Saturday, 7 January 2017

FIGHTING THE BATTLE AGAINST SIN THROUGH INTIMACY WITH THE LORD

20170107 FIGHTING THE BATTLE AGAINST SIN THROUGH INTIMACY WITH THE LORD

1John 5:14-21
14 Our fearlessness towards him consists in this, that if we ask anything in accordance with his will he hears us.
15 And if we know that he listens to whatever we ask him, we know that we already possess whatever we have asked of him.
16 If anyone sees his brother commit a sin that is not a deadly sin, he has only to pray, and God will give life to this brother -- provided that it is not a deadly sin. There is sin that leads to death and I am not saying you must pray about that.
17 Every kind of wickedness is sin, but not all sin leads to death.
18 We are well aware that no one who is a child of God sins, because he who was born from God protects him, and the Evil One has no hold over him.
19 We are well aware that we are from God, and the whole world is in the power of the Evil One.
20 We are well aware also that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding so that we may know the One who is true. We are in the One who is true as we are in his Son, Jesus Christ. He is the true God and this is eternal life. Children, be on your guard against false gods.

John 2:1-11
1 On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee. The mother of Jesus was there,
2 and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited.
3 And they ran out of wine, since the wine provided for the feast had all been used, and the mother of Jesus said to him, 'They have no wine.'
4 Jesus said, 'Woman, what do you want from me? My hour has not come yet.'
5 His mother said to the servants, 'Do whatever he tells you.'
6 There were six stone water jars standing there, meant for the ablutions that are customary among the Jews: each could hold twenty or thirty gallons.
7 Jesus said to the servants, 'Fill the jars with water,' and they filled them to the brim.
8 Then he said to them, 'Draw some out now and take it to the president of the feast.'
9 They did this; the president tasted the water, and it had turned into wine. Having no idea where it came from -- though the servants who had drawn the water knew -- the president of the feast called the bridegroom
10 and said, 'Everyone serves good wine first and the worse wine when the guests are well wined; but you have kept the best wine till now.'
11 This was the first of Jesus' signs: it was at Cana in Galilee. He revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him.


