It's Advent once again. Last Sunday's Gospel was about John the Baptist calling on sinners to repent for the Messiah was coming. The reading from the Old Testament used picturesque words to describe the repentance that was required for one to be prepared for the Messiah..."make way for the Lord...you shall flatten the hills and valleys"...as if to suggest that if you've got one hell of a sin,you've got to clear it out!
When I was in Grade 1, our Catechism book illustrated the difference between venial sin and mortal sin. I still recall drawings of three boys: one whose heart was pure white(sinless);the second had some spots on his heart (venial sin) and the really bad boy had a black heart (mortal sin.) Whoever drew that picture is to be commended because I really believed that was how sin affected people. When I saw a broadcast of a heart surgery done on TV I wanted to see if the patient had sins. I was looking for the black spots on his heart that would tell me if he had mortal or venial sins. So it came as quite a shock to me when I realized that sin wasn't something you could see marked on one's heart.
But now that I am older and wiser,I realize that the imagery of sin as something blackening one's heart is really closer to the truth than I realized.
My realization is that sin has a way of deadening one's capacity to love (as symbolized by the heart.) For example, if a man cheats on his wife,I'm pretty sure that the first thing to react is his heart.It starts to pump faster because it knows something wrong is happening. The man's guilt can't be hidden. Over time though,after the man has rationalized his sin,the heart no longer reacts...because it has already been blackened by sin...it no longer feels.
No wonder that men find true repentance difficult!It will require the effort of" levelling the hills and valleys" to clean one's heart, and bring it back to a state where it can love and feel again.
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