Can people make mistakes in life? Can they go insane with those mistakes and be a different version of themselves? A version they never imagined in their wildest dreams would be them. Can their lives completely fall apart with those mistakes and yet have a faith of a mustard seed to regain life? All this seems possible when you intertwine with God back again. The majority of the non-Catholic devotees are in the mindset that Catholicism is such a free and flexible religion as it allows the devotees to sin as much as they want, ruin their lives, regret and repent. They believe even if we commit the gravest sins, we still have a possibility to enter in communion with God and to be forgiven by him. Every thought of them is perfectly appropriate because our God is so merciful and always remains closer with the sinners than the righteous, as Jesus mentioned in Luke 5:32, “I have not come to call the righteous, but the sinners”. It is the weakest person who needs more support and more of love than the person who is in control of his/her life. However, this society admits the otherwise, they abandon the weak, look down upon them whilst celebrating the righteous. That is not true love, that is not discipleship, that is not the ultimate purpose of this Christian missionary life. In Baptism, we are invited to be a part and parcel of the greatest living kingdom on this earth, we are invited to comfort the disheartened and downtrodden. Instead of judgmental thoughts we flash against these sinners, maybe we should change the perspective towards them.
However, there is also another part for this story, which is the most important part, that is the responsibility the sinners have to act upon. This is the point hidden and unrealized by the non-Catholics. Though our God is merciful and accepts us as we are, it does not become a free pass to continue with our sins, because God knows our thoughts well ahead of us, and thus He knows whether we genuinely regret and request for forgiveness or our thoughts are just a temporary breeze of night time. Receiving forgiveness and completely shutting the door of that sin in our lives is discipline. If we sinners fail to embrace that discipline in our lives, the forgiveness too is temporary. God’s forgiveness is not something to be bought off the shelf from a store, it is something to be earned through a genuine confession done with a priest. If we are not ashamed to sin in secrecy, we should never be ashamed to confess in secrecy either. In John 8, as Jesus forgave the woman who was caught committing adultery, when a group of scribes and Pharisees was ready to kill her by throwing stones for her wrongdoing, Jesus had only one answer, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at her.” Even in our lives we often provide a deafening ear to our own sins whilst voraciously tries to correct another. Similarly, another prominent take-home message of this bible incident is the fact that Jesus tells the woman “Then neither do I condemn you, Now go and sin no more.” Jesus is not only asking her to go but also not to sin again. It is common to realise that human weaknesses could make us commit sins whenever and wherever, but if we are in the mindset that no matter what sin we do in this life, God will always forgive, maybe we are illusioned in an incorrect reality of faith. Forgiveness is received by sinners when the circumstances are detrimental to avoid the situation. However, having the ability to avoid the sin but ignoring for personal satisfaction with complete consciousness, thus it does not become a forgive-worthy sin. Lest we forget God would allow us to go through trials and tribulations in this life as a part of punishments for the sins we have committed. Our subconscious will know why we go through such ardent periods in life sometimes and the feeling of guilt we receive by then is unavoidable. Once a saying mentioned that, sinning is like using a credit card, as long as we use it, we are in ecstasy as we satisfy our desires from another person’s money, however the moment we have to repay for the sins we have committed is when things become unattractive. It is so easy to fall into temptations and sin, however it takes a lot of courage to stand true to your virtues and principles in life and overcome the temptations that put us into sin.
Even the person who was once closely connected to God could go astray and make mistakes in life. But such people will know where they ultimately belong in life, so they will return back to the warmth of God, irrespective of the distance they have traveled away from God. Sometimes, in this life, such turning points are needed to realize how beautiful and comforting is God’s loving embrace. How could we forget the narration of the prodigal son in this moment. The son was gone leaving all the good things of his father, gone searching for another world of temporary happiness and worldly satisfaction. Lest he forgot how carefully and earnestly his father looked after him when he was under his roof. Sub could delusion us to the extent of terror and despair, however we hardly forget the place or the person through whom we were earnestly comforted. As the prodigal son remembered how well was his father’s servants were being treated when he was dying eating pigs’ food left with nothing, though he was baffled with guilt and lost pride, he wanted to return to where he could seek eternal comfort. In this life no matter what we do against the will of God or how far we will travel away from God, we will always return back to where we ultimately belong and that is to where God is. Let not the mistakes in your life stop you from enjoying the greatest joy God has prepared for you.
May God Bless You!