Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz and this is Ascension Presents. So ... I don't want to harp on the whole notion of sin,
but it's a real thing in our lives. And yet, not all sins are the same. You might find some Christians who will say, like, "No, it's all the same. Whether you steal a pencil at work, whether you murder ... a village. It's all the same, it's all the same in God's eyes." "All evil is wrongdoing. All sin is wrongdoing." So, yeah, in that sense, it's all sin. But, there's certain kinds of sin. In fact, Saint John. Right? Saint John, the Beloved, Jesus', the beloved disciple. In First John Chapter 5, John makes a distinction between some sin that is deadly and some sins that aren't deadly. "If anyone sees his brother sinning, if that sin is not deadly, he should pray to God and he will give him life. "But this is only for those whose sin is not deadly. There is such a thing as deadly sin of which I do not say you should not pray." "All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that is not deadly." Right? So, John says, "Yeah, all wrongdoing is sin. But there's actually a distinction between deadly (we call it in Catholic circles "mortal") and not deadly sin (we call that in Catholic circles "venial")." Now, here's an important thing to understand:
Is that, again, it's all sin. So, it's not like, "Well, that's just a venial sin, no big deal." "I just, you know, rejected our Lord - denied him somehow . . . but it's only in a venial way." All wrongdoing is sin. OK. But venial sin—how I've heard it described to me—is venial sin will wound our relationship with the Lord. Whereas mortal sin, or deadly sin, will actually destroy that relationship. Or break that relationship of intimacy that we have with the Lord. Our communion with the Lord, and with the community of the Church. And the Body itself. There are three requirements for a mortal sin. Number One: That the mortal sin has to be grave matter, so it has to be "serious sin." Now, serious to God, not to me, right? So, I might say, "I don't think taking the Lord's name in vain is that serious. Like, simply saying something like, 'Oh my God.' Like, that's not a very big deal to me."
But it's a big deal to God, so, grave matter. Number two: I have to know that it's grave matter. I have to know that it's a serious sin. Because, again, remember sin is not an accident. Sin is not a mistake. It's, "I knew this was a serious sin. And the third requirement is: I freely chose to do it, anyway. Those are the three things that make up what makes a sin mortal. Now, if any one of those is missing, it might still be a sin, but I might not be mortally responsible for that kind of thing. For example, I know that intentionally skipping Mass on Sunday or a Holy Day -- that's a big deal sin, that's a grave sin. If I didn't know that, the second piece is missing. OK, so, I've done the sin, but I'm not guilty in the same way. Or, for example, I know it's a sin. It's a sin, and I know it's a sin. So, "skipping Mass on Sunday." I go out to my car and I'm driving to the 8 pm Mass on Sunday night because that's when we have it here on campus, and on the way, I run into a snowbank. I can't get out. Or I'm parked in an alley, and I can't get out because I'm plowed in. (There's a lot of snow-in's these days.) So I tried to go, however, I was prevented from going. So, I did not freely choose to do it anyways—actually, my intention and my action was to get to Mass. I wasn't able to. Now, in all of this, though, of course, I don't want to get all technical about this, because sometimes people just say, "Then I can just venially sin just all I want. I don't have to worry about that." "Because I'm just avoiding mortal sin." Think about any real relationship you have in your life. There's some things you can do that would break the relationship with that person. But there's also a bunch of things you could do that would wound that relationship. Would you want to just do those things carelessly? Absolutely not. In fact, doing those things carelessly would probably weaken the relationship to the point where it actually might end up being one hair's breadth away from completely breaking. Here's a really violent analogy. I'm so sorry about this. I heard this years ago and I thought, "I really like that." And the person next to me said, "Thats disgusting!" So ... Bull fighting. OK, so I'm not advocating bull fighting. I'm just saying that it happens. I've never been to a bull fight. I think that I would probably not like it at all. I would probably say, "This should not happen!" Right?
But here's what happens: You don't have that matador just walk out and kill the bull. You have these people called "picadores" and they have these small daggars and they stab these daggers—again, I said this was violent and I apologize—I'm not advocating this. I think it should be stopped! Anyways, you have these people with small daggers and they put the daggers in the bull's shoulder and neck so that the bull gets weakened. It doesn't kill the bull, but it makes it so he can't lift his head and can't move very freely. So then the matador comes out with his long sword and he has the opening kill shot. This is what venial sins and mortal sins do to us. Venial sins, they weaken us. They make it so we can't see. We can't move. That we—that our relationship with the Lord has been weakened to the point where—here comes a mortal sin and BAM, takes us out like a Mack truck. The idea is I want to be on guard against all sin. What is Saint John saying? "All wrongdoing is sin." We want to avoid it all. The great news is this: Grace is always available to us. Just because the life of grace has been destroyed in my soul, does not mean that grace is not accessible. In fact, even the desire to go to confession is God's grace working in my heart. The desire to pray is God working in my heart. The desire to ... that I feel bad about my sins — that's God's grace working on me. So no one—whether someone massively wounded by venial sins or massively hurt and destroyed by mortal sins, no one is beyond the reach of God's grace. You are not beyond the reach of God's grace regardless of what your life has been. We go to confession. We lay our sins down at the foot of the priest who represents Jesus at that moment and by the power of the Holy Spirit, working through the ministry of the priest, Jesus Christ forgives us of our sins, raises us back up, and restores us to proper relationship. This is such great news. Today, if you find yourself not just wounded, but mortally wounded, go to confession. Confession is the sacrament of mercy. And if God brought this video to your life today, and you find yourself in sin, maybe that was his invitation, maybe his way of letting you know it's time. It's time to be forgiven. It's time to confess your sins. It's time to be back in relationship with the God who loves you. From all of us at Ascension Presents, my name's Father Mike. God bless.
