We hear in the letter from Saint Peter today about Jesus putting to death in the flesh so that he may live life in the spirit. It’s important to realize that Jesus did this for us. He was put to death in the flesh to live life in the spirit so that we could live to death in the flesh and live life in the spirit. Now it’s important to know that Jesus does this, not us. We cannot do this ourselves; we do not put to death our own sins. Jesus does.
I want you to think about sin as we enter into Lent. In the addictive programs, they say that it’s the drug of choice. Everybody has one. What’s your drug of choice? So, I want you to think about that for sin. We all have a sin; we probably all have that one thing that we do that we wish we didn’t do, we tried to do, and we feel trapped in it. We are “imprisoned,” as we hear in the second reading. What is that sin for you? I want you just to take a moment and think about that.
Ok, whatever that sin is, whatever our sin of choice is or the sin that we are stuck in is, have you tried to quit it before? Have you tried to stop? Probably, right? Why doesn’t it work? Why can’t we stop? Well, because we, by ourselves, cannot free ourselves from sin. Only Jesus can.
So, we enter into this season of Lent, and it’s a time to convert; it’s a time to repent, and to repent is to turn away from sin and to be faithful to the Gospel. So how do we do that? Well, I think the critical thing to realize is when we can identify our sin. I think it’s important to realize that only Jesus can free us from it, but secondly, sin, with any sin, there is absolutely no value to it. What I mean is it never brings any good whatsoever ever. Sin never brings good. And I think what imprisons us is we allow ourselves to be tricked by satan to think, ‘well, I need this sin in my life because it brings something,’ right?
I’ll give you a few examples of what a sin, we think, might bring: ‘It brings me an escape, just to get out of my daily life and suffering.’ You might say, ‘I like it because it helps me to relax, something I do to de-stress.’
I’ll use the image of smoking just because it’s a very common thing and one of the hardest things, I think, to quit. So, if you think about a cigarette, people will say, ‘I just find it so pleasurable.’ Well, if you think back about the first time that you smoked or if somebody doesn’t smoke and were to hand you a cigarette, and you were to suck in that smoke, would you find it to be pleasurable? No, right, it’s disgusting. But after a while, for some reason, we get hooked on it, and we find it to be pleasurable. But there is no good in it whatsoever, it doesn’t actually bring us pleasure, because you finish smoking that cigarette, and what happens ten minutes later? You want to smoke it again, right?
What happens immediately after we do whatever our sin of choice is? We feel guilt. We feel shame. It doesn’t bring us what we thought it was going to bring us, and we allow ourselves to be duped into it time after time after time. So, I think with any addiction, with any sin of choice, with any sin that we are imprisoned by, it’s important to know that we need Jesus to free us. But I think it’s important to also know that he has already done it. When he suffered and died and was put to death in the flesh and now lives in spirit, he lives in us and he puts to death in our flesh that we may live in the spirit. I just want you to think that instead of giving up whatever that sin is, usually when we have this sin that we are for some reason imprisoned by, we think, ‘I can’t give it up because I’ll be miserable if I don’t do that. I won’t get to indulge in this thing that I know I like doing but it brings me no life, no good whatsoever.’
What if instead of constantly obsessing about that, we shifted our thought to, ‘I’m already free. Christ has freed me.’ What if we turned our thought to, ‘I don’t ever have to do that thing again because I’m free.’ And every time the temptation comes, we think, we don’t think, oh, I’m going to miss doing that so much, but we think, I’m free, I don’t ever have to do that again. Christ has set me free.
Reflect on that, think about whatever it is, what sin you would love to be free of this season of Lent? Instead of approaching it as sorrow for this thing that we are called to give up, what if we saw it as freedom? What if we came it as I don’t ever have to do that or live that way again because Christ has set me free? With sin there is no advantage, it doesn’t ever bring us any good, ever, in any way shape or form. We think it does, but it never does. It never relieves us; it only leads us to guilt and shame. And us trying to do it by ourselves, just by bare-knuckling it, as they say, generally doesn’t work. But if we can shift from sorrow that we can’t do this thing to rejoicing that we have been set free, that Christ has died in the flesh for us and risen to life in the spirit, we too can live in the spirit.
So, after this homily, I will just give you a few moments of silence. I want you to think about that sin that you want to be freed from and, just for a moment, shift your thinking from, I’ll never get to do that again, so I don’t ever have to do that again. And experience the joy of the resurrected life and life in the spirit.
