I would like to put forth two ideas that I find are helping me in avoiding the near occasions of sin, and also in resisting temptations to sin. But, first a question has to be asked; Do I REALLY love God or don’t I? We believe in a personal and loving Deity, it has been revealed to us that God is our Heavenly Father(give that notion some time in prayer if you really want to have your mind blown!). Jesus taught us that we should love God with all our heart, with all our mind, with all our spirit, and with all of our strength. It should matter to me wether or not my actions and behavior is pleasing or offensive to my Lord and my God. So, ask yourself - Do I really love God?
Now, to the two ideas I mentioned above. The first came to me when I was studying the Church’s teaching that there are two levels of sin, namely mortal sin, in which our free will choice of action or behavior has the result of completely rejecting God’s grace in out life, and venial sin, which only wounds our relationship with the Father(not that that is a small thing!)(1 John 5:16-17). I asked a priest in confession recently; knowing that we are all sinners, and always will be, is it possible for a person to live their life without commiting mortal sin? And to my delight he said yes. If we truely love God and are willing to open ourselves to His Grace, He can work wonders. Certainly, we may fall or find ourselves becoming aware of sins commited after the fact, due to selfishness or thoughtlessness, or poor habits, and you may also come to recognize a whole new catagory of sins, the sins of omission. In other words, not what you did, but what you should have done, but didn’t. However, just the realization that it is possible for me, with God’s Grace of course, to NOT CHOOSE sin, or to CHOOSE NOT TO sin has helped me a number of times when temptation was whispering it’s poisonous musings. Anyway, I don’t know if this will help others, but it has helped me.
Number two, and I’ll be the first to say that I’m not sure if I’m being theologically correct here, but here goes. One day while meditaing on Our Lord and particularly on God’s nature, I was thinking of a statement someone had said along the lines of how God is not bound by space or time. We all know that God is omnipresent, but it had never occured to me that that included time as well. Not only is God present with me in the here and now, He is, all in the same moment, with me at the moment of my birth and He is with me at the moment of my death, and He is with me at every moment in-between those two bookends of my life, all at the same time! Coming to that understanding caused me to realize that even though God’s Mercy is boundless(and this realization helped to understand just how boundless it is!) the fact is that every time that I have commited a sin in my life, up to this point, God is there, present in that moment, and that every sin I am going to commit in the years to come, God is there as well, it is ever present to Him because He is ever present to all moments and all places always. Mortal sin is, as the Church teaches, 1)something serious, 2)you must know, full well, that it is sinful, and 3)you must make a free will decision to choose it anyway. Knowing that God, my loving Father, my Saviour, and my very life, whom I am suppose to love with all that I am is going to be experiencing that sin for all time certainly puts an added incentive to choose otherwise. Oh, and just so no one get’s totally bummed out by that thought, remember that God is ever present at all the moments when we did something good too, wether it was attending Mass, praying the Rosary, helping the poor, showing compassion to someone who was hurting, perhaps forgiving someone, or any number of other good deeds.
So, for what it’s worth, there you have it. Have I resisted all mortal sins since coming to this understanding? Sadly, no. But, the number of times has certainly been reduced, Praise God, and one thing I have noticed is that it is helping me to develop a real desire to root out the sinful behavior in my life and to replace it with virtue and holiness.
I’ll remember you in my prayers and ask that the Good Lord guide you…and your wife. God Bless.
