Do we have an awareness of how sin affects us and others? Do we even know what sin is? When we look around us at our culture and nation, sometimes it’s easy to wonder if anyone actually believes in sinful actions any more. About the only things that seem to be considered “sinful” are polluting the environment, not recycling your trash, and speaking against a politically-correct world view. Sinful actions that were considered unthinkable even 30 years ago are now considered accepted and some are even considered a normal part of life.
While our culture has developed a distorted view of sin, we as Christians are still called to a higher morality, where sin is a fact of our daily lives. During this season of Lent, we need to remind ourselves once again that we are sinful beings in need of reconciliation with God. Every sin we commit is like placing a barrier between us and God, preventing us from receiving the gift of His grace that He wishes to bestow upon us. Like a dam in a river, sin prevents those graces from flowing freely into our souls.
We can see this in the actions of the Prodigal Son in today’s Gospel. The younger son, wishing to living a life of sinful excess, cut himself off from his father, squandering his share of the father’s estate in another country. Of course, the only time we worry about someone’s estate is after their death, so requesting half of the estate is like the son telling the father, “As far as I’m concerned, you’re dead.”
While I think most parents would be offended if their children said to them, “Give me my inheritance now, because you’re dead to me,” and rightly so, we are in effect saying that God is dead to us every time we commit a sin in words or deeds. Even the smallest venial sin can restrict our openness to God’s grace, and can eventually completely block us from God. Every mortal sin we commit cuts us off from the flow of God’s grace as completely as turning off the kitchen faucet. This is not a state that we want our souls to be in when we die, as it will have eternal consequences.
We are not without hope, however, that sin will have a hold on us forever. According to St. Paul, God “has reconciled us to himself through Christ and given us the ministry of reconciliation.” Like the father in the Gospel who forgave without even allowing the younger son to finish his confession of guilt, God is ready and willing to offer His forgiveness if we but approach Him and ask for it.
Our Heavenly Father wants to reconcile us with him, removing the blocks of sin and restoring the flow of graces into our souls. God created us to spend eternity with Him in Heaven, and He wants to give us every opportunity in this life to receive the inheritance that He promised us. This is so important to God that, as St. Paul says, “For our sake He made Him to be sin who did not know sin,” that is Jesus, the Son of God, “so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” Through His Death and Resurrection, Jesus took on the punishment for our sins so that we can enter into the Kingdom of God when our lives on Earth are over.
Notice, however, that the father in the parable did not go out seeking the younger son, but waited for the son to come to him. In the same way, we need to have true sorrow for our sins, as the younger son did during his time tending the swine. The younger son then returned to the father and asked for forgiveness. We too need to turn to God in our remorse and ask forgiveness for our sins.
We need to be careful that we don’t fall into the erroneous mindset that all we have to do is be “really sorry,” ask God to forgive our sins, and we’re good to go. I’ve heard many non-Catholics and even some Catholics state this idea or something similar. Jesus established the Church to be the normal means that God uses for our salvation. For that reason, He has given us the Sacrament of Confession as the normal way by which God provides his forgiveness and reconciliation, hence “Sacrament of Reconciliation” as an alternate name for this sacrament.
I know I’ve talked about the Sacrament of Confession before, but it needs to be said again and again. Our Heavenly Father really is waiting for us to return to Him with contrite hearts, but we have to be the ones to take that first step. Through the Sacrament of Confession, we can return to God, and hear Him say, to paraphrase the father of the Prodigal Son, “You were lost, and have been found.”
