APRIL 08, 2014
Tuesday, 5th Week of Lent
ST. WALTER OF
PONTOISE
1st Reading: Num 21:4-9
Gospel: Jn 8:21-30
Jesus said to the Pharisees, “I am going away, and though you look for me, you will die in your sin. Where I am going you cannot come.” The Jews wondered, “Why does he say that we can’t come where he is going? Will he kill himself?”
But Jesus said, “You are from below and I am from above; you are of this world and I am not of this world. That is why I told you that you will die in your sins. And you shall die in your sins unless you believe that I am He.”
They asked him, “Who are you?”; and Jesus said, “Just what I have told you from the beginning. I have much to say about you and much to condemn; but the One who sent me is truthful and everything I learned from him, I proclaim to the world.”
They didn’t understand that Jesus was speaking to them about the Father. (…)
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
Sin kills the spirit by drawing it away from God who is the only source of life. The lethal effect of sin is exponential; the more one sins, the surer the possibility of spiritual death since it shuts down conscience completely. With conscience shut down the person lives like an airplane without a radar to rely upon for its navigation.
A story is told of a woman who had to give birth to her child after several abortion attempts failed. She went to a hospital to deliver the baby and escaped thereafter. Surprisingly, the baby boy was born normal. Birth did not give him a break from rejection since he was also considered a big burden to the hospital for his mounting bills. Meanwhile the mother went scot-free and probably played with men again. This is a shocking story but not to the mother whose conscience was dead.
Mortal sin may not kill the body but surely kills the person’s conscience when committed repeatedly. Sin takes the person to a level of spiritual destruction where there is no way of returning to the Lord. And even if one manages to come back, it can happen that God may no longer be found. This was the gist of Jesus’ message to the Pharisees when he exclaimed: “I am going away, and though you look for me, you will die in your sin.” This is most applicable to hardened sinners seeking the Lord at deathbed. Very few people find the Lord at the last minute, probably because the devil will always stand guard beside a bad person’s deathbed like a landlord demanding his share of the produce of his land.
In this season of Lent, let us hone our conscience by steering it away even from mere possibilities of sin. —Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM. Email: dan.delosangeles@gmail.com. Website: www.frdan.org.
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