SIN OF NOT DOING
Sometimes I ponder what sin I regularly commit? We commit sins “in my thought, in my word and in what I have done” as we often confess and ask for God’s forgiveness before Mass. But I think my sin is found often in later part of that prayer, “and what I have failed to do”. This may mean the good things I could have done for others, yet I did not do or failed to do. Non-action sin.
Martin Luther King once famously said, “The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by bad people but the silence over that by the good people”. Evil prevails around us because of the silence of good people. What could we have done, yet fail to do it when we choose to be silent?
Isaiah who lived 700 years before Christ already pointed out, being a good Israeli is not just about going to the temple and observing the laws, but also about doing justice to the weak and the oppressed. “Share your bread with the hungry, shelter the oppressed/homeless, clothe the naked, remove oppression and false accusation and malicious speech…then your light shall break forth like the dawn.” (1st reading)
Jesus invites us to be effective agents in the world like salt for the earth and light on the mountain. These two items seem to be insignificant in quantity, but their effects can be huge. A meal cooked without salt cannot be a tasty meal; we can see the mountain because the light shines on it.
Our temptation is that instead of being salt we want to be the whole meal for others, or instead of being light shining on the mountain, we want to be the whole mountain ourselves. We want to be everything for everyone. How futile it is! Mother Teresa of Calcutta said, “do small things with great love”.