely dealt with our
sin, and so His grace is sufficient for us to deal with sin in our lives. Christ has
given His Church the authority to absolve sin, especially mortal sin. “Those
who sins you forgive, they are forgiven…”, He said to the Apostles on Easter
Day.
We need to take sin immensely seriously but taking it
seriously does not mean wallowing in it or just being miserable, it means
dealing with it. So let us all repent, get ourselves off to confession, and let
us all have our sin dealt with by the grace of Christ in the Church. Dealing
with sin through the grace of Christ is actually a great joy!
Fr Ian
*Not everyone in the C of E thinks like this, there are many
good Christians who do believe in salvation from sin, but for me there were too
many who thought that this way of thinking was entirely compatible with
membership of the Anglican church.
