Sin begins simply, innocuously. It begins in loving what God hates and hating what God loves. That's why if you love the transient things of this world and yourself with a self-absorbed love, you sin. God hates this.
In fact, it makes God so unhappy, He decided to work out vengeance and punishment for it on His own body. God made himself an anvil and on this anvil hammered out our sins.
---Catherine of Siena, Letters
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Hi Pat! Thanks for the post. This does make you think. I like the idea of sin as loving what God hates (of course, Catherine of Siena is no slouch).
ReplyDeleteIt made me think of a discussion going Mark Shea's NCR blog a few days ago about the Church designating certain things, like eating meat on Fridays, as mortal sin and then changing that. Some people were upset about that. But if you think of the Church as helping us to understand how to love what God loves and hate what God hates, that makes more sense. And, the Church continues to refine the expression of that for the culture and the times.