Top of the morning everyone! Howis it going? We can give thanks to God for the stable condition of PopeFrancis. There have been no emergency procedures needed. But continue prayingfor the pope. This is a good habit to develop. A new season in the Church kicksoff today. Lenten season opens with Ash Wednesday. We may encounter people witha faint dark sign of the cross marked on their foreheads. It is not a holidayof obligation, but, all the same, it is a nice national and Christian custom tomaintain and transmit to our children. From Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18, weread, “Jesus said to his disciples: “Take care not to perform righteous deedsin order that people may see them; otherwise, you will have no recompense fromyour heavenly Father.” This reminds us of the basic internaldisorder in our being. The points it out. We do perform good, or even holy,actions to be seen by the others. Instead of focusing on the goodness orholiness of the behavior we prefer to be superficial about it. Externally itlooks good but internally it is rotten. This disorder is referred to asoriginal sin, that is, the sin our first parents committed. Its effects in usare evident, namely, weakness in doing good and avoiding evil,self-centeredness as main concern for doing things, obtuseness in havinginitiatives in doing good and helping the others, being judgmental, etc. This sin is not Merely theirpersonal sin and something of the long past. That first fault persists today inour fallenness. It affects our nature to the core. We all receive a weakenedhuman nature from our parents. As long as one is a descendant of Adam and Eve,he or she begins to exist with this inherited sin in his soul. The effects of disobeyingGod’s direct and simple commandment in the Garden of Eden of not eating of theTree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, is the loss of all their preternaturaland supernatural gifts. Thus, each of our faculties suffers a wound. That iswhy we are all basically weak and inconsistent. Hence, human nature is better referredto as fallen human nature. Now, one manifestation of theeffects of original sin is our loss of rectitude of intention since we tend torevolve more around ourselves and our egos being hurt or affected by thingsthat happen, that we do or suffer from. We worry unreasonably about what andhow people see us. In fact, as the Lord says, we do good deeds for men to seeand forget doing good, to help the others for love of them, etc. The rest of the gospel enumeratesthree examples of doing precisely that, namely, so that people see our gooddeeds. The deeds Jesus mentions are the three forms of penance that we need todo in a special way during Lent. Why should we do penance? Lentreminds us of some basic truths of our faith. First, we recall the reality andgravity of sin. Sin is an offense against God. We cannot just shove it under the rug afterasking for forgiveness, and forget about it. We cannot write sin off as amistake. God is offended. Thus, we need to fix what we have destroyed. We proveour sincerity in asking for pardon by fixing what we have done. This is thenature of justice and it requires us to give what is due to another responsibly.If we offend someone, we need to repair it. The Passion and Death of Jesus isrecalled in Lent so we remember our transgressions of God’s Will. We can ask for pardon and can bepardoned. But there still remains the damage we have caused with our sins. Weneed to fix that damage. The problem is the cost of the damage is infinitebecause the offended one is God. No man can possibly foot that bill. Sinning islike we fall into a pit so big, deep and dark that we cannot extricateourselves from it. We need a helping hand. This is where Jesus Christ comes in.He is true God and true man. He is perfect God and perfect man. So, He can paythe price of sin because all he does is of infinite value since He is God. He canrepresent man since He is human as well. Perfect!
