One of the best parts of getting to know someone is that you start to know a whole bunch of little-known facts about them. This happens all the time in our families. We know which brother or sister likes this or that food and which vegetables they will secretly feed to the dog when no one is looking. We also know their favorite color, the music they listen to, the car of their dreams, and what they want to be when they grow up, even if that changes every three weeks. If we are lucky, we will also have a friend or two like this. We will be blessed to know their favorite food, their most embarrassing moments, and even the things that drive them crazy. The more we love someone, the more we want to know them inside and out. And the more we know someone, the better we can love them because we understand them, with their qualities and preferences that make them unique.
With this in mind, I want us to reflect on the person who is supposed to be a friend to us all. In fact, this person is meant to be our best friend, the love of our life. The person I am referring to is no ordinary person because it is God himself, the one we are called to love above all else and other persons in this life. And if God is our friend, then those same little things that we know about our family and best friends, well, we should know those about God too! For example, do we know what he loves? Or what makes him happy? And what his dreams are? We can! It’s all there in His Word to us, the Bible, if we are willing to read and listen to it! But for today, I would like us to consider something we probably don’t think about too often. It is an aspect of God that almost seems strange to us. In light of the second half of the gospel,and because he is our friend, let’s take a little time to reflect on what it is that God hates.
This is actually pretty easy. There is only one thing that God truly hates and it is sin. Everything else God loves. He loves the earth and the planets and the stars in their galaxies. He loves humans and plants and animals and bugs and everything else that is running, flying, or swimming around. In short, He loves everything that he has created, because it reflects him in some way and is good. So why does God, who is clearly defined by love, find sin so offensive? The answer lies in what sin does, both to God and to the one who sins.
Sin is defined as any immoral act considered to be an offense against divine law. Sins can be little or large, they can take the form of thoughts, words, actions, or omissions, but they all share one thing in common: they separate us in some way from God and hurt others. Why is this? Well, sin is a deliberate choice to do or not do what God commands. And anytime, we act against what God wants, we end up hurting ourselves, even if it feels good or right at the time we do it. Sin is never in our best interests, even if it seems to be the easier or more pleasant path in the short term. God, who loves us more than we love ourselves, wants us to be happy forever with him. God hates sin because it separates us from him. And not only that, each sin takes on a life of its own, hurting other people and even causing them to sin as well. When we sin, we risk losing our happiness and peace and we drive a wedge between us and God. Now, that’s bad enough! But sin gets even worse. Our sins don’t just affect us, they also set a bad example, making it easier for others to sin as well. Some sins that we commit can even cause other people to do wrong. Sin always hurts more people than we know, even though that sin seems private. There is no such thing as a private sin!
This effect of sin, where our wrongdoing hurts other people and encourages them to sin, is called scandal. Scandal is a concept we don’t hear too much about unless we are speaking about some crazy behavior of a celebrity. But scandal is a very real consequence of sin and it is something that each and every person is obligated to avoid. God takes scandal very seriously as we hear in today’s gospel, when Jesus tells us that “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were put around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.” A millstone was a large, heavy stone that was used to crush wheat grain into flour. Having one of these around your neck in the water would mean certain death with no hope of surviving. Our Lord tells us that it is better to have one of those around your neck than to be responsible for leading another person into sin. WOW!
Jesus goes on to say, in the same dramatic fashion, that whatever leads us to sin needs to be cut off, torn out, and cast away from us, no matter what the cost. Does he mean this literally? I don’t think so! Does he want us to take sin seriously? Absolutely! Does he want us to avoid even the circumstances and persons that lead us into sin? Without a doubt! Are we accountable for the ways our example might lead others into sin or weaken their faith? You bet!
There is only one thing in the whole created world that God hates and that is sin. As his children, as the ones who love him, we are called to do everything in our power to avoid sin, even if that means incredible personal sacrifice. We are also required to think of others before we act, knowing that our example, our decisions could cause scandal and make it easier for them to do wrong. No sacrifice is too big if it protects us from hurting God and our immortal souls. Jesus commands us to stop at nothing to protect our relationship with our Heavenly Father and to suffer anything rather than to lead another person into sin. This is a tall order! In fact, we can’t do it on our own. We desperately need the sacrament of reconciliation to help us avoid sin and the near occasions of sin. And when we fall, God’s healing grace is available to us if we are sorry and ask for forgiveness in this beautiful sacrament
So let us set our minds and hearts on getting to know God better, paying attention to the things he loves and doing the things that make him happy. And let us never forget the one thing that he hates, trying always to avoid it in every possible way!
