Friday of the 5th Week of Lent
April 11, 2014 8:30am
One of our Catholic authors says
that often sin is not doing what we want really want to do, or doing what we
don’t want to do.
The author is speaking about
persons of faith who at least intentionally want to follow the way of God.
And for these persons, maybe for
us, sin is often not doing what we really want to do and doing what we really
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.
Jesus reminds them of the words
of Psalm 82: “Is it not written in your
law,
‘I said, you are gods!’
And this is spoken to you to whom God’s word is addressed.
So why do you claim that I blaspheme?”
So these people believe that we
are all gods in the sense that we are all God’s children and have God’s
presence within us.
And yet they go against their
faith in accusing Jesus.
Like Jeremiah, they end up doing
what they really don’t want to do.
I won’t say that this is 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, and we don’t do what we realty want to do.
And this happens because of lesser,
more self-centered motives, as we see in these readings, like: our own security
or self-esteem needs, our need to be right and righteous and make others wrong
or not-righteous, our not managing our anger well.
A good Lenten reflection for us
this morning.
