Got Sin?

Do you know that I pray before I start writing my blogs?  I do. I know that whatever I'm writing will be read by someone else on the planet at some point in the future, so I want to make my message meaningful.  This is a challenge, so I must pray first and ask God what He wants me to write about. (Recently people from the US, Turkey, Jordan, Russia, and the Phillipines have read my blog! My blog stats don't tell me who reads the blogs, just where they are from and I find that interesting.)

Words have power and if perhaps a few of my words touch your soul or make you think, then I feel I have written a successful blog.

Tonight I feel called to talk to you about sin.  Sin is rampant and temptation is everywhere.  Sometimes we fail and we mess up. We sin. That is when we have to get ourselves to Confession. Sin is an awful thing that is part of our lives and we struggle with it every day.  If you ever find someone who says they don't sin, they are either deluding themsleves or lying to you because we all sin.  We have all fallen short of the  glory of God. All of us. Nobody is exempt.  Lay person. Priest. Religious. We are all sinners.

Jesus however,  has saved us from eternal damnation due to our sins by his death and resurrection. We have only to accept his offer - to say Yes to Him and live for Him, and live in His way. Most of us know the story of how Jesus took our sins to the cross. They were crucified with Him. As a result He has saved us and set us free. Yet .... we still sin. It isn't that we haven't learned our lessons. We know sin is wrong. It is just part of being human, thanks to Adam and Eve, and so God has entered humanity through the Person of Jesus Christ and He has saved us, and saves us daily by offering us His forgiveness.  There are some people that aren't aware of this.....even in our modern world! There are people who think it is a theory or myth, "but of course",  they say, "it isn't really real".  Boy are they wrong.

Someday,  we will each know for sure the depth of what Jesus has done for us.   But for now, we just can't wrap our minds around it. I often think that the world we live in is so clouded. It is a tiny reflection of what is to come. It is like a dusty knick knack that over time, has become unintersting and old.  It is like an old woman who was once  a soft cute little baby and is now like a wrinkled prune.  Our world is not the way it should be.  It is not the way God intended it to be.  Someday it will be.

Can you begin to imagine what it will be like someday when we are given a new Heaven and a new Earth?  Did you ever find an old mirror, covered in dust or a piece of brass that is tarnished? If you take the time to clean them you will be amazed at their beauty. I think that is how it is with earth. As beautiful as it is now - parts of it anyway - it wil lbe a milion times moreso in the future.  This is not only our hope, it is our promise from God.

So, we are sinners and our souls are like the dusty mirror or the tarnished brass.  We have to keep taking them to Jesus for cleaning and polishing.   Someday, when all is new, we will be eternally sparkling and clean. We will have no more sin. We will be truly free and sin and temptation will no longer hound us. We have to cling to this hope.

For now, we wander in the mire of our current age. We are like ships passing one another in the night. We are all off . This is our world now. But although we must be in the world we are called not to be of it. Jesus can help us do that.  We have to strive to be holy and to be saintly. This is so hard. I for one, know what a horrid sinner I am. Every day I pray to be made holy and to be who I'm called to be, and every day I go to bed with a heavy heart because I know somewhere along the line, I messed up.  Despite our messiness, we are loved by God.  The challenge is to believe it and live it. Otherwise we will remain a dusty mirror or tarnished brass.

Dear Jesus, make us new. Help us to see who we really are called to be in you. Mother Mary, pray for us.  Amen.