It is 17:49 on the 4th of September 2024, and I have been stuck in an elevator at my office building for more than 30 minutes. I work on the 20th floor and when pressing the floor to travel down to the basement I got stuck. There is nowhere to go it's just the four walls around me, my computer bag and my guardian angel in the elevator with me. So in these moments, all becomes quiet and we become in touch with our inner selves, our souls. The mirrors in the elevator are positioned opposite each other so if you look into the one mirror you see multiple reflections that seem to run into infinity. If I were in a movie scene I could spice the scene up and start causing panic with highly unlikely scenarios like: What if the elevator cable starts fraying? What if I run out of oxygen? What if ... Fortunately it was pretty chilled and the technicians got me out after 50 minutes.
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| Stuck in the lift, 4 September 2024 (17:48) |
So after that dramatic introduction on contemplating death and what happens to us in eternity, I bring you the third part of the ToB series where we go into the fall. How did things get jumbled up for us humans?! The devil (a once powerful angel known as the angel of light) brought darkness to the world with a lie. Today he is known as the father of lies. He confuses by crossing the lines of truth with lies. He hides in the shadows of darkness out of sight but is quick to lure us into his web of confusion.
God created everything and it was and is good. So why would he have created good angels that would go on to rebel? Like all creation, God created us out of love giving us freedom of will to choose, as God is no omnipotent dictator. St Thomas Aquinas explains in his shorter Summa that humans and angels can both commit sins, but they differ in how their freedom of will is used. When humans die and their souls leave their bodies, their wills are judged to be either permanently good or permanently evil. However, in the case of angels, they become either forever blessed or forever wretched instantly after making their choice with full intention. Their choice with full intention means choosing either God or something else as their ultimate goal. Angels' choices are unchangeable from the start, whereas humans' wills are not fixed until after death.
So once angels make their choices they are judged immediately (mmm, I think I prefer being human). It can seem harsh from a human perspective but I believe that is because they are higher spiritual beings and so they see God and His creation in more completeness than we could ever imagine. So when they go against God I assume they do so with clearer sight that it means directly rebelling. When Lucifer (the devil) and his following of fallen angels (the demons) chose to reject God and His Kingdom they gave rise to the existence of hell (CC, 73).
We can go through life thinking sin is something reserved for the really bad ones and so my "small" faults here or there are no real big deal. This is why reflecting on the existence of Heaven and hell is so important. Our present actions dictate the path of our future but more importantly our eternal destiny. Otherwise put, what we do today can steer the course of our life in one of two ways: to the wedding feast of Heaven (a wedding celebration that never ends) or to the eternal suffering of hell where there is no way back into the wedding feast. The idea of hell sounds pretty heavy and quite scary because how much we love during our limited time on earth will determine how we live out eternity (where time does not exist as we know it).
The devil's actions against God not only reserved his place with the demons in hell but also reserved a place for souls who die in a state of mortal sin. If a mortal sin is not redeemed by repentance and God's forgiveness, it causes exclusion from Christ's kingdom and leads to the eternal death of hell, for our freedom has the power to make choices forever, with no turning back (CC, 1861).
For an explanation of what are mortal sins, you can read an older blog on this here. All sin, big or little, displeases God. Jesus also died on Calvary and rose from the dead to redeem us of our sins and opened the doors to heaven through which we can enter at death. However, Jesus dying for us does not mean we get a free pass to heaven. God wants us to use our intellect and will freely at all costs to avoid the usual occasions of sin. When we do fall which will inevitably happen we have an opportunity to go to confession to make things right.
Now if our perspective is to never go to confession because the priest is just some man who also sins we face a grave danger. We slowly start cutting ourselves off from the grace of God which works through the priest during confession and strengthens our conscience. There is a mystery behind confession that the more we go the more likely we are to notice more of our faults. The less we go (and at the very least once a year is an obligation) we face the danger of not seeing where we require the healing touch of the physician (Our Lord) in the confessional.
There is a reflection on the iPray with the Gospel App of the Bishop of Madrid many decades ago who was told of a person dying but did not want to go to confession. The nun caring for the sick man kept insisting and to get her off his back (so to speak) he said he had so many sins it would need the ears of a Bishop. To his surprise, the Bishop of Madrid Eijo y Garay arrived at the hospital and told the sick man: "Let's get down to business. Where do we start?"
There is nothing such as too many sins or such terrible sins that God cannot forgive them. Priests have probably heard it all and because they act in the person of Christ during the absolution of sins they hear and forgive through the power of Our Lord and not of their own. So the forgiving is not in their power but God's and so they also are given the grace to not look at you differently, that would be judging and they would need to go to confession themselves. We are not defined by our sin. We are children of God and that makes us enough.
The issue is if we choose to allow our pride to get in the way the devil gets the upper hand. Perhaps someone's position is "I don't confess to priests I confess straight to God" I respectfully ask: if that approach works why does the guilt still linger?
As for the idea "my sins are no big deal" we must remember that even small sins destroy our union with God and in fact years of small sins can eventually pile up blinding us to big sins.
The bottom line is we don't want to die having not made our best effort to make things right by confessing those sins we know we have committed. Confession is simply an opportunity to be the blind man, the woman suffering from a haemorrhage or the lady at the well who has been living sinfully. It is the opportunity to humbly tell God I am weak, I have done this and that and I am terrified of dying in this state please heal me and wipe away the stain of sin from my soul. If we are brutally honest we will leave the sacrament of confession free, light and able to see, to hear and to love with new eyes, new ears and a bigger heart.
"The proud man who trusts in himself has indeed a good reason for not daring to undertake anything, but the more a humble man recognises his own weaknesses, the more courageous he becomes, and the more wretched he esteems himself to be, the bolder he becomes, because he places all his confidence in God." (Introduction to the Devout Life, St Francis De Sales)
So at death, we will enter the elevator of life. We may want to go up to heaven but the elevator may come to a sudden jolt and we will be stuck with trying to make things right we never took time to do on earth. Or the position we pray befalls no one the elevator starts heading down for the pit of hell. Let us pray a lot for those who have grown lukewarm in their faith as our prayers can help save them from the descend to hell.
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