Passion Sunday 9.3.08 Sin binds and blinds.
Our Lord came to save the human race, but that proved to be no easy task.
The trouble with sin is it has two effects, both bad. One is to put the soul into darkness and alienation from God.
The other is to confuse the intellect so that the sinner does not necessarily see what is wrong with his sin, and does not necessarily want to be free of it.
The sinner needs saving, but he does not want to be saved. Imagine running a rescue service and picking up stranded people, only to have those people send you away, telling you they would rather be stranded. ‘I’m quite happy sitting on my roof with the flood waters lapping at my ankles, thank you. Go away!’ Not likely? Well, it happens every day in the spiritual world. People deep in sin tell Our Lord (and His Church) to go away. They are quite happy thank you, living in darkness and slavery.
So Our Lord Himself was met with resistance. He came with the offer of eternal life and was largely rejected by the population.
Sin blinds us. The pharisees were so jealous and angry and put out at Our Lord’s spiritual power that they reached a point of not caring whether He was the true Messiah or not. He had to go. They had to kill Him, ever the remedy used by bad men to remove the good.
Our Lord knew that His words and even His miracles would not be enough to convince those who preferred darkness to light. He would have to die to prove the extent of His love.
So He willingly submitted to death, something we focus on especially in these next two weeks.
By His death He would both become the Lamb of sacrifice that would atone for the sins of the whole world;
and He would be able to show a greater degree of love than He had shown previously. (Greater love has no man...)
Ironically, those who sought to remove Him only made it worse for themselves. They provided Him with the means to do exactly what He had come for – to forgive sins; to renew the human race.
People today still reject Jesus Christ. In fact they go out of their way to hate Him. (A sign of the demonic rage. The devil was outwitted at Calvary but continues to rage against any who would seek refuge in Christ.)
Just as much as ever sin is binding and blinding. Those who are in its grip will not break free easily, and part of the problem is that sin is a kind of addiction. One does not fully want to give it up.
So into the fray we go, we the Church, the ambassadors for Christ. We can say to the world: Behold, your God. Ecce homo.
You may not love Him but He loves you. You may reject Him, but the more you hate Him the more His love will be seen in offering you forgiveness.
He will not force your consent, but He will surround you with love and break down your resistance.
The poem ‘The Hound of Heaven’ brings out this relentless quality of Our Lord’s pursuit of each individual soul. He is the Shepherd, but also a Hound.
Careful how you hate Him! You might just release a response of love that you cannot resist.
Passion Sunday. Passion originally means Suffering. It also could have the current meaning of Strong love. It was love that motivated the suffering and the suffering releases a flow of love that is hard to resist.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.
