troubledgoodangel
Posts: 29
Joined: Dec 2006
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March 18, 2007 4:06 PM
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Usually, like the Prodigal Son, people stray and suffer a lot before they repent. Even before they repent, they must be convinced that what they do is sin. Granted that Grace spurs them to repentance, but the knowledge of the Law is a must. It used to be that everyone abided by the Ten Commandments and a clear moral code. As a matter of fact, there was a time when parents were allowed "to engrave" the Ten Commandments on the "tablets" of their childrens' behinds, and this made contrition much easier later in life! But those times are all but gone, and the conditions have dramatically changed in consequence. A group of "friendly" Pentecostals have recently asked me "when exactly does the death to sin occur" (they lack the Sacrament of Penance). Our death to sin will occur at death, I responded. As long as we are in the body, we cannot say that we are without sin. But how about love? Can we love without our bodies, they asked? Certainly, there is some ambiguity here that needs clarification. On the one hand, Jesus says that "it is the Spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail - [and] Jesus' words are Spirit and Life" (Jn 6:63). This leaves no doubt that our God is Spirit, and that "we must worship Him in Spirit and in Truth" (Jn 4:24). In other words, the more spiritual and lovers of truth we are, the more "dead to sin." On the other hand, God has made us out of flesh and spirit (Gn 2:7), for which reason, as Pope Benedict XVI reminds, "eros and agape can never be completely separated, [...] the more eros and agape converge in a single reality of love, the more the overall nature of love is fulfilled" (Deus Caritas Est, 7). This inevitably means that we must not hate our bodies, for if bodily eros were evil, God would have not created it in the first place! I think that the solution must be sought in the return to the initial stress on the Ten Commandments! For, as Jesus has said, "everyone who listens to My Father and learns from Him, comes to Me" (Jn 6:45). As the children learn from their fathers initially, so we must learn from Our Father first! The Law "was given through Moses [for that reason], and [only then] Grace and Truth came through Jesus Christ" (Jn 1:17)! Or else, we must be drawn by Grace to know the Law before we come to love! We simply cannot pretend that we love Jesus and neighbor if we ignore the Commandments: without a conscience formed by the Commandments we wouldn't know what to repent from! This is why an intelligent contrition is very unrealistic without the knowledge of the Commandments, lest the prevenient Grace makes both happen!
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