A Modern Parable
I quote this from Michael Lofton's blog because it succinctly resounded with something I was pondering lately:
"One day, a man went to his annual wellness exam, expecting to hear a good report. The doctor learned that the man had lung cancer but did not want to break the bad news to him. After his exam, the doctor entered the room and told him there is good news: they recently discovered a cure for cancer. The man looked puzzled and asked if he had cancer. The doctor quickly assured him that everything was okay and just wanted to inform him there is a cure for cancer. He thanked the doctor for this information and told him he would keep this in mind if he ever was diagnosed with cancer. The man went home without seeking treatment for his cancer because the doctor never told him the bad news. The man died six months later.
Was the doctor effective by stating the good news about a cure for cancer, while withholding the bad news that the man had lung cancer? Most assuredly, this was not an effective means of helping his patient, since it emphasized the cure but neglected to mention the need for the cure."
Jesus, the Divine Physician
While diseases, cuts, and bone breaks are wounds to the body, sin is an affliction to the soul. It damages (or destroys completely if it is mortal sin) the divine life of grace within us, undermines our dignity as sons and daughters of the One, True God, and gives subtle but certain "soul wounds" that leave us without true peace or feeling empty, restless or hurt. For a time we may not realize it, especially when we first commit and continue (willfully or obstinantly) in a way of sin, but surely in time just as a body will begin to manifest symptoms and signs of a disease, so too in time will the miserable state of the soul manifest its sadness and emptiness.
Willfully continuing to allow the disease of sin to persist in one's life without repentance is death to the soul and true happiness just like allowing a disease of the body to ensue without treatment will bring eventual death to the body.
Why do we take great pains and measures to preserve and heal our bodies, yet neglect the wounds our sins inflict upon our souls? The people of our time willingly seek relief from a doctor but the relief and cure from the Divine Doctor, Jesus Christ, we do not want. We want healing of body, but not healing of soul.
Vain pleas and prayers
It is a temptation of Christians today to live in a dangerous delusion and it is this: That we can still consider ourselves faithful to God without repenting of the willful sins we are committing. We cannot reach our arms up to heaven while our arms are clinging around our sins. As we all will sin and battle against our sins the rest of our lives, there marks a major difference in disposition when a person wants to know their hidden sins and conquer their sins and weaknesses by striving to live a life of virtue for love of God, and between one who is aloof and indifferent about their sin. The Psalms tell us the Lord desires a contrite and humble heart. Yet when we persist in our sinful lifestyle - when we persist in that sin we enjoy because it brings us pleasure - we close the door to grace and mercy. We cannot reach our arms up to heaven while our arms are clinging around our sins. Christ warns us of this adulterous relationship in that He says we cannot serve God and mammon. There are many reasons to God's designs and while one cannot know His thoughts and purposes and His mercy is constantly drawing us to Himself through various situations and circumstances, there is one huge barrier that we place in front of God: Our willful commission of sin and our insistence on living in sin without repenting of it.
The cure
The cure is repentance. True repentance. This is what opens the floodgates of God's grace and mercy!
God is SO INCREDIBLY MERCIFUL, GENTLE, AND FORGIVING! His love is so tender and great indeed!!! But we cannot experience that beautiful grace and mercy until we ask God's forgiveness; and asking God's forgiveness means repenting, not just mere lip service or empty words of "Forgive me" without strides of action against future occasions of sin.
Saint John Chrysostom said it perfectly:
"Be ashamed when you sin, don't be ashamed when you repent. Sin is the wound, repentance is the medicine. Sin is followed by shame; repentance is followed by boldness (meaning to beg God for undeserved mercy). Satan has overturned this order and given boldness to sin and shame to repentance."
