A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. When John, that is John the Baptist or John the Baptizer, take your pick. When John caught sight of Jesus coming toward him, he exclaimed, that is John, look there, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. It is he of whom I said, after me is to come a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me. I confess, I did not recognize him, though the very reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel.
John also gave this testimony. I saw the spirit descend like a dove from the sky, and it came to rest upon him. But I did not recognize him. The one who came to me to baptize with water told me, when you see the spirit descend and rest on someone, it is he who is to baptize with the holy spirit. Now I have seen for myself and have testified, this is god's chosen one.
And this is the gospel of the lord. Praise to you, lord Jesus Christ. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Having listened to the first reading and somewhat to the second, because this second reading is very mysterious. There's one thing comes out clearly.
There always is something very clear in these readings. In spite of all the mysteriousness and the cloudiness and the ambiguities and and the and all the rest of it. There's always something very clear, and that to this morning is this matter of sin. Now it's very interesting the way you can read books or new some of our new catechisms. You can hit read sermons.
I read them I mean, contemporary sermons. I read a number of them just to see what my brethren are saying and doing. You know, is our motto. And it's amazing how little, if anything, in some instances you hear about sin. I mean, the word.
They they say we about separateness and that anti community spirit and all kinds of euphemisms. But they the the the word English word sin is carefully avoided. Now, as I said, you heard the first reading today from Saint Paul. You you can't miss the idea that he had some idea of sin. Whatever it is, he certainly talked about it a lot.
A friend of mine, one of my satellites, sent me a a sermon from the Lutheran minister Bonhoefford, that word I'm sure rings a bell with some of you. He was a very outstanding Lutheran minister who opposed Hitler and paid for it with the supreme penalty, Bonhoeffer. And they this sermon was preached in 1943. And Bonhoeffer takes the Of course, I was reading it in English. You wouldn't have guessed that, but I was.
And Bonhoeffer develops this idea of miners being trapped in a mine. And they they have the expectation. This was preached during the advent season in 1943. They have the ideas of of their fellow miners coming to save them. Then they begin to hear something.
Then they begin to hear very distinctly the machines banging and crashing against this the coal and the rock. And then finally their rescuers come. Finally, they are saved. From what? Well, the miners were saved from death.
But Bonhoeffer is talking about sin and our need for a savior. Even the concept of the savior is downplayed today. Because you see, if you talk about a savior, even even as I say a person with a half of a brain cell working, they're gonna say, save us from what? What are we being saved from? What was all this talk about a savior?
What do we need a savior for? It's a good question, isn't it? Well, Bonhoeffer had the answer, he's saving us from sin. The Catholic churches had the answer, he's saving us from sin. Now we may use all kinds of euphemisms today to escape it, but you see the idea of sin cuts you off from the world.
It's from the secular world, from your humanists, from your secular humanists, from your good people. And I'm I'm not being cynical. There are plenty of good people who don't believe in God. By good, I mean, they don't go around killing people. They're kind to animals.
They tell the truth. They're very fair and just and legal. They're very generous in helping the poor, and some of your greatest philanthropists in the world have been atheists. You see, so good works don't good works, I can say they mean almost nothing as far as belief in God. Now, belief in God puts you in a whole new ballgame, and it's not only a whole new ballgame, it's a whole new world.
That's what being a Christian is. That's why I don't like the word initiation for baptism. That may make gives you an idea of becoming a knight of Columbus, a Mason, or getting into the Rotarians, or getting into your favorite sorority, or fraternity. Baptism is a transformation. It puts you in an entirely different world, with an entirely different purpose, an entirely different way of living, and an entirely different armory.
Notice, I said armory of helps, to help you live as you're supposed to live. Live how? For Christ. Not for yourself and certainly not for your neighbor. That's this old stuff of altruism of John Stuart Mill and the rest of the utilitarians of the nineteenth century.
But some people haven't heard about that yet. You see, as soon as you bring the word sin in, you bring God into the picture. Secondly, you bring into that picture some kind of a relationship that by your will, I'm talking about actual sin, that by your will, by your freedom, by your knowledge, you have broken a relationship. You don't make God sad or angry. You don't make God.
