Gaudium et Spes and Sin

Sin isn't something we like to think about these days... not really.  Many of us are all too eager to think about how other members of the Church have sinned or fallen short of what we believe the Church is or should be.  I do it.  I wish I didn't do it.  Gaudium et Spes, though, has a very realistic look at sin when it begins its discussion of it.  Original Sin, if we want to use that phrase, happened when our Genesis-found progenitors decided they wanted to be like God and disobeyed God's command.  The document says that men and women upset their relationship with their source and final destiny and, at the same time, with all of creation.  We are divided creatures.

So the "wages of sin" is not only death but broken relationship.  When God calls us to our vocation, I think the point is to try to fix those relationships.  It's kind of like a mirror, or walking back the way you came.  God created a perfect world.  Humanity sinned.  Relationships were broken.  Maybe we have to make right relationships to ever move back to a place were sin has no power over us.  I see Jesus is the Gospels always trying to restore right relationship.  Think of the healing of the lepers when Jesus sends them to the temple to show themselves and be brought back into community.

I think this is what my vocation as a brother is about.  For me, right relationship is about being brother to my fellow creatures.  And I mean all creatures, just like Francis did in his Canticle of Brother Sun.  Not only creatures but with the Triune God.  If I can fix my relationships, or the way I enter into relationships, then the way I see those around me will change and, hopefully, my inclinations toward sin, to put myself first, to see others as objects and not subjects, will go away.  Thank God that the second person of the Trinity came to show us that way.









(The first picture is care of WikiCommons.)