Bible Study, Prayer, and Homily Resources
by Fr. Tommy Lane
Every time I fly to Ireland to visit family, the flight is about one hour shorter than the return flight from Ireland to the US. Why? When flying to Ireland, the plane is flying with the jet stream but when traveling from Ireland the plane must fly against the wind and all that extra drag adds about one hour onto the flight. A documentary showed that an airline discovered it would save huge sums of money by washing the outside of its planes more regularly to reduce the wind resistance.
Planes being slowed down because of extra drag is a way of seeing what happens to us because of sin—we are slowed down from living the fullness of the Christian life. Another way to describe this is that sin is putting weight on us; guilt is a weight on us. If you had to carry an extra 50 pounds every day, you would certainly notice it. When we sin, we carry weight which hinders us. In our three readings today, we see people who were held back for a time by the drag or weight of sin. In the first reading (Isa 6:1-8), the prophet Isaiah received a vision of God in heaven but instead of Isaiah being overjoyed, as we would expect, he was filled with fear because his conscience was aware of sin:
Woe is me, I am doomed!
For I am a man of unclean lips,
living among a people of unclean lips;
yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts! (Isa 6:5)
In the second reading, Paul remembers all the trouble he caused the Church in the past:
I am the least of the apostles, not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. (1 Cor 15:9)
In the Gospel, when Peter saw the catch of fish, what came to his mind was his sinfulness:
he fell at the knees of Jesus and said, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” (Luke 5:8)
Clearly Isaiah, Paul, and Peter were held back by the drag and weight of sin before they were forgiven. We also cannot really be happy if we are in sin. But once we turn from sin and our sin is forgiven in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, we are new people. After the angel in Isaiah’s vision touched Isaiah’s lips with the coal and his sins were cleansed, God asked,
Whom shall I send? Who will go for us? (Isa 6:8)
Isaiah then had the freedom to respond, “Here I am. Send me.” (Isa 6:8) In the second reading (1 Cor 15:1-11), Paul tells us God’s grace overcame his past:
But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me has not been ineffective. Indeed, I have toiled harder than all of them; not I, however, but the grace of God (that is) with me. (1 Cor 15:10)
Peter’s sin also was overcome by Jesus who called him,
“Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.” When they brought their boats to the shore, they left everything and followed him. (Luke 5:10-11)
Isaiah, Paul, and Peter acknowledged their sin. That was good because the first stage in overcoming any problem is admitting the problem. Then they were cleansed of their sin and forgiven. If we do not know we are in sin, we do not know we need to be cleansed and we continue to carry the weight of sin around with us. Unfortunately now many people don’t realize that sin is causing the problems in their lives. I once heard a priest in Ireland relate that his niece who is a psychiatrist said to him that in the past when people were in sin they went to their priest to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation but now they go to psychiatrists like her and the psychiatrists make lots of money. Don’t get me wrong—I have the greatest respect for psychologists and psychiatrists and the great work they do to help people. But it is Jesus who forgives sin in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
If people do not know they are in sin, why not? One reason is that the world has convinced them that the teaching of the Church is wrong. They get their information from all kinds of media instead of from the teaching of God. If people do not get their teaching from God, how can they know about the things of God and the healing that comes from God when sin is forgiven? If people do not realize that sin is causing their problems, then they will not seek the solution for that sin in the correct place, forgiveness from Jesus. People have been deceived by all kinds of media and the secular teaching of the world just as Eve was deceived by the serpent in garden:
The serpent asked the woman, “Did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?” The woman answered the serpent: “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; it is only about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, ‘You shall not eat it or even touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman: “You certainly will not die! No, God knows well that the moment you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods who know what is good and what is bad.” (Gen 3:1-5)
Yes, people have been deceived by the world and the teaching of all kinds of media to believe that the teaching of the Church and of God is wrong so now people do not even know that sin is sin and they carry the weight of sin just as a plane is slowed by drag.
But we want to learn from God and God’s teaching through the Church. We cannot rationalize our sin by saying, “but we love each other,” or “everybody is doing it,” or “God will understand.” At the end of time, we will not be judged by the media and world; we will be judged by God. We take our teaching from God and from the Church so that we may not be blind to sin but acknowledge it and be forgiven. Sin is like the extra drag on the plane slowing it down and using up extra fuel. We want to rid ourselves of sin that we may be truly happy and follow the Lord in peace. Then like Isaiah, Paul, and Peter, we will be free, free to live happy lives without the weight of sin, full of God’s life, a life the world or the media cannot give us.
Copyright © Fr. Tommy Lane 2007
This homily was delivered in a parish in Maryland.
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