God hates sin, but He hates it because He loves us so much.

Mark 1;40-45 Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time. February 15th, 2015

Today we hear of the healing of the man with leprosy. Leprosy was one of the most disfiguring, disgusting and debilitating diseases in the history of the world. It literally involved a rotting away of the flesh and the extremities, all as, the affected person in agony watched and smelled the rot, until death eventually came. As bad as all of this was, there was however, an even worse aspect of leprosy. Leprosy was not only a death sentence, but also a prison sentence. It literally separated the one affected, not only from the larger society, but also from his loved ones, from his families and friends. Imagine going through a debilitating and terminal disease…now imagine doing it alone.

Because of leprosy’s effect of separating its victims not only from a support system but from those they cared about the most-their family, over the last few years this Gospel has been used to point out the marginalized and outcast of our society. Many priests, speaking from a Social Gospel aspect, have pointed out that Jesus, like he did with this leper, always welcomed the outcast and dregs of society; and so in imitation of Jesus we should do so as well. There is of course nothing wrong with this understanding; it’s a message of tolerance. The Catholic Church in fact came up with the idea of tolerance; it’s expressed in the following way, “Hate the sin, love the sinner; but love him by calling him to repentance. In other words, we must always tolerate the person but at the same time, always be intolerant to sin (or to lies or errors).

Unfortunately, however, many of those who call for tolerance today have redefine tolerance; they have redefined it to mean tolerance of sin. In other words, we are supposed to by tolerant to those who say, that we must not only put up with their sinful lifestyle and look the other way, but that we must accept it and even endorse it. And if we refuse, we are called intolerant. We then become the outcast of society, the criminals of society. In own our lives we can do this as well …we can tolerate sin in our lives and even believe that what we are doing is no longer wrong, that we have no sin. And if someone points out our sin, either directly or by his or her holiness of life, we can attack him or her as being judgmental or “intolerant.

The truth is, is that God never tolerates sin and we can never tolerate sin either. God hates sin, but He hates it because He loves us so much. Our sin doesn’t hurt God it hurts us and others, this is why God hates it, and why in love we should hate it too. Sin is evil; it is devastating to the happiness of man-our happiness; it is truly the cause of all the unhappiness in the world. In fact, leprosy, that horribly disfiguring and separating disease, has been used by the Church from the very beginning to symbolize the devastating effects of sin. Sin does to the soul, what leprosy does to the body. Venial sin begins to damage the soul, making it stink in a spiritual sense; and if it isn’t checked, sin can lead even to the death of the soul, through serious sin or mortal. Serious sin--mortal sin, kills the soul and makes it putrid, spiritually speaking.

Sin kills the soul because it separates the soul from God and from His Church, which is the Sacrament of salvation. How does Sin do this, How does it separated us from God and His Church? Many would answer this question by saying that when we sin, we break the law of God and so, as a consequence, He punishes us. But this answer really isn’t satisfactory; after all God loves sinners. In reality, sin separates the soul from God and His Church by actually making the soul incapable of worshiping God properly and worthily, and so, incapable of receiving fully not only God’s grace, but God Himself and union with Him. Sin is totally against God’s nature; it is unclean, and nothing unclean can enter into union with Him. God is charity-love, and sin is the very opposite of charity. Perhaps to better understand this, we need again to look at our comparison of leprosy to sin.

Leprosy in the time of Jesus frightened people just as terrible and contagious diseases frighten us today. But even more than this, and this is the worst aspect of leprosy, leprosy rendered somebody unclean, that is ritually unclean. What does ritually unclean mean? It means they were prevented from engaging in the act of worship in the temple. By the way, it’s not coincidental that the person who examined the person for leprosy in order to determined if they were unclean was a priest. Why the priest? Well he was the one who was given the charge to monitor the worship of the people to make sure their worship corresponded to the dictates of God. In other words, the priest had to make sure that the people were worshiping God the way God by His very nature has to be worship. God is to be worshiped in spirit and in truth. And so, it was the priest, according to the law given by God in the book of Leviticus, who was to determine who could and couldn’t participate in temple worship. The priest was also the one who offered up sacrifices in order to ask God to take away the sins of the people and sins devastating effects; especially the effect of separation.

And so, I hope you see the connection. Sin, like leprosy in the Old Testament times and the time of Jesus not only separate its victim from the community and his family, it separated him from the family of God and from that families’ worship in the temple of the true and living God. Remember, Jesus came to find those who would worship God in spirit and in truth. The point is, is that we are saved by our correct and worthy worship and adoration of God. It’s not that God needs our worship, but it is we who need to worship Him. Sin prevents us from proper and worthy worship of God. Sin either keeps us from worshiping God altogether, or even if we come into the Church, if we do so with un-repented sin on our soul, we cannot possibly enter into the type of worship that God by His very nature demands. And of course, we are to worship God not only in the temple, but after we leave, we are to worship God with the temple of our bodies through our holiness of life; that is, living His Commandments and the teachings of His Holy Church.

This Lent, let us ask the Holy Spirit to help us more deeply and truthfully examine our conscience in order to discover hidden sin in our life. Perhaps we could find good examination of conscience on the Internet at EWTN or at a Catholic bookstore. Let us then turn evermore deeply to the Father through the Son and ask for the grace of forgiveness and the grace to sin no more and live more fully the Gospel truth in our life. We do this of course sacramentally through the Sacrament of Confession.

Confession is not so much about sin as it is about returning to the Father in order to experience the embrace of His Mercy and Love. It is in Confession that we can come in contact with the Mercy of the Father, through Jesus Christ forgiving our sins in, with and through the person of the priest. This encounter, if we are properly disposed, purifies us and leads us to a more worthy worship and adoration of God and so into a more intimate union with the Father through Jesus His Son truly present in the Holy Eucharist.

With our souls purified and healed from the corruption of sin, and united with Jesus perfect sacrificial act of worship and adoration of the Father at the Holy Mass, we can then offer ourselves fully and so worship the Father in Spirit and Truth, growing in our communion with Him and with the members of His Church. Through our worthy worship and adoration of God, we will be transformed into instruments of God’s mercy and love; and through us, Jesus will reach out and touch and heal the devastating and separating effects of the contagion of sin in our families, in our communities and in our world, souls will be healed and brought back to life, brought back to the loving embrace of the Father through the Son, in the unity of the Holy Spirit. Jesus wills it…do we?