What Makes You Sin?

One

If Your Eye Causes You to Sin

Part of the path to holiness is to be really disciplined about removing sin and bad habits from our lives. And so we’re going to meditate today on the part of the Gospel where Jesus talks about how to do that, how to overcome habitual sin. 

This is what He says in the Sermon on the Mount, “If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.”

Reflect on or think about this and apply it to your life. 

Two

Avoiding Near Occasion of Sin

Jesus is really vivid in this passage. Again, he says that if your hand causes you to sin, you should cut it off. And if your eye causes you to sin, you should pluck it out. After all, He says, graphically, it’s better to get into heaven missing a body part than have the whole of you get tossed down into the fires of Hell.

We all have to cut certain things out of our life, certain things that aren’t bad in themselves, but which, for us, are near occasions of sin. We have to cut those situations out and it’s going to be really hard. It might even feel a bit like an amputation. But it’s worth it.

What are your habitual sins, and what situations lead to those sins? 

Three

Situations and Sin

Our sins, our temptations, and our vices are nearly always linked to particular situations. Take, for instance, the use of foul language. Almost none of us would erupt into loud, uncontrolled vulgarity in the middle of Mass, or during an important business meeting. But plenty of us do struggle with vulgarity when we are angry, and definitely while we’re driving.

Mental health specialists over the last fifty years or so have expressed it by saying that addiction is largely environmental. If you put folks in a certain environment, they’re almost certain to give in to their temptation. But if you remove them from that environment, the intensity of their temptations and their likelihood of giving into it goes way down.

This is just what classic Catholic moral advice has always said: avoid near occasions of sin. The eye we need to pluck out, the hand we need to cut off, is the environment, the situation, in which we are prone to succumb to our particular vices.

Four

So what is your vice – and when does it usually occur?

When it comes to our deep vices and addictions, willpower isn’t primarily about resisting temptation when it happens. By the time temptation hits, we’re usually too far gone to be much good at resisting. Willpower is about strategizing in advance, it’s about reflecting on the situations in which we’re tempted and making plans not to avoid the sin, as to avoid the situation in which we’re tempted to sin. 

Jesus doesn’t say, “If your eye causes you to sin, just resist the temptation next time.” He says pluck out your eye, cut out the occasion of temptation. And you might say, “There’s nothing I can do about it. No way to avoid the temptation.” Really? Maybe you haven’t thought hard enough about it. Or maybe you’re just not willing to part with something, even if it’s the difference between hell or heaven.

So, for example, if you occasionally or regularly watch pornography, do you need a smartphone? Do you need that temptation in your pocket, all day every day? Do you really need these things more than you need salvation from sin? Or is it better to enter heaven with a flip phone than to be cast along with your connected iPhone and laptop into Gehenna?

Or do you occasionally or regularly engage in gossip? Who do you do it with the most? A friend at work, a friend you go out with? Do you actually need to hang out with that person? Really? The early saints used to say that gossip is the spiritual equivalent of cannibalism, eating the flesh of your brother or sister. So do you really need to keep hanging out with that person, even though you know it means you’ll keep ripping the flesh of your neighbors, like two vultures tearing up a roadkill?

Maybe it would be better that you enter Heaven separately, instead of both being cast, along with your vicious words, into Gehenna together? The Christian life would be a lot easier if we didn’t have to worry about detaching from our sins, but that’s not how it works. Sin blocks God’s grace and inhibits our capacity to love.  And grace and love are what unite us to Christ.

So if we want to draw closer to Jesus in prayer, which is, remember, the whole point of this Rosary podcast, then we have to be willing to make some difficult changes in our lives to avoid near occasions of sin.

Five

Resolution

The resolution for this meditation is easy. Just ask yourself three questions: First, “What is my dominant fault?” Second, “What is the environment or situation in which that fault typically surfaces?” Third, “What can I do to change that environment, and avoid or at least mitigate that situation?”

Lord, we end this rosary asking for the insight to answer those questions well, and the courage to make the changes needed to avoid sin and follow you more closely.