In St. Francis de Sales' book Introduction to the Devout Life, he advises us on that first stage in building our relationship with God and growing in holiness: Purification from mortal sin. If one is persisting in their state of mortal sin - that wrong thing they know they shouldn't be doing (and believe me, there are plenty of those sins in our time) - then there is no relationship with God and no growth in virtue. We are only fooling ourselves and making ourselves believe a lie about the state of our soul so that we feel good about ourselves. It is necessary to rid ourselves of those grevious sins which bring death to our soul. Then, after having gone to the Sacrament of Penance, we must guard ourselves against those occasions which lead us to that sin and proceed to weed out, by God's grace, our venial, "smaller" sins and imperfections. St. Francis goes on to remind us in the pursuit of holiness (or as its referred to in the Gospels and by the saints, the pursuit of perfection) that "our very perfection lies in diligently contending against them [our sins], and it is imposssible so to contend without seeing them, or to overcome without meeting them face-to-face." We cannot draw close to God if we cannot see, or do not want to acknowledge, what is getting in our way, namely those sins one commits. Just like you cannot win a battle unless you know who the enemy is and what he's about, we cannot battle our sins unless we acknowledge they are sins. Our number one enemy is our sins.
Without humility, we live in a delusion about our relationship with God
Humility is a virtue and we possess it if we can honestly confront God about our sins and desire to know the sins we are committing but may not be aware of.
"Who can know all their sins? from my secret ones cleanse me, O Lord!" (Psalm 19:13).
And it'd be spiritually slothful to acknowledge our sins in a general, vague way; so to guard against that sin of spiritual sloth itself, it's necessary to address the specific way about how we are sinning, about how we are sinners. It leads to a slothful, lazy, insincere, and false repentance when we are vague and general about our sinfulness.
St. Gregory Palamas said:
“...Repentance which is true and truly from the heart persuades the penitent not to sin any more, not to mix with corrupt people, and not to gape in curiousity at evil pleasures, but to despise things present, cling to things to come, struggle against passions, seek after virtues, be self-controlled in every respect, keep vigil with prayers to God, and shun dishonest gain. It convinces him to be merciful to those who wrong him, gracious to those who ask something of him, ready with all his heart to bend down and help in any way he can, whether by words, actions or money, all who seek his assistance, that through kindness to his fellow-man he might gain God's love in return for loving his neighbor, draw the Divine favour to himself, and attain to eternal mercy and God's everlasting blessing and grace.”
Our Lady of Fatima
Our Lady of Fatima, in her dearest motherly concern for her children, spoke much of the eternal death and punishment of sinners who would not repent. She pleaded to us, the Church, to pray and do penance for these people, whoever they may be, and for ourselves and the sins we commit, so that we will not fall prey to our sins again and live in God's grace. She warned also that more souls fall into hell due to the commission of sins of impurity - those of lust, pornography, fornication (pre-marital sexual relations), and others related to sex, lust, and the like. This was back in 1917. Think of how this has multiplied today in our culture with the introduction of contraception, a relentless agenda of advocating homosexuality, widespread pornographic use and the like! Our Lady of Fatima came to preach a message of repentance and prayer that is applicable even moreso for our times today. She asks us to pray the Rosary daily for the conversion of sinners, for our priests, and for peace in our world.
As May 13 is the feast of Our Lady of Fatima, resolve to pray the Rosary daily and begin a habit of it. Even if you start with a simple decade and build from there, just do it!
Open the floodgates of God's grace!
If you want to open the floodgates of God's grace in your life, repentance is necessary.
If one wants God's blessing upon their situations and struggles, one needs to struggle away from sin.
If the soul does not take up this battle, the relationship with God is a delusional and misleading one that does not draw a person toward His fresh and flowing fountain of love, mercy and tenderness but rather leaves them in their own cess pool of stagnant, murky, and dark spiritual waters. The Lord is always there reaching out, drawing us in, but He does not make us walk towards Him without our cooperation.
By one's lack of repentence and obstinancy in their sin, one tells the Lord "I don't want a relationship with You; I don't want to love You, and that I want to keep the door closed to the redemptive healing and grace You so ardently desire to give me."
As Saint Augustine is so famously quoted:
"God made us without us, but He will not save us without us."