In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. It would be much easier to speak a few well chosen words on our blessed Lord's remarks this morning, which are a little puzzling, but they're not nearly as puzzling as what you have just heard read from Saint Paul's letter to the Romans. Here we have that famous statement which is just mutilated beyond recognition. The older translations were this way. It's a it's a very same thing that that we read this morning when Paul says, the good that I would, I do not, but the evil that I would not do, that I do.
Here is just one expression of this confusion that all of us have experienced in in our own self, in our own self. You can't blame this on anything outside. Not really. I mean, this psychological fact. You go for example, you have one of the ancient poets before our blessed Lord.
He said, the I see the good, I approve it, and I do the opposite. I think it was Horace or or Terrence, but it's one of the Latin poets a a good many years before our blessed lord's coming. So this fact of human experience that there is a conflict within me, that I see what I ought to do, I approve what I ought to do, I even wanna do what I ought to do. Notice that little word ought. And by golly, what do I do?
I do the opposite. Saint Paul says, the good that I would, I do not. And the evil that I would not do, that I do. And I cannot see that this translation improves on that one iota bit. How do you explain this?
Well, here's where we get into trouble. Notice that first sentence of Saint Paul. I know that no good dwells in me. That is in my flesh. Now notice, this is not Catholic doctrine.
This is Saint Paul speaking about the flesh. As if the flesh were sinful. Now that is not an uncommon view. I mean, it was not uncommon in Saint Paul's time. It goes back to the Greeks.
And it's not uncommon in the sixteenth century when Luther says we are nothing but a manure, a pile of manure, that God's grace comes like a beautiful snowfall and covers us with his grace, and now we are immaculate, but we are basically manure. And that idea is is around today. You hear people say you they do evil because they are sinful. Well, yet remember to be sinful comes after you do something. This is now, this is the kind of thing that Luther picked up.
This is the sort of thing that Calvin picked up. And if you take a sentence from Saint Paul here and a sentence from Saint Paul there and another sentence from there, you can get anything you want. But Paul wasn't a fool. He had a direct revelation from Jesus Christ. He says that.
He says, I didn't what I'm teaching you, I did not get from the apostles. I got it from Jesus Christ. It was a direct revelation that Paul had. Well and he's using language which was understandable in his day. And it's obvious that might that many of our sins come from our appetites.
Now I'm not just talking about sex. Today just think, today in many instances if you use if you say that's a virtuous man, that's a virtuous woman, all all all the people will understand is, well, they are living a good decent sex life as if there were no other virtues, as if there were no other immoralities. When as a matter of fact, as a matter of plain simple fact, there are many sins and immoralities which which are a heck of a lot more sinful than the sins of the so called passions. Blasphemy for one. That's where because, obviously, blasphemy means you're rejecting God.
And so what is Saint Paul's obviously, when you look at our lives, most of our immoralities notice that word immorality. It's a negative, if you notice. They come from our appetites. Well, who gave us those appetites? Did we give them to ourselves?
Where did they come from? They're god given. And is god given did god give me something which inevitably in itself is sin? That's ridiculous. It's absurd.
It's crazy. It's lunacy. And yet you'll hear you'll hear parents talking about their children that so and so's a you're a bad boy. I've told you this story many times, and it was told to me by the father who was a child psychiatrist. He was doing the dishes for his wife, and I that's a husbands do that all the time.
They come home after a hard day's work and they said, Darling, you sit down there, I'll do the dishes for you. It's a commonplace thing. So, this psychiatrist was out there doing the dishes, and his little son was doing the drying. Every son dries dishes at the evening meal in every home, while the mother goes and watches TV. So, the poor little kid drops a cup, one of his mother's precious China cups.
And he looks up at his dad and said, Dad, you think I'm a bad boy, don't you? And the father said, No, son. I don't think you're a bad boy, but you did a bad thing. This is the thing that see, there's good thinking. Now that father told me this himself, but that was extremely quick thinking because it was it felt so easy to say, sure you're bad, you're clumsy lout.
What if your mother gets a hold of you? She'll show you. So that we have to face up to this. There there there's a lot of this kind of thing in Saint Paul. Let's face it.
Luther didn't pull it out of thin air, neither did Calvin. His great sentence, we are saved by faith, and Luther puts in faith alone. He knew that word was not in the Greek. Of course, it's not in the Greek. But he said that the the sense requires it.
In other words, we are saved only by the faith in Jesus Christ, and therefore good works, you don't have to worry about them. Now, we have to we have to come to grips with this. How is it that I see the good, I approve the good, I even want to do the good, and I do the opposite? And I'm not talking about an alcoholic. Maybe that's something else.
I'm talking about what we all experience in normal affairs of life. You go to bed at night and you say I'm getting up at such and such a time because I know when I get up at that time everything goes smoothly. I get up and I move quietly and getting ready for the day, I don't have to rush, everything goes fine. It makes no sense to get up at the very last minute then have to start your day with a heck of a rush. This is all before you go to bed.
And what happens the next morning? You throw your pill at the alarm clock. This is the way we do it. This is the way we are. Now, how do you explain that?
Why isn't it that when I see something that I know is the right, the good, the beautiful thing, and that's what I want to choose, why don't I choose it? Why is it that that ancient poet could say, I see the good and approve the good and do the opposite? This is a fact of life. How do you explain it? Well, the Catholic explanation of this is original sin.
That's it. That there has come into human nature which came from God. God didn't make me sinful. And the fact that I have this contrariety in my very being, that doesn't make me sinful. The fact that a married man or a married woman may have a yearning for an a partner, not his wife or not her husband, that doesn't make them an adulterer.
The yearning doesn't, the wanting doesn't. And so we have to it what I'm trying to say, this concept that there that man is intrinsically evil, that original sin devastated human nature, that it made human nature a sinful thing. As Luther says, a dungheap, a pile of manure. That is has never been the Catholic view. Now there's been plenty of stuff written in in a neo platonic form which which seems to say that, but it's never been the doctrine of the Catholic church.
Never. Never. Never. And it shouldn't be our doctrine. We are not dung heaps, piles of manure.
We are not. Original sin did do something. I need God. I can only be saved by faith in God. Only his merits can do it.
I cannot save myself. I know this. And let's admit it. And I'm confused in many instances. And it's easy for me because I'm such a complex thing, that when I see the good, in many instances the good I see is an abstraction.
Whereas the good that I choose is a very concrete reality which appeals to all my senses. So which one will I normally choose? Newman had gone into this thoroughly, thoroughly in his grammar of ascent. The difference between notional and real ascent. And so let us let us not be confused.
What Paul is saying here is a description of human experience. We've experienced it in our lives, and we'll experience it again. Sin is possible. I can be a sinner, but it's not because god made me sinful. It's because I made the wrong choice.
In the name of the father, and the son, and the holy spirit. Amen.