Repent and believe in the gospel! This is the message of John the Baptist as he called people to a radical conversion of heart. A call not just to change our actions, but to change our life and direct it towards the God who loves us. How interesting that there are two sides to this equation: repent and believe. Repent is being sorry for our sins, gaining forgiveness, detaching ourselves from sin, and changing our life. Then believe is reaching forward to that mystery: to the hope, the grace, the love that can actually transform us and lead us to eternal salvation.
Yes, repent and believe. Let’s start with the repent side of this equation: the process of rooting out sin in our life. I love the protoevangelium. It’s the first gospel, the first time God reveals his plan of redemption in the bible, and it’s right after the fall in Genesis 3. How merciful is that!
After confronting Adam and Eve, God turns to the serpent and curses him: “On your belly you shall crawl.” And then tells the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”
Did you hear that? The offspring of the woman is Jesus Christ, and on the cross, Jesus crushed the head of the serpent. No, sin will not have the last word! But, in this life, the serpent is still there nipping at our heels, trying to pull us down and separate us from the transforming love of God. So we need to work to root out sin, and not fall prey to the things that lead us away from God.
Sin can blind us; it dulls our intellect and weakens our will. Sin kills or injures our ability to love God and to love our neighbor, which, of course, is the greatest and most important commandment that Jesus gave us (Mk 12:28-34).
The process of rooting out sin is an important part of our spiritual journey. So, how do we do it? We start by taking an honest look at how we live. What we say and do, how we treat others, our general attitude towards life, our conversations, and how we spend our free time. We need to consider all of this and get rid of anything that pulls us away from God. This may seem overwhelming, but it doesn’t happen all at once. It’s a process we go through with God’s help and by God’s grace.
Let’s use an analogy to help describe this process. Now, imagine that you have the task of cleaning up a room. But when you walk in, it’s totally dark. You don’t know what’s in there and you can’t see where you are going. You bump your shin on something as you feel around for some sort of light. You finally find a small lamp and turn it on. By that dim light, you can see that things are a mess. The furniture is in disarray and you can barely move through the room. So, the first thing you do is put the furniture into place. You push the couch against the wall, you upright the coffee table that was knocked down, and you put the chairs all around the dining room table.
Then, you find another lamp and turn it on. You can see the whole room now, and you notice papers, books and magazines strewn about, along with clothes and trash everywhere. So, you bag up the trash, gather the clothes in the laundry room, and then organize the books and papers. Things are starting to look reasonably tidy now. You find a window and you open up the curtain, which lets in a little more light. But the windows, they’re a mess too. So you wash them until they sparkle and the sun shines brightly through them. Satisfied, you turn around and look at the whole room. With the bright sun, you see everything in the room clearly. You now can see that there is a thick layer of dust everywhere, and the crumbs from the chips are scattered all over the floor. So you grab the vacuum cleaner and the dust rag and you go to it.
This is similar to the process of rooting out sin. As the light of Jesus shines in our heart, we see our sins more clearly and we can clean them up. We start with the big things and get them in place before moving on to the smaller things. And we don’t do this alone, by our own power. Instead, we are cooperating with the transforming grace of God, the transforming grace He gives us in the process of turning from sin. Remember: sin blinds us. It dulls our intellect and weakens our will. So, as we root out sin, we can see more clearly. We understand how sin enslaves us and hurts our relationship with God, and we are stronger to fight against temptations nipping at our heel.
So, what’s the big stuff? Those are the mortal sins, and we must deal with them first. The Catechism tells us that mortal sin destroys charity in the heart as we separate ourselves from God. (CCC 1855) For a sin to be mortal, three conditions must all be met: it is grave matter. which is also committed with full knowledge. and deliberate consent. That means it’s really bad, we know it’s bad, and we freely choose to do it anyway. (CCC 1855-57). Some examples are blasphemous use of the Lord’s Name, shoplifting, manipulative lying, fornication, slanderous speech, coveting or being envious of the success of others, and skipping Sunday Mass. Did you catch that last one? Yes, skipping Mass on Sundays or Holy Days without serious reason is grave matter. For these grave sins, we must go to confession to get forgiveness, and then strive to remove these habits and attitudes from our life. In doing this, we really take our soul out of darkness.
Once the mortal sins are conquered, we’ll have the light to see what needs to be done next, which is conquering the more serious and deliberate venial sins. Sins like failing to pray daily, vulgar language, gossip, distracted driving, or driving way over the speed limit, greed that focuses our time talent and treasure on self instead of being generous to others. Again, as we root these out, more light is ushered in. The more light there is, the better we can see, and the more sensitive we become, even to the minor venial sins: that sharp tone of voice, being unnecessarily late, irritability with that customer service rep, uncharitable thoughts about a family member.
The process of moving forward, gaining clarity, and moving forward again is the general progression of the spiritual life. However, it often comes with fits and starts. We make progress and then fall back a bit. This is normal so we need to guard against doubt and discouragement when we do stumble. The saints tell us to treat doubt and discouragement as temptations of the devil rooted in pride and self-sufficiency. I remember, once, after stumbling back quite a bit far back, I went to confession and my confessor gave me a really easy penance, like one Hail Mary. And I’m thinking, “Whoa, didn’t you just hear those sins? I’m sure I need to do something way more difficult than that!” But no. And in that prayer, that simple Hail Mary, God reminded me that it’s not about me and my efforts. I am not saved by myself, but I’m saved by placing myself into God’s loving hands. So, when we do stumble, we should immediately repent and return to God without all the hand-wringing. It’s important to stop trusting in our own abilities, and instead trust in God’s mercy.
That’s what keeps us moving forward: our love for God in response to His love for us. Saint Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans that it is the kindness of God which leads us to repentance. (Romans 2:4) In God’s kindness, He is patient with us as He sheds His light in our mind, allowing us time to gradually understand our real situation before Him and the greatness to which He calls us. We can better see our sin for what it is, that serpent nipping at our heels, trying to pull us away from God. Repentance and rooting out sin are very important, but it shouldn’t be a soul-scraping activity. By God’s grace, we can gain a growing awareness of the things in our life that are not in line with God’s will, along with a growing strength to root them out. Yes, repent and believe.