(Death, Heaven, Purgatory, Hell)
Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults
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Our Sense of Sin
The one who reads this pamphlet is most likely a marked man. It is not a pamphlet which he would want to be seen reading. He will read it (if he reads it at all) in the privacy of his room. The very title suggests that he is a fanatic of some sort, or that maybe he has some morbid type of mentality. It is not even a pamphlet which one could give to a friend without incurring some kind of suspicion. In fact when all things are considered, I don't think that this pamphlet will have much of a clientele. And yet it has to be written. It has to be written for the person who is honest, not for the fanatic or freak or the curious. Perhaps the only honest man is the one who admits he is a sinner.
The topic of sin is not a popular one. Even when people believed that there was such a thing as sin, it was not popular to talk about it. But today when the notion of sin has disappeared, it is not only not popular but even something of a curiosity that people should write about, and read, something on sin. We have been brainwashed through TV, radio, novels, textbooks, lectures by prominent men, into believing that what men used to call sin is really explained in other ways. The notion of sin was part of a pre-literate society before we really knew that sin is simply an indiscretion, not playing the game fair and square. Or what used to be called sin is now seen as coming from something in one's emotional life, or environment, or family background.
Perhaps the greatest sin, the capital sin, today is dishonesty. The second is like unto this. It is cowardice. Today when we talk so much about honesty and openness, and courage, there is such a fear to admit the fact that we are really responsible persons, and that we can deliberately reject God and His will for us. So much of what we read and what we hear tells us that we are really not responsible. We always have had the tendency to rationalize and cover up our deliberate failures. But perhaps we have never had so much encouragement and help in our rationalization as we have today. We do not even have the courage to use the word sin (except for a perfume).
The tragedy of sin, however, is present. Though we try to explain sin away, we see its consequences. How many of our poets and our artists (though they will not call it by its name, sin) see man's emptiness, his lack of meaning, the fact that though he appears to be alive, he is actually dead.
THE BASIC REMEDY
Many remedies are offered to cure this emptiness-more education, more recreation, more psychological counselling, better buildings, better schools. These may contribute to some extent. But the basic remedy is one which few people have the honesty or courage to suggest. That is conversion. One has to repent of his sinful life, and change his life. Then the other things such as education will be able to exercise their effect. But without repentance all of the other constructive activities cannot have their full effect. It is like trying to build a building on sand.
History shows that all peoples have had a sense of sin. For this reason they had ritual observances, purification, sacrifices, penances, to cleanse themselves, and to render the deity propitious. In many cases these peoples distorted the notion of sin and distorted the ritual expression of their sense of sin. But they had something which many people have lost today. That is a sense of their personal responsibility. What they did really counted for something. They also had the sense that their gods were personal. Their actions then were a personal offense against the god of gods.
But in recent times the sense of sin has been stifled. The notion of personal responsibility has given way to a feeling of impersonality. One is simply carried along by biological or social drives. God Himself has become impersonal. If one believes in God at all, it often is a God Who is simply a "power," but not a personal power.
And yet though man has lost his sense of sin, he is filled with a sense of loss. A loss of what? Perhaps he will call it by other names. He can call it loss of fulfillment, of meaning, of identity. But basically he has lost God. And when anything that is alive, dies, there is a kind of putrefaction which takes place. When God dies in man, he is filled with the emptiness which cannot be replaced by any created thing.
Basically he is searching for his own meaning as standing before a personal God, as a person before the One calling him, with the freedom to answer that call or to reject it. He is searching for that identity which is covered up by so much subterfuge and dishonesty that goes under the name of emancipation. He will find himself as man, when he finds himself as a sinner. His act of emancipation will be his act of contrition.
Courtesy of
Catholic Information Network (CIN)