FIGHTING THE BATTLE AGAINST SIN THROUGH INTIMACY WITH THE LORD

SCRIPTURE READINGS: [1 JOHN 5:14-21; JOHN 2:1-11 ]
How can we fight against sin?  This seems an uphill task.  We all want to be good and to do the right thing.  We want to worship God and make Him the center of our lives.  Yet, as St John says, “The whole world lies in the power of the Evil One.”  We keep falling into sin no matter how much we try.  Indeed, it is so frustrating, especially with the sins of pride, anger, envy, sloth, lust, gluttony and greed.  Now and again, we fall into one of these sins.  So much so, some of us give up struggling against sin for our ego gets bruised just when we think after a good confession, we can now live a holy life.  Before we know it, there, we fall into sin again!  The tendency for us is to admit defeat and surrender to the temptations of the Evil One.  As it is often said, “if you cannot beat them, join them!” If we are having a defeatist attitude, then think twice again, as we read today’s first reading.
Firstly, St John tells us that “every kind of wrong-doing is sin, but not all sin is deadly.”  We must make a distinction between the sin that rejects God fundamentally in our lives and those venial sins that offend God out of human weakness because of human passion.   Among the mortal sins, the most deadly of all is the sin that rejects God wholly in our lives.  It is the refusal to acknowledge God and the truth.  It is the sin of impiety or practical atheism, that is, living in evil and shutting God completely out from our lives.  This deadly sin cannot be forgiven because the person is deliberately and freely choosing evil instead of goodness; Satan and His works instead of Christ and the gospel.  This sin “is a sin that is death, and I will not say that you must pray about that.”
Hence, St John urges us, “Children, be on your guard against false gods.”  We need to be on guard all the time.  The seven capital sins are the false gods in our lives where we worship ourselves primarily, and the world, which includes people and things.  By addressing us as “children” St John is reminding us that we are not the offspring of Satan but of God.  We are the children of God.  This is our true identity.  St John reiterates that ”anyone who has been begotten by God does not sin, because the begotten Son of God protects him, and the Evil One does not touch him. We know that we belong to God, but the whole world lies in the power of the Evil One.”  If we are truly children of God, and God is in us, in principle, we should not give ourselves to the Evil One as it contradicts our identity as sons and daughters of God in Christ.
But the existential fact is that we do sin.  This is our real frustration.  Not only do we sin, but we sin again and again.  So much so, we give up going for the sacrament of reconciliation because it seems we are repeating the same old sins and even adding new ones.  It appears that we are not getting any better.  This is precisely what the Devil wants.  He wants us to be discouraged and give up hope that we can ever live the life of God.  Even Jesus was tempted after His baptism in the desert when the Devil challenged His divine sonship by tempting Him to prove Himself by changing stone into bread or even jumping from the pinnacle of the Temple.  (Cf Lk 4:1-13)  So should we be surprised that after our baptism or after a good sacrament of reconciliation, the Devil would tempt us even more?
This is where St John, realizing that we are still children in faith, urges us, “If anyone sees his brother commit a sin that is not a deadly sin, he has only to pray, and God will give life to the sinner.” Yes, we must pray all the more for forgiveness and for the strength to resist the relentless attempts of the devil to derail our path to holiness.  And this is the assurance that St John gives us, “We are quite confident that if we ask the Son of God for anything and it is in accordance with his will, he will hear us; and, knowing that whatever we may ask, he hears us, we know that we have been granted what we asked of him.” God will give us the grace to overcome sin, and greater grace still, when we sin, since St Paul says “where sin increases grace abounds all the more.” (Rom 5:20)
What does prayer entail?  It means coming into intimacy with the Lord.  As we grow in intimacy with the Lord, we will find ourselves more and more drawn towards Him than to the world.  Fighting against sin requires more than a passive resistance against temptation but an active offensive against sin by intensifying our relationship with the Lord.  If we focus too much on our sins and weaknesses, we become weak and discouraged.  Worse still, we become even more obsessed with the very thing that we want to give up. This is true particularly when it comes to the sin of lust and gluttony.  The more we want to give up, the more we are compelled and tempted, as it fills our minds and our hearts all day and night, thinking about sex and food.  So instead of giving in to further fantasies, we should be proactive by growing in love and in intimacy with our Lord.  The more we come to share in His love, the more we feel that we are loved by Him, the more secure we become and the less desire we have for the world and its goods.  When we are loved, we have everything.  The rest is secondary.  Why are we so lustful, greedy, envious and angry if not because we feel empty within, especially the vacuum of love in our lives?  But if God fills us with His love, then we will find ourselves complete and fulfilled.
Isn’t this what the gospel is inviting us through Mary and the miracle at Cana?  Mary was a great woman of prayer and hence also sensitive to the needs of others.  She knew Jesus so intimately that she also knew the needs of her fellowmen as well.  She is not only sensitive to God but also to those around her.  So when the wedding couple ran out of wine and it would have been so embarrassing for them, she told Jesus, “They have no wine.”  When Jesus replied to her, “Woman, why turn to me? My hour has not come yet”, Mary simply instructed the servants saying, “Do whatever he tells you.”  Such was the utter confidence in her Son.  Without pressurizing Him, she just entrusted the whole quandary to Jesus.  If Mary was so great an intercessor, it was because not only did she unite herself with the needs and sufferings of her brothers and sisters but she was also in union with God and knows the mind and heart of God.  If she could pray so confidently as St John asked of us, it was because she knew that her Son is full of compassion and would somehow answer her request for the wedding couple even though it was not yet His Hour of glorification, which would only take place at His passion, death and resurrection. (Cf Jn 12:23-36)  The key to Mary’s powerful intercession is intimacy leading to obedience in doing His will.  So if we want to overcome sin, we need to know the Lord so that we can surrender our lives to Him since we would then have heard Him so clearly in our minds and feel His love so tenderly in our hearts.  We can be certain that Mary’s love for God and for her fellowmen had a part to play in moving the heart of Jesus to respond the same way to the couple’s predicament, notwithstanding His plan.
But something even more significant about today’s gospel is that the marriage feast at Cana is an anticipation of the sacrament of the Eucharist.  By associating this miracle with His Hour, that is, His death and resurrection, St John posits that by changing water into wine in Cana, Jesus was anticipating the cross where blood and water flowed from His side.  (cf Jn 19:34)  In other words, it prepares us for the sacrament of Baptism and the Eucharist.  In the Eucharist, we drink the new wine of the blood of Christ which gives us the Holy Spirit and we become one with Christ in Holy Communion. In uniting ourselves with the Lord, beginning with Baptism and reinforced by the reception of His body and blood, our intimacy with the Lord is intensified.  With Christ as our bridegroom and we His bride, we can then be confident that united in heart and mind with Him, we will find greater strength to resist sin and even if we fail, we know that He is there waiting to console us and encourage us to persevere.  Repeatedly, St John wrote in his letter, “we know” the heart of God that has been revealed to us by Jesus and so we need not be afraid.
Indeed, we must be patient because God does not force us to grow in love against our human nature.  He knows that because we are fallen creatures, we need time to learn, to grow in grace and wisdom.  That is why we must pick ourselves up again every time we fall, never thinking that we are without hope. And our hope is certain because it is founded in our Lord.

Written by The Most Rev William Goh Roman Catholic Archbishop of Singapore © All Rights Reserved


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