Dear Brothers and Sisters,
I have been keeping account of how many miles I drive in order to deduct business related trips on my taxes for the last two years. And this year, lo and behold, I hear it is no longer necessary since these miles are no longer deductible. I wish I knew sooner. It was freeing to throw the notebook away of all these comings and goings which became, at times, a slavery. I found myself thinking, no, I cannot go there because I already drove a hundred miles today. So the decision was based on money or comfort more than anything else.
It is strange how irrational I can become over s0mething small and stupid. There is something inside of me and you that lead us to get hung up on silly behaviors. It is similar to what St. Paul says in his letter to the Romans about not being able to do the thing I know is good, and finding myself doing the evil that I don’t want to do (Chapter 7). This is sin or the tendency to sin, and try as we may, we cannot avoid it.
I read somewhere about a Native American father who told his son that he has two wolves inside of him that are always fighting. The son asked which wolf won. The father said wisely: the one that I feed the most. It is a brilliant answer. Which wolf or lifestyle do we feed the most? It is fashion or comfort or professionalism or Christ? Something gets fed more than the other and it is good to know which one we are feeding.
I read recently that the students of Catholic University blocked pornography from entering the University, or actually they blocked access to the 200 largest websites. The initiative came from the students and hopefully other universities copy them. Watching porn is definitely feeding the wrong wolf.
The gospel this weekend about the woman caught in adultery (John 8: 1-11) can help us to reflect about my deeper instincts. The Pharisees were trying to trap Christ. They did not care too much about justice since they did not even bother to find the man, or about the woman who they used for their own purposes. Their only intention was to trap Jesus. If he let her go then he was against the Law of Moses. And if he said it was ok to stone her, where was the mercy? He came to save the sinner.
Well, it is not easy to trick Jesus Christ and what does he do? He was already sitting down and he starts to write on the ground with his finger. Some think he was writing the sins of the accusers, or maybe he was just doodling. It could be his accusers thought of a phrase from Jeremiah about God writing our sins in the dust. Who knows?
Then he said, “Let the man without sin cast the first stone.” Maybe they thought of what he said earlier in his ministry that to look at a woman with lust was to commit adultery or how can you tell your brother to remove the splinter from his eye if you have not removed the plank from yours. And then he started to write a second time and they went away starting from the eldest.
Finally, Jesus is left alone with this woman and tells her that he does not condemn her, and go and sin no more. He doesn’t just brush off the sin and minimize it. He tells her not to do this again. He does not threaten her. Imagine her fear and what was going through her mind in all of this. Stoning someone to death is not an easy death.
I think Christ is telling us that to receive forgiveness from our sins in the Sacrament of Reconciliation we need to show a sense of amendment. What does that mean? It is the true desire to never commit that sin again. That is required for the person to receive forgiveness from God. It is not that the person will never commit sin again but that he has the firm desire to avoid it, especially anything serious.
God will always help us and as it says in the first reading he gives us “a way out,” as he did to the Jews in Egypt. God always provides a way, a friend, a Word in church, to help us get out of our rut, to get out of that irrational thing we keep doing even though we know it is useless or even harmful. Ask for this “way out” during these last two weeks of Lent, and Christ will help you.