Don’t Do It!

“If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed than with two hands to go into Gehenna, into the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut if off. It is better for you to enter into life crippled than with two feet to be thrown into Gehenna. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. Better for you to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into Gehenna, where 'their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.’" (Mark 9:43-48)

Before you decide to become a pirate with a peg leg, a hook for a hand and an eye patch, let me tell you what Jesus meant in today’s gospel. This is how the priest opened his homily today. It caught our attention and was a great use of imagery. The thing that God wants us to cut out of our lives is our sin. There are many reasons we may not want to let go of our sin. Maybe it brings us moments of pleasure; maybe it has become a habit that we can’t seem to break; or maybe it has allowed us to become prosperous and obtain great wealth or status. No matter what the “good” reason is for not wanting to give up our sin, there are always negative consequences to sin. Even though we may like a particular sin there is always an element of shame in our heart, because we weren’t meant for sin. Sometimes we may need to look for it because our sin has blinded us from this truth. Letting go of our sin may mean we have to let go of a friendship or relationship that we have had for a long time and we’re not sure how we are going to get by without that person in our life. Maybe our sin is the result of lies we’ve been told that we have come to believe. We believe that we are worthless so it doesn’t matter that we have sex with whomever.

Sometimes we are tired of our sin but don’t know how to get out of the spiral of darkness that it has led us to. There is nothing that we have done, no situation that we are in that will prevent God from loving us. There is no reason to continue the battle alone. We have all been redeemed by Christ’s death on the cross. We don’t need to be afraid of the light of truth. Sin loves darkness and wants us to stay there, drawing us further and further away from the light of God’s love. Let our heads be bowed in humble reverence for our Savior instead of in shame from our sin. It is only His love that can free us from the bonds of sin. He can make us whole; I don’t have to stay a broken girl.