You don't hurt God at all. God is absolutely changeless. But you change yourself. You change yourself. If you're an adopted if you're a son or an adopted son or what have you, and you're you're in the way of make of of collecting a great inheritance, and then in some way or other you violate the conditions on which you were to get the inheritance, that doesn't hurt the person who's giving it to you at all.
Doesn't hurt him or her in the least. Hurts you. Now, all this talk about antisocial conduct and unloving conduct, that's a lot of malarkey when it comes to being a Christian. The essence of evil for a Christian is sin, and that may be accomplished and damn your soul to hell without committing one physical act. Keep that in mind.
What you don't have to commit a physical act to commit a first rate mortal sin. Sin isn't in the physical act at all. Sin's an act of the will. Then you hear this talk today about the fundamental option, which almost eliminates sin because you love God. If you love God everything else just falls into place.
Of course, a little bit of adultery, a little bit of injustice, a little bit of blasphemy, God will understand how weak I am. You know, you hear this from you hear this from so called Christians today, from Catholics. Where are we going? You heard what Saint Paul said this morning about sin. Now sin isn't something that's going to give us a a pessimistic view of life.
Sin is a very realistic point of thing of life. Very realistic. And the the closer you come to some kind of an apprehension of the goodness and the holiness and the purity of God, then the greater will be your appreciation of what sin is. Then you will begin to understand like that a man of Augustine with his great genius could talk about the theft of an apple as if it was a great heinous crime. Now people make fun of Augustine on this issue, it's in his confessions.
How could a sensible man, you know, a man who wrote the confessions, who wrote the city of God, how could such a genius get all excited at the triviality of stealing an apple? It's like a little child going to confession when they used to go to confession every week. Said, I don't have any sins to tell because they looked it up in their little key to heaven, and they saw adultery, and blasphemy, and fornication, and stealing and thievery and lying, and they can't think of any big sins like that. So they say, I haven't committed any sins. And I'm not criticizing the little child.
That's perfectly alright. But you see, this is the point. When that We aren't supposed to have the minds of babies when we're adults. We're supposed to have an appreciation of reality, and a truth, and a goodness. And that isn't something that's innate, unless you're a Platonist.
And this is something that that grows. And as you grow, the more perception you have of God and his goodness, the more perception and insight you will have into the evil of stealing an apple. Because I've said many times, the the closer a mirror gets to perfection, the closer the image will get to perfection. And if you're holding up a very crummy old broken down mirror, and if that's your reflection of truth and goodness and holiness, you will see of just what you see, a very poor reflection. But as that as that glass, as that mirror gets thicker and purer, and as the silver on the back gets better and better, and as the skill of making that mirror is improved, so will that image get better and better and better.
And that this is not it's not merely negative, you see. It's not negative at all. Because it isn't a perception of sin, it's the perception of goodness, and of truth, and of holiness, and of purity that will give us some perception of what it means to violate them, to violate. See, this is not a doctrine of of the negative. This is not this is not a pre preachment against vice.
This is a sermon for the positive virtues, for an apprehension of the good, the true, the beautiful, and this is God. These are all realized in God, perfect. And so the closer you come to some perception of God, you'll never totally comprehend it, the more your perception of falling away from virtue will become. And this is sin. Whether it hurts anybody in the sense of being physically injurious is irrelevant.
So you don't see the word sin anymore because people don't like this. They'll say, what's evil? What's wrong with what you do in the privacy of your bedroom? Doesn't hurt anybody. And so, let's come back to some basics.
We are not saints. We're called to be saints. And that means a call to virtue. And what throws me off the track of following Christ to virtue is sin, and that is the evil. But notice it's a negative.
It's a frustration. It's a privation. It is a it is a nothing. Sin is a nothing like all evil. So let's not think that we are living the Christian life by avoiding sin.
We're living the Christian life by pursuing virtue. Christ said, come follow me. He didn't say, look folks, there's a devil, so spend your time keeping away from that Christ said, come follow me. And when we turn away from him, that is sin. Name of the father, the son, and holy spirit.
Amen.