12 days ‒ Emptying oneself of the spirit of the world - Day 2

Discover the grace of learning the truth about sin

Prayer to the Holy Spirit 

O Holy Spirit, inspire me. God’s love, engulf me. Holy Mary, my Mother, guide me in the right ways, look at me, and together with Jesus, bless me. Keep me from all evil, from all delusions and all threats. Mary, The Spouse of the Holy Spirit, obtain for me the grace of learning the truth about sin. Amen!

The Word of God 

“Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God say, ‘You shall not eat from any tree in the garden’?’ The woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden’; but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’’’ But the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves” (Gen 3:1‒7).

Meditation 

The truth of God’s love is not so evident for us. Many people say that life is not a fairy tale, and it indeed is not. Sometimes, we cry in our hearts: God, where are you? Why do you let it happen? We may ask: why I don’t experience God’s love every day? Why isn’t it so obvious? Where do all these distorted ideas about God come from? If we want love so much, why don’t we choose it? This is illogical. Exactly! 

We experience different sorts of evil in life. This experience of evil hinders us from being happy. Most often, evil is a result of the actions of particular people. Sometimes, we are not to blame for evil: people are born in a country which is at war or in families with alcohol problems; we experience diseases and death. It brings suffering that we are not able to overcome. There is also this kind of evil that we cause. On the one hand, we know that we sin, but we often don’t plan to sin. It’s not like we wake up in the morning and think: “Okay, at 10:38, I will shout at somebody.” It often happens suddenly. And why? There is a kind of struggle going on. “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (Rom 7:15). I want good, but it isn’t working. This is our drama. There is a close correlation between evil and sin. It’s not easy to confess to sin because “people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil” (Jn 3:19). Yet no one could feel free from the responsibility for evil they do. The problem of sin concerns every person. The sin doesn’t allow us to experience God’s love, joy and happiness in everyday life. 

The Book of Genesis illustrates this truth in the story of temptation when Satan begins with a blatant lie that is aimed at sowing doubts in the hearts of people. When people yield to it, they allow themselves to be drawn into the vision of becoming God and deciding between good and evil. It is not only about the disobedience towards God but also about rejecting His love and order He established. “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin” (Rom 5:12). Our every sin is eventually nothing but repeating the original sin described in the first book of the Holy Bible. 

The personal source of sin is Satan. The poison comes from him. He is the originator of evil and the one who deludes and deceives us. “Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour” (1 Pet 5:8). Once, he was one of the angels who were the closest to God, but because of his arrogance, he opposed God and started fighting with Him. The evil one knows that he won’t defeat God because he is only a creation, yet he fights with us; he hates us because we remind him of everything he lost, and looking at us he sees in us the resemblance to God. That is why he deludes and deceives us to separate us from God not only in this life but also for eternity. 

Sin has its consequences. We distance ourselves from God. The Scripture says that our sins separate us from God, and because of that, God seems to be far away, almost absent. This is how the poison of sin infects us. The bond and unity are torn off; we are more like this branch on the vine that bears no fruit. “Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me” (Jn 15:4). 

There may be two types of aggression towards God: active, i.e., expressed by rebellion, and passive, i.e., represented by indifference, passive opposition to God, or living in such a way as if God doesn’t exist. This leads to being separated from God. It stems from the deceitful belief that God wants to limit me and doesn’t want my happiness. This is the hissing of the snake in paradise who distorts reality and suggests grotesque ideas of God. We tried to deal with these ideas on the first day of our retreat. On earth the abyss between God and people is called sin, and in eternity, it is hell. Just like the present time leads us towards eternity, being separated from God by sin in the present leads to being separated from God in eternity, which means hell. Since it is said that “the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23), ultimately, this death is eternal. 

Sin also has its effects. They influence my present and my eternity. Despite many various human efforts, it is not possible to bridge this gap. 

Another consequence of sin is distorting the way you perceive yourself and others. There comes suspicion, accusations, and distrust, so we become defensive. And if we feel defensive, it turns out that the other person is our enemy, so we start fighting with them. We start hurting, stop believing in love, close ourselves to tenderness, and become cold. We put on our masks, pretending to be someone we are not. There is much fear within us, and we don’t want anybody to discover the truth about us, our weaknesses, flaws, sins and challenging backgrounds. The fear begins to condition us and prompts us: if you don’t meet the expectations, they will reject you! 

