What . . . me attracted to sin?

The Liturgy of the Word for the 6th week of Ordinary Time provides a marvelous lesson for someone in spiritual direction who wishes to break through some barriers in their path to follow Christ. For that matter it is a lesson for anyone, in spiritual direction or not. It is a lesson for all time about self-awareness in the spiritual world around us.

There was a time when we often spoke in such terms as "avoiding the occasion of sin" and coming to awareness of our "affection to sin." Somewhere along the line that terminology seems to have fallen out of use as being stilted or old-fashioned. Unfortunately the terminology, while falling out of usage, has not been replaced with anything better . . . or for that matter, with anything. Our humanist friends have generally taken over the conversation and would tend to instruct us that our thoughts and emotions are for the most part harmless and that it is somehow unhealthy to "suppress" them. Those who would provide the spiritual direction that we need to be responsible for our thoughts and emotions might be dubbed as "thought police." The general direction of our culture has been to "protect" the individual's free will at just about all costs. A slippery slope? More like an Olympic competition bobsled course.

Sirach instructs us that our Creator gave us the law, you might say as a trellis, upon which we gain the support to grow into mature spiritual beings. He also tells us that in God's wisdom He gives us the power and dignity to freely choose between good and evil, life and death . . . but that He never gives us the license to sin. Paul tells us that this is a mature wisdom and not the wisdom of this age, or our age, for that matter. But that if we grasp this wisdom and live it out, we shall attain a life that is beyond our imagination.

Our Lord teaches us that to understand and follow the law we must live the law to the very marrow of our being. This is the law of love; that all of our motivation in life be driven by seeking the good of the other and that to do that is to serve our Lord. If that is our focus then we will not be satisfied with the minimum standards of not killing and not committing adultery. Such breaches in the law of love will never be approached by those who live the law of God's love.

And so to lead the life of a true and earnest disciple of Christ we must care very much about where our minds and emotions go. We therefore make every effort to avoid the occasion of sin and continually seek to better understand our own personal affection for sin. It is on this path that we best discern our way to where our Lord will lead us.