To listen to this homily, click here.
One of the best parts of getting to know someone is that you start to discover a whole bunch of little-known facts about them. This happens all the time in 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 it 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. 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.
These same principles apply to our God who wants to be friend to us all. In fact, God desires and deserves to be our best friend, the love of our life. He is the one we are called to love above all else in this life. Amazingly, when we love God in this way, we end up enjoying the things and people in our lives more than if we ignored God to focus on them. So, 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. Not sinners, mind you; God loves them. Only sin itself. 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 he has created, because it reflects his goodness and love in some way. 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 asks. 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, 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 can even cause other people to do wrong. Sin always hurts more people than we know, even though that sin seems private. In truth, 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 about too often unless we are speaking about some crazy celebrity behavior. But scandal is a very real consequence of sin and is something each and every person is obligated to avoid. Today’s gospel shows us how seriously God takes scandal, when Jesus says “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? No! It’s called hyperbole where someone exaggerates to make point. Like when we say “I am dying of thirsty” or “So hungry, I could eat a horse.” However, Jesus is very clear that he wants us to take sin seriously. He want us to avoid even the circumstances and persons that lead us into sin. Out of love for us and our eternal wellbeing he is warning us that we are accountable for the ways our example might lead others into sin or weaken their faith.
There is only one thing in the whole created world God hates and that is sin. As his children and friends, as the ones who love him, we are called to do everything in our power to avoid sin, even if it 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 someone into sin. This is a tall order! In fact, we can’t do it on our own. We desperately need God’s grace in prayer and the sacrament of reconciliation to help us avoid sin and the near occasions of sin. And when we fall, God’s healing gift 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 he hates, trying always to avoid it in every possible way!
