Material and Formal Sin

Deacon Les
Homily

WEDNESDAY OF THE 34TH WEEK OF THE YEAR
25 November 2009

Luke 21: 12 - 19

[Luke 21:12] "Before all this happens, however, they will seize and persecute you, they will hand you over to the synagogues and to prisons, and they will have you led before kings and governors because of my name.
[Luke 21:13] It will lead to your giving testimony.
[Luke 21:14] Remember, you are not to prepare your defense beforehand,
[Luke 21:15] for I myself shall give you a wisdom in speaking that all your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute.
[Luke 21:16] You will even be handed over by parents, brothers, relatives, and friends, and they will put some of you to death.
[Luke 21:17] You will be hated by all because of my name,
[Luke 21:18] but not a hair on your head will be destroyed.
[Luke 21:19] By your perseverance you will secure your lives.
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In today's Gospel, Our Lord is prophesying at two levels. First, He is speaking to His apostles and other disciples, telling them of the persecution they are to expect when proclaiming the Good News of the Kingdom of God the Father in a world ruled by the usurper Satan. Second, He is speaking to each one of us here in the 21st century, telling us of the persecution we are to expect when proclaiming the Gospel and living out the Kingdom of God the Father in the world in which we now live.

In part of that world, for which the Church is a signpost for the Kingdom, dwell people who have accepted the salvation and redemption of Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ by obeying the Father's commandments, and by living out lives of growth in faith, hope, and charity.

The remainder of mankind dwells in one of two worlds--one for which the Gospel has never been preached, and the other for which the Gospel has been preached but rejected outright. The latter is still ruled by the usurper Satan. Although a defeated enemy, he still maintains power over those who reject the Gospel; those who prefer (as did and as does Satan) to make themselves the center of their universe instead of making Jesus Christ the center.

The grouping of mankind who have one way or another submitted themselves to the sway of the usurper Satan has established itself throughout our own contemporary culture, subverting morals and justice, and following the lead of Satan and his minions in sowing confusion, doubt, and half truths (it has been said that a half truth is a whole lie). This moral malignancy has subverted the print and electronic media, our state and federal judiciaries, our state and federal legislatures, and our state and federal executive branches.

The horrors that are preached and practiced in our contemporary secular culture include the glorification and exaltation of at least two of the sins that cry out to heaven for vengeance: the shedding of innocent blood and sodomy.

Our response as baptized and confirmed Catholics must be accomplished on two levels: our response to the sinner and our response to the sin.

1. Our response to the sinner: we are to love the sinner with the love of the Holy Spirit which Jesus Christ has poured forth into our hearts through Baptism and Confirmation, and which is sustained by the sacrament of Reconciliation and most of all by the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist.

The Word of God instructs us as to who our true enemies really are in Ephesians Chapter 6:

[Eph 6:12] For our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens.

2. Our response to the sin: we follow the lead of our Divine Master in hating all sin: the sin that we ourselves commit, the sin committed by public figures with great influence on others, and the sin which characterizes the Zeitgeist of these degenerate times. We must speak out bravely against the proliferation of sin and its underpinnings, especially as such proliferation engulfs our children through a corrupt educational system.

A final note: we must not misunderstand the Holy Spirit when He forbids us to judge our neighbor, as we read in James Chapter 4:

[James 4:12] There is one lawgiver and judge who is able to save or to destroy. Who then are you to judge your neighbor?

What is being forbidden is the judgment of the conscience of anyone else. No one can impute formal sin to another person. What is not forbidden, and what is often mandatory, is to make a judgment of the gravity of a sinful act. This is the objective aspect of sin, also called the matter of the sin. We say that murder is a grave sin (that is, we say that grave matter is involved) but we do not say that someone who has killed someone else has committed a formal sin--that judgment is reserved to God.

Hence, when we say that a person in authority is a public sinner, we are speaking only of the gravity and harm of the acts which that person performs; we do not say, and are forbidden to say, that that person has committed formal sin. Our obligation toward that person is twofold: to pray for his conversion, and to pray that the harm he has done will be mitigated by ongoing Christian witness.

Many of us hesitate to give Christian witness against those who lead sinful lives for fear that we will be called Pharisaical. This happens when no distinction is made between material sin (i.e., the gravity of an act) and formal sin (i.e., the state of someone else's conscience as a result of that act).

We read of St John the Baptist's fearless witness to the truth in Matthew 14:

[Mat 14:3] Now Herod had arrested John, bound (him), and put him in prison on account of Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip,
[Mat 14:4] for John had said to him, "It is not lawful for you to have her."

St John the Baptist was ultimately beheaded for his witness to the truth. At no time, however, did St John impute formal sin to either Herod or Herodias. Let us all pray that we might display the courage of St John the Baptist as he denounced King Herod's sinful and scandalous liaison.

Despite the somberness of these considerations, we can rejoice that these are great times to be alive. Our Lord is inviting each of us, in our time, to conquer evil by the conduct of our lives. He never commands us to do that which He does not give us the grace to do--and in these times that grace which is forthcoming to the faithful Christian is to be great indeed. We heed the Holy Spirit's reassuring words which we read in Romans 12:

[Rom 12:21] Do not be conquered by evil but conquer evil with good.

We are involved in an ongoing spiritual war under the captaincy of Our Savior. Let each one of us so comport himself in this battle, cooperating with the grace of the sacrament of Confirmation, that we might look forward with confidence to those wonderful welcoming words promised to us by Jesus:

[Mat 25:21] ... 'Well done, my good and faithful servant....Come, share your master's joy.'