theROCK

Rationalizing Sin

About a year ago I was hanging out with some friends I had a not seen in a while. During our conversation one of my friends said something along the lines of, “that’s wicked,” to which another friend said, “do you mean good wicked or bad wicked?”

While in the context I knew why my friend asked that question, it was tough to know if wicked was being used in its proper form or as a slang way of saying “that’s cool.” I could not help but think how that question reflected all of us. The word wicked properly means morally wrong or evil, in slang it means awesome or excellent. How a word can have very different, even opposite meanings, may seem strange, but I do not think so if we take a minute to realize how often we do this in our own life.

We love to rationalize and put a positive spin on things, especially when it comes to things which are by definition evil or morally bad. This is becoming more and more prevalent in our larger culture, but we do this with ourselves as well. We try to make the sin or bad habit in our life “good” by changing what it is, think of a “white lie.” We rationalize the bad that we do and say, “well it isn’t that bad” or we justify the sin of others saying, “he’s a good person, he doesn’t mean to hurt anyone.” Now both of those can be true, but it is also true that wicked is wicked, evil is evil, sin is sin, and no amount of slang can change that.

This simple exchange between my friends clearly stuck with me and has become a point of reflection that I go back to every so often, which I would like to invite you into as well. What is the sin or bad habit in my life I am trying to redefine and make good? What am I trying to place “good” in front of so I can keep doing it?

This is the opposite of what Christ does and what he invites us to. He does not redefine things to make it easier, he changes and invites us to conversion. He does not want us to be “good” sinners, he wants us to be saints. This is far more challenging than a redefinition, but it is also far less confusing. For with Christ we never have to ask, “do you mean good holiness or bad holiness?”

Live Loved

Have you ever experienced an epiphany? That moment when everything you thought or ever believed was forever changed, but for the better. I sure did. My epiphany came when I was sixteen years old. This is the moment when I realized that the only love I ever needed, or shall I say needed to accept, was that of Jesus. For you see, when I was sixteen, I attempted to take my life because I just didn’t feel loved. I felt alone. I felt unwanted. This was all despite the tremendous love I knew I had from my family and friends. I was craving something more and just wasn’t getting it. I knew that love existed in Heaven. As it dawned on me what I was doing and what that meant for my soul, I prayed to Jesus that, should He get me out of this situation, I would surrender my life to Him. In trying to end my life, I saved it by placing it squarely in His hands. That epiphany carries me through life: Lord, my life is in your hands. The love I knew, but hadn’t accepted, was the love of Jesus, even though I had known Him my whole life.

While I have lots of words to express my love for Jesus and my undying appreciation for Him and His Blessed Mother, I wish to share with you the words of author Max Lucado from a small little booklet entitled A Love Worth Giving To You at Christmas (2002).

Accept the love that came in the form of a newborn babe. Accept the forgiveness and grace bought for you through the cruel, nail-piercing reality of the Cross. Accept his love won for you through the victory of his resurrection. Let this love worth giving fill you, flood you, and change you forever. Live in the knowledge and acceptance of this love. Live loved.

Remember, God loves you simply because he has chosen to do so. He loves you when you don’t feel lovely. He loves you when no one else loves you. Others may abandon you, divorce you, and ignore you, but God will love you. Always. No matter what.

It is love worth giving. To you.

Bread & Wine

Why do we use bread and wine for Mass? The easy answer to give would be to just say, well we use bread and wine because Jesus used bread and wine. We need no other explanation.

A professor at seminary would jokingly tell us that sometimes the answer is Jesus. And that would be reason enough, we do plenty of things simply because Jesus did, so the better question may not be why do we use bread and wine, but why is it fitting to use bread and wine at Mass and why perhaps did Jesus pick these elements.

St. Augustine gives us a good answer in a sermon he wrote and it is this sermon I will be drawing from. He says ad I paraphrase, Bread and wine is fitting to use at Mass if we consider how it is made. For bread to be made, many grains of wheat must be gathered, these grains are then ground up and formed into one loaf of bread. A single grain of wheat cannot be used to make bread, it needs hundreds of grains. This is the same for wine, wine cannot be made from one single grape, you need many.

And for this reason bread and wine are perfect for Jesus to use and give to us. For we as the Body of Christ are not made of one person, but many. We all gather here at Mass to form the one body. Like the wheat and grape we lose our individualness to make the one body. That is why we all say the same responses at Mass, we are no longer many, but one. We become inseparable.

That is not all, it reminds us we do not live as silos, and we do not think as silos. We should be just as concerned for the person next to us as we are ourselves. When one of us suffers we all suffer, it is why we announce funerals at Mass, when one of us is joyful we all share that joy, it is why we announce baptisms/weddings at Mass. Jesus uses the accidents of bread and wine to remind us how he wants us to live.

There is more though. Bread is the universal sign for sustenance. Throughout the world bread is used by everyone, rich and poor to feed and sustains us. This makes it fitting for Jesus to use bread because he also sustains us. He sustains us both physically and spiritually. He does not change what bread does, he elevates it. He becomes bread so that he can sustain us both physically and spiritually.

Wine also carries an important attribute, joy. When we drink wine we feel more joyful. Jesus also brings us joy, spiritual joy. Again Jesus does not change wine, he elevates what it can do. He becomes wine so that we may have both physical and spiritual joy brings joy.