Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Today in our second reading, we heard about a particular sin: that of withholding wages from laborers. St. James writes, “the wages you withheld from the workers…and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.” This is one of a list of sins that Scripture notes cry to heaven for vengeance. The full list is: the blood of Abel (homicide); the sin of the Sodomites (homosexual activity); the cry of the people oppressed in Egypt (slavery); the cry of the foreigner, the widow, and the orphan; and injustice to the wage earner, which we heard today. You can find this list in paragraph 1867 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
We probably don’t use this phrase that often, and because we don’t use it, we forget that it still holds true. Certain sins cry out to God for His divine justice. And even though one may think that he has gotten away with it because no one has noticed, God has taken notice; He has heard the cry from that sin, and will repay accordingly if there is no repentance. Some make sense, especially homicide and slavery. Others, like the sin of Sodom or maybe even the sin that St. James mentions today, may not seem serious. In fact, some would not even call them sins. But they are gravely against God’s plan for human happiness and the justice that He desires exist among all people.
In the Gospel, Jesus also reminds His disciples, which includes us, that while good deeds, even the smallest ones, can echo into eternity, so can evil deeds. Jesus advises us to take seriously the punishment for sin, because one will account for the evil done in the “unquenchable fire” of Gehenna, another name for Hell. Jesus even notes hyperbolically, that if a part of our us is causing sin, then cut it off. Of course, he’s not asking us to perform surgery and mutilate ourselves. But He is encouraging us to figuratively cut out the parts of our life that separate us from God, so that we can enter heaven.
We don’t talk about sin too much, because talking about sin makes us admit that we are wrong, and no one likes to do that. We don’t talk about the consequences of sin because we prefer to think about God as more of a grandparent who never tells us no, and who will welcome us into His home no matter what we may have done at ours. Sin has an effect on us, and draws us farther away from God. God, who is Justice Himself, cannot ignore unrepentant sin, anymore than light can allow darkness to continue in its presence. The light always destroys the darkness whenever it is present. This doesn’t take away from God’s mercy, which is also who God is, but somehow in God justice and mercy meet perfectly.
Dr. Peter Kreeft, a Catholic apologist, notes:
If you really think that you can endure and enjoy the full light and fire of God for a second after you die, being essentially the same kind of being you are now, without any kind of divine operation on your soul, then you dangerously underestimate either your sinful nature, God’s holiness, or the gap between them.
It’s not as if God can let sin go, in the sense that He can allow sin to persist in His divine presence, like it’s a permission He can grant. God, being holiness itself, burns away sin, which is why God told Moses that he couldn’t see God face to face on earth and live. Instead, God had to shield Moses in the rock, and only let Moses see God as He passed by, so that Moses would not be destroyed.
So, for us, all unrepentant sin will receive its consequence. Venial sins will not be treated harshly because they were not a strong turning away from God and His life. But God will still deal with them. And even more harshly will God deal with mortal sins and the sins that cry out to heaven for vengeance, because they signify serious, even deadly repudiation of God’s presence in our life. We can deal with those mortal sins in confession, where the Blood of Jesus washes those sins away so that they are no more, or we can deal with them at our judgement, at which point, as the Church teaches, we have no hope of salvation if we have not yet repented. Again, we don’t talk that way often, but the Church teaches, and I quote, “If [mortal sin] is not redeemed by repentance and God’s forgiveness, it causes exclusion from Christ’s kingdom and the eternal death of hell.”
So today, it’s a good thing to ask ourselves, do I have serious sin that needs to be forgiven through sacramental confession? Do I participate in or encourage any of the sins that cry to heaven for vengeance? Am I forming hatred in my heart for another that can lead to homicide? Do I encourage human trafficking through the viewing of pornography? Do I oppress those who have no one to help them, like the foreigner, the widow, or the orphan? Am I just to those who work for me? Are there other mortal sins, even simple ones like taking God’s name in vain or skipping Mass out of laziness or preference for other things that are endangering my eternal salvation? If so, today is the day for repentance. Today is the day to return to the Sacrament of Penance so that the mercy, rather than the justice, of God can wash over you and save you.
Just because we don’t talk about sin as much does not mean that it has gone away, or that it no longer matters. May we not forget just how serious sin is, but rather accept God’s grace to turn away from our sin, and turn to God to be wrapped in His divine mercy.