Sin is also poisoning your perception of yourself. The Book of Genesis shows this inner state in the following way: the first parents committed the sin, and then there appeared the crack within them. On the one hand, they were still created in the image and likeness of God, but on the other hand, they appeared to have a strange inclination towards evil. Since then, there has been an internal rift within us, like a split. Evil and mediocrity come easier into our lives. Doing good requires some effort, perseverance and discipline. On the one hand, you wish to be loved, but when you experience evil that brings about suffering and hurts, this question arises: is it possible that someone loves me? You start looking at yourself through the lens of your failures, weaknesses, flaws, and bad decisions. And this is a space for your inner prosecutor who tries to evoke guilt and slams you to the ground by reminding you all of this. You feel overwhelmed. You are not able to deal with it. You need some sort of escape. And you try to console with sin. You look for some short-lived pleasure and you get trapped because sin deceives you. You pay for a moment of pleasure with an even greater fall in the spiral of accusations. 

Finally, you look at your life and the world, and you no longer see the sense of all this. The world seems strange; life problems overwhelm you because you are alone, and everything tells you that you won’t handle it. You see the world’s brutality, and you don’t have any solution to it. The fear of the future rises. You are not sure if you will cope with what life brings you. You analyse, try to control, and worry whenever something is not going as you intended. You recognise that you are not able to control the reality. 

God loves the sinner, but He hates sin. God and sin are the opposites. Holy God doesn’t put up with sin. We must acknowledge that evil is stronger than we are and realize that we need help because evil “sticks” to us. We cannot deal with it alone, either in our relationship with God, others or ourselves and the world.

Spiritual reading 

“Man’s entire being was bright without shadow, beautiful without blemish, pure without stain, perfectly proportioned without deformity, flaw, or imperfection. His mind, gifted with the light of wisdom, understood perfectly both Creator and creature. The grace of God was in his soul making him innocent and pleasing to the most High God. His body was endowed with immortality. He had the pure love of God in his heart without any fear of death, for he loved God ceaselessly, without wavering and purely for God himself. In short, man was so godlike, so absorbed and rapt in God that he had no unruly passions to subdue and no enemies to overcome. Such was the generosity shown to man by eternal Wisdom and such was the happiness that man enjoyed in his state of innocence. 

But, alas, the vessel of the Godhead was shattered into a thousand pieces. This beautiful star fell from the skies. This brilliant sun lost its light. Man sinned, and by his sin lost his wisdom, his innocence, his beauty, his immortality. In a word, he lost all the good things he was given and found himself burdened with a host of evils. His mind was darkened and impaired. His heart turned cold towards God he no longer loved. His sin-stained soul resembled Satan himself. The passions were in disorder; he was no longer master of himself. His only companions are the devils who have made him their slave and their abode. Even creatures have risen up in warfare against him. In a single instant, man became the slave of demons, the object of God’s anger (Cf. Eph. 2:3), the prey of the powers of hell. He became so hideous in his own sight that he hid himself for shame. He was cursed and condemned to death. He was driven from the earthly paradise and excluded from heaven. With no hope of future happiness, he was doomed to eke out a pitiable life upon an earth under curse (cf. Gen. 3:10; 17:23; 4:11,12). He would eventually die like a criminal and after death, together with all his posterity, share the devil’s damnation in body and soul. Such was the frightful calamity which befell man when he sinned. Such was the well-deserved sentence God in his justice pronounced against him. 

Seeing himself in such a plight, Adam came close to despair. He could not hope for help from angels or any of God’s creatures. Nothing could restore his privileges because he had been so eminently fair, so very magnificently fashioned when he was created, and now by his sin he had become so hideous, so repulsive. He saw himself banished from Paradise and from the presence of God. He could see God’s justice pursuing him in all his descendants. He saw heaven closed and no one to open it; he saw hell open and no one to close it.” 

St. Louis de Montfort, The Love of Eternal Wisdom, 38–40

Homework 

Today, I will try to discern and acknowledge my helplessness towards evil and sin. 

Prayer of consecration 

I am all Yours, and all that I have is Yours, O most loving Christ, through Mary, Your most holy Mother. Amen!