Friday of the 5th Week of Lent
March 27, 2015 8:30am
One of our Catholic authors says
that often sin is 1) not doing what we really want to do, or 2) doing what we
don’t want to do.
We see this in today’s readings.
The prophet Jeremiah is being resisted
and persecuted.
And then, sadly, Jeremiah becomes
like his persecutors.
He wants God to take vengeance on
them and he even wants to see the vengeance, to see them suffer.
We have to imagine that Jeremiah ends
up doing what he doesn’t really want to do.
In today’s gospel, some religious
people accuse Jesus of blasphemy – of claiming that he is God.
They are religious people,
presumably persons of sincere and good intention.
They must be aware that they are
human and imperfect and in need of growing.
All along Jesus has been calling everyone
to grow in their relationship with the Father.
But these religious leaders allow
self-interest and maybe fear to get in the way, and the result is that they
don’t do what they really want to do.
They don’t take any steps in
spiritual growth because they won’t admit that Jesus has anything to offer
them.
Now, I won’t say that this is the
way to understand every possible sin, but it is a good insight into what a lot
of sin is about.
Sometimes we do what we really
don’t want to do, like Jeremiah in the first reading, and sometimes we don’t do
what we realty want to do, like the religious leaders in the second reading.
This might be a good framework
for examining our conscience here in these later days of Lent.
