INOPPORTUNITIES OF SIN

Tuesday in Passion Week

For fifteen years I served on the staff of the National Youth Camp outside of Denver, at Camp Santa Maria—first as Chaplain, then for the last five years or so as Director. One of the chaplain’s jobs was to hear the confessions of all the children at camp on the final Saturday. While I can’t remember the age brackets at Camp, I think the kids ranged in age from twelve to eighteen. One of you who went through this annual pilgrimage to purgatory with me will, I’m sure, correct my memory.

Sin is—or was—different for a twelve-year-old than a budding young person of eighteen. Opportunities are different; I hesitate to say an eighteen-year-old is more subtle than a child of twelve, but they are certainly more practiced in cunning (I remember my years at church camp as a teenager and how we put Fr Petersen and the nuns through the wringer with our late-night escapades). Opportunities and “inopportunities” of sin vary at different times in our lives. The other end of the spectrum is older people—in their late sixties on (that doesn’t sound so old to me now!)—whose confessions I’ve heard. Many times I’ve had an older person say to me, “Since I’ve got older, I just don’t sin as much. I’m not as interested.” A little questioning shows that’s not exactly so.

We don’t outgrow sin. In different times in our lives, though, it shows itself differently. The sexual temptations of a precocious sixteen year-old boy are not the same as a mature man of thirty-five. The more refined temptations of the flesh are different in a fifty-year old than for a man of seventy. But make no mistake, the tempter who so played us at sixteen and thirty-five doesn’t pack up his fiddle and slink off because we get too old. He simply alters his tune and keeps us dancing. The boisterous libido of a teenager becomes the “sophisticated” sexual connoisseur of late middle age, but the same devil is playing the melody. The man of seventy-five who has spent a life engrossed in sexual pursuits doesn’t lose interest, but his sophisticated sexual life now is reduced to grubby, secret pursuits.

It’s not just sexual sins that we think we outgrow. Whatever your “favorites,” your besetting sins, they don’t go away just because of your age. The obvious selfishness of a five-year old becomes the manipulative stinginess of a girl of thirteen. By the time she’s in her twenties, she’s learned to mask her greed and put it across with a practiced indifference, but it’s there, nonetheless. She’s learned to hide her greediness while still feeding it.

Since I was hospitalized five years back, my appetite for food has decreased. I can’t eat as much; I don’t want as much. But it’s no virtue. I haven’t become more abstemious. Now, rather than wanting a piece of steak, I want only a rib-eye or especially good T-bone. I’ll eat nothing rather than chose something not just to my liking. The demon of gluttony didn’t give up on me. “The subject Wilcox doesn’t eat as much, and I’m about out of a job!” his report might read; but my gluttonous tempter knows better. “Subject Wilcox doesn’t eat as much, but I’ve convinced him his palate is too refined for the foods of the hoi polloi. I’ve got him snared by concentrating, not on more, but better food! And what’s more, now and then he praises himself for being less gluttonous than in the past!”

Our temptations change as we do, but their goal is still the same. The intention is to drag us—unaware if possible—to hell. The Seven Deadly Sins are called that because they have the potential to destroy us.

So what are we to do? We keep watch over our souls. We examine ourselves regularly—preferably every day, for just a brief minute or two. You may not know how deeply your love of your favorite sins—we all have them—is ingrained in you, but you should know what they are. They’re ones you’re well- acquainted with—self-centeredness, self-pity, envy, anger, whatever they are, you have more than a passing acquaintance with them. We defeat them—and that’s God’s intention—that we face out sins in daily combat—by knowing what they are, seeing them in action (and our weaknesses in addressing them), and turning to Jesus for help.

When you’ve said something particularly nasty about a co-worker, face up to it. Go to the person you said the thing to and tell them you were wrong—then don’t accept their attempt to say the person deserved it; they’re simply embedding you more in your sin, justifying what you did because they, too, are guilty. Don’t simply tell God, I shouldn’t have taken that extra change from the cashier—give it back. Many people say they don’t need to confess their sins to a priest because they “confess directly to God.” What that really means is they don’t want to have to face up to what they’ve done in the presence of another. I’ve never heard a repentant politician confess to a scandal when he didn’t assure his hearers “God has forgiven me. I hope you can, too.” The implication (actually, implications—there are several in this type of cant) is that you can’t reasonably deny him your absolution if God already has.

But before we throw stones at politicians, let’s remember that they’re typical of us. Everybody wants easy, cheap forgiveness. But for those following the Lord Christ on the road to Calvary, it’s the last thing we need.