Sin
Fault
Sin therefore interrupts communion with God. And if God is the God of life, sin brings death into the world. But the contemporary world hardly recognizes the gravity of sin.
Sin marks the radical failure of man, the rebellion against God who is Life, a "extinguish the Spirit" and therefore death is nothing but the external, more showy manifestation".
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The sink
Sin is the greatest, the only real evil! And men seem not to notice it; they sin and silently repeat with the wicked: I have sinned, yes, and that evil came to me forever; the death of the body and that of the soul.
Sin is the abandonment of God. To properly understand the malice of sin, one should know the Lord well. But even without pretending to explain the divine secrets, there should be a sufficient vision through what we have inherited from the Heart of Jesus: "Our Father who are in Heaven" Father! So the one from whom life comes and with life the light of intelligence and the warmth of the heart, the sun and the stars, the mountains and the sea, everything. And we, his children, do not remember anything and we become rebels, in the likeness of the angel of light who became a demon. For centuries and centuries, creation has responded meekly and happily to the voice of the Creator. But already the first page of human history is marked by revolt, by the challenge to the Supreme Good!
Sin is the executioner of Jesus. If man had not sinned, Jesus would not have died! We count the torments of which the life of Jesus was woven, in his very sweet soul, in his most holy body, and we will know all the ferocity of this executioner. And we will know what we are, and we will soon recognize on our hands the traces of the blood of Christ. There is no water that can wash them. Pilate tried to erase them on the day of the infamous condemnation: but the stains remained. There is but the blood of Christ to cleanse us of all sin: the blood of our obstinate selfishness and blind pride can only be cleansed by recognizing and accepting the blood of the loving Heart of Who came to redeem the sins of the world: "The Father sent his Son as Saviour of the world" (1 Gv Jn 4,14); "He appeared to take away sins. Whoever remains in Him does not sin".
(1 Jn 3,5).
Venial sin
The Lord died because of sin. And every sin, small or great, venial or mortal, made his cross heavier. Now, to consider the lightness with which some Christians let themselves go to the faults, slight as they are, it would seem that they think that Jesus was a victim only for mortal sins. Is not the venial sin offended by God? Is it not the greatest evil after grave sin?
Oh, if we were accustomed to making the meditation of the pains of Christ our daily bread, we would certainly find in the unlimited refinement of the sufferings of the Lord also to our so-called sins read. We would find, among longer, harder, bloodier thorns, other small ones that also penetrate the royal forehead of the Son of God and ooze blood without solution.
Venial sin is foolishness and cruelty. It is foolish to disgust those who love us, who are for us the source of all true joy; it is foolish to convince us that the Lord should not take into account our voluntary weaknesses, and that He cannot punish us for certain small satisfactions, so natural; it is foolish to think that Jesus can treat with the same attention who makes himself a law for every minimum of his desire and who neglects the delicacies of his law. But all this is also cruel! It is as if we say, "God is good and I cannot believe that He wants to look after these little things. No, I will not take the lance of Longinus, to pierce the Heart but I will only add some thorns to his crown".
The soul risks its salvation. Reasoning like this, it is inevitable that God, in the end, leaves the soul a little to itself. And how is one saved from us? By running to the edge of the abyss, we will end up falling into it. And to whom shall we cry then? How can he listen to us He whom we disgusted so as not to mortify in all our passions, our whims, our vanities? Salvation is the result of a resolute battle against temptations, small and great, against all that can still be offended by God. This is the thought of Christian piety..
Punishment
God knows sin. His spirit hovers over the world of souls and matter, and nothing escapes his immense eye. Man sees the surface of things, God penetrates minds and hearts.
The psalmist meditated: «Where will I flee, O Lord, far from you? In heaven? You are there. In the depths of the earth? In the deepest I will reach again your condemnation. Far where the dawn rises? also I will be in your hands".
(Psal 138,7-9).
One does not escape God. He who has a shred of faith knows that God exists, that God sees, that God cannot be deceived. God punishes sin. He is creator, and the creature rebels against him with immense ingratitude; he is father, and the son derides his authority; he is lord, and the subject wants to be foolishly independent. What will God do in his righteousness? He must restore order, he must give reparation to offense; and order flourishes with pain, and pain mends offense! Remember the perversion of mankind before the flood and the cry of God: "I will destroy the man I have created!" (Gen 6:7). Remember David’s sin: "The sword will not depart forever from your house..."
(2 Sam 12,10).
God has punished our sin in his Son. The painful life of Christ is the tragic punishment of our sins: "He took upon Himself our sins, and He took them with Him on the cross» (1pt 2:24). But woe to that man who, after redemption, closes his heart to the bleeding cross of Christ and believes he is escaping the justice of God, because God is patient, he is good, infinitely good, but he cannot forget that he is just, infinitely just!
Death
Life is a vigil. Jesus is the light of this vigil. In every vigil a small light always shines; but, in the vigil of life, Jesus shines like the sun that does not set.
Life is always short, even when it seems so long; as every vigil is short, even if midnight passes, even if the cock is heard singing... One does not stay awake if the light is not lit, if at least there is a poor distant star: how can one live if Jesus, who is the light of the world, does not illuminate life? Once we were darkness, now, for Him, we are light. Therefore, let us live in the light, let us also illumine death in Him with splendour!
Death is good. It is good after Jesus overcame it, dying. Once death was a punishment, a terrible punishment, from which no created man could escape. Through the pain and love of the Son of God, the punishment becomes redemption, purification, aspiration, salvation! And those souls will be blessed who, given to the good, will be awake waiting for Him who returns. He returns precisely by that dark and hidden way that is called death, the good "sister death" which brings souls back to the fiery center of their life, to God, eternally alive life. What is this life without death?
Death is the beginning. The Christian thus responds to a world that sees in death the end of everything and lives as if its sunset has no dawn. Not for us! Death is the principle of truth, of light, of love, of life. And therefore the Church in her martyrology calls Christmas the day of the death of the saints. The grave is the cradle of new life, but only for those who have willed God, in loving and sorrowful activity of good, and died in his grace.
