AN EXPERIENCED LIAR

Wednesday after the Fourth Sunday in Lent

Concupiscence is a long word with a big promise. Whenever any human being sins—every time any one of us sins anywhere on the globe, sins past, present and all sins yet to come—concupiscence was, is and will be there, smiling. “The water’s great. Come on in. You’ll love it.”

Yesterday I quoted St James the Apostle. It’s one of those unpleasant Bible quotes nobody likes to hear: “When concupiscence has conceived, it gives birth to sin: and sin, when it is finished, delivers death.” Grim and somber, it reads like a threat: enjoy yourself and you’ll be sorry. If you have fun here on earth, just remember, young man, you’ll spend an eternity in hell. You can almost imagine St James rubbing his hands together and saying, “That’ll wipe the grins off their faces.”

St James, like St John the Baptist, isn’t one of the jolly figures of the Bible. His quote above wasn’t written to give us a chuckle, but to make us stop and think. There's a reason for that. When we sin, we’re not thinking straight.

Nobody commits any sin thinking “I want to do something that’ll make me sad and sorry—something I’ll regret for the next ten years.” If sin was straightforward, we’d all be saints. Sin starts with a lie—and concupiscence is its delivery system. Concupiscence promises us fun St James says just isn’t there.

When we sin, we do it because we think it’ll be good. St Augustine tells us that everything we do, holding up a bank or going on a date, we do because we believe it will benefit us somehow. Even if we’ve robbed a bank before and it proved to be an unfortunate experience, this time it’ll be different. That’s what concupiscence does—it promises the delight—it entices us by suggesting things we wouldn’t believe otherwise if our heads were on straight. What it’s really saying is this: “I know you got second degree burns the last couple of times you pressed you palm onto the burner of the stove, but don’t think about that. If you do it this time, it’ll be different. You’ll love it.”

If we got an electric jolt every time we sinned, as if we had on one of those dog collars, we’d quick sinning pretty quickly. So the tempter tempts us with pleasure. "It feels good. You look great. Nobody’s ever been quite like you. This will make you happy. Finally, you get what you deserve." He puts out the same old lines, using the same old bait year in and out, and reels us in by the bushel-basket.

Concupiscence is the delight we have in the pleasure sin promises it will give us. The pathetic part of it all is that concupiscence doesn’t deliver. It makes promises it can’t keep. Underneath his less-than-honest agenda to get us to sin, the Really Evil One has a hidden plan. What he wants to do is train us to sin without promising us anything. It’s called habitual sin. We sin not because there’s a promised payoff but because we’re used to it. We can become like the tempter’s trained seals, sinning because we’ve become efficient at it.

Hard to believe anybody could be so dumb? We’re habitual sinners, every one of us.

Sin is a choice. We don’t sin accidentally, ever. But that doesn’t mean it’s always a struggle. Not every temptation you have is dramatic. Most are so casual we’re not even aware we’re being tempted. Tell a lie? Sometimes a lie’s a lot easier than the truth. Keep the mistake the All-Powerful Phone Company made to your benefit on your bill? How many times have they cheated me? Tell a co-worker about the malicious gossip going on about her (and pretend not to enjoy her pain at hearing it?)? She needs to know. The besetting sins we talked about yesterday become habitual sins if we don’t put up a fight. The devil has us walking to hell via the direct route and we haven’t the faintest idea we’re even going anywhere.

Our warfare is spiritual and the battleground is inside us. How do we fight sin, besetting, real and habitual? Our Lenten weapons—prayer, fasting and almsgiving—are deadly ones against sin. Prayer—lifting our hearts and minds to God; fasting—laying aside legitimate pleasures with a specific intention we offer to God to fight a specific sin; almsgiving—turning our resources, whatever they are, to benefit others so we don’t become spiritually self-absorbed. These are powerful weapons. But in the fight against sin there are two others we must pick up and learn to use.

First is the Sacraments, especially the Grace which comes through Holy Communion, “He in us, and we in Him.” The Sacrament of Confession is one of the most personal and powerful weapons against the devil. You lay yourself open to God without reservation and receive His forgiveness. The Lying Serpent hates it when we are honest about our sins.

Second is self-examination. Take five minutes at the end of the day and ask yourself “how have I failed to live up to who I want to be today?” Mull it over, be honest, blunt and don’t accept your excuses. “She deserved what I said” or “He’s such a creep, anybody would have done the same thing” don’t cut it with God. “Love your neighbor as yourself” isn’t a bad guide and it comes Highly Recommended.

The devil has spent your lifetime learning how to play you. Spend what you have left of this Lent making his job a bit more difficult. Go ahead, you’ll enjoy it. St James, the old curmudgeon, will be cheering you on.