Gospel Reflection for Thursday, February 27, 2025

I’m reading today’s Gospel text, and it strikes me that I’ve rarely, if ever, talked about sin in these reflections. The word «sin» pops up at least three times in the text. And it’s clear that whoever «causes one of these little ones to stumble» commits a serious sin, serious enough to deserve the death penalty.

The truth is, we’ve talked a lot about sin in the church. For centuries. Maybe we talked about it so much that now we’ve swung to the other extreme. That’s how we humans tend to operate. For many years, it seemed like being a Christian meant living in a jungle full of sins that were constantly threatening you. It felt like you could commit serious sins «without even realizing it.» That’s how it was, for example, with the obligation to attend Sunday Mass under the penalty of mortal sin. And so many other things. We lived with the feeling that sins could be committed automatically, without thinking, even without wanting to.

Sin isn’t automatic. Of course not. That’s not how it works in the Kingdom. True sin is going against the Kingdom and what it stands for: brotherhood, justice, solidarity, compassion, mercy. But that’s where God’s great mercy towards our weakness, our limitations, our character comes in. It’s not always easy to know what we should do in situations that are sometimes complex and even hard to understand.

The main thing for a Christian isn’t so much about examining ourselves every day for what we’ve done wrong. What’s important is trusting in God’s mercy and trying every morning to be that salt that brings flavor to the lives of our brothers and sisters, that is a source of brotherhood and forgiveness. We don’t have to cut off our hand or foot, or pluck out our eye. It’s about putting our hand, our foot, and our eye at the service of the Kingdom. The focus of a Christian’s life can’t be sin, but the Kingdom and all that it entails. Less guilt (less navel-gazing), more trust, and more getting to work to build brotherhood.