Thursday of the
First Week in Ordinary Time
(Hebrews 3:7-14; Mark 1:40-45)
A retired preacher of boys’ retreat was asked why he gave
up the practice. He answered that the
fire and brimstone that he used to scare the boys no longer had a positive
effect. He said that once boys were visibly
shaken by exaggerated descriptions of eternal punishment, but they had come to
dismiss the possibility. Perhaps the
author of the Letter to the Hebrews is aware of this tendency in the second reading
today.
The reading quotes the Old Testament in describing the
effect of sin. It does not say that
sinners will be tortured but, much more simply, that they not enter into God’s
rest. Then it encourages readers to become
allergic to sin so that they do not surrender to its promptings.
Sin is allowing selfish desires to take precedence over
doing God’s will. In a sexual temptation sin is saying that one’s
desire for pleasure is more important than the personal integrity of that
person’s partner or, indeed, of the person’s own integrity. We never want to become comfortable with this
kind of thought. Indeed, we want to
resist it from the beginning.
