Holiness occasioned by Sin

WE need to remind ourselves that holiness can be occasioned, (not caused, of course) by sin. And so we have to devise a spirituality that recognizes this very important fact and acts on it accordingly.

Just a reminder: it’s God’s grace and our correspondence to it that cause holiness. But anything, everything, even our problems and sins, can be and should be an occasion to attain a certain degree of sanctity. With God, everything will always work out for the good.

Let’s be wary when we only develop a spirituality that restricts itself to the practice of good things and yet is helpless when faced with the ugliness and effects of sin and evil in oneself and in the world.

That would be a spirituality that is not realistic, that chooses to ignore a salient if unwelcome aspect of our human condition here on earth. It is prone to fall into self-righteousness, rash judgments and fault-finding.

It’s a pity, because with the temper of the times when a great majority of the people are saddled with all kinds of sin and anomalies, not only of the small and transitory ones but rather of the big and often persistent and vicious kind, there’s a clamour for a spirituality skilled in tackling this unfortunate situation.

We need to have a plan or program of spirituality that can be attractive to sinners and people in trouble who, in spite of their predicaments, still have a longing for what is objectively true, good and beautiful. This practically refers to all of us.

It should be a spirituality that knows how to dispense mercy and the means to cure or at least give relief to our spiritual and moral predicaments. It should have a pharmacopoeia that is able to attend to a great variety of spiritual and moral conditions that we can fall into as we go through life.

Let’s remember that the Church which is holy because of its founder, its doctrine and sacraments, etc., is also a family of saints who have been sinners but who struggled all the way to the end.

Some of our great saints have been big sinners before. We can cite the example of St. Paul, for one. He was a vicious persecutor before his dramatic conversion which was an effect both of God’s grace and his quick correspondence to that grace.

Let’s hope that we can develop a spirituality that knows how to take advantage of our sinfulness!