Christianity 101: Part 2
Sin, Incarnation and Redemption
This article is the second of a three-part series explaining the basics of the Creed. Part one explained the fundamental truths everyone needs to know about man, God and creation. Part two explores sin and virtue.
Sin
Unlike any other animals, man — the rational animal — has free will. This means he can serve God but also offend Him by committing actual sin. This takes various forms. We can take pleasure in evil thoughts or wishes (sins of desire) and misuse our power of speech (sins of word) or other bodily powers (sins of action). We can also neglect to do things we’re obliged to do (sins of omission).
Venial sins are less serious than mortal sins, but they’re still worse than any bodily injury you could suffer. None of us can abstain for long from semi-deliberate venial sins, meaning ones committed without full consent of the will, but we should all strive to avoid all deliberate sins. And God will always give us sufficient grace to avoid them: “God is faithful and will not permit you to be tempted beyond your strength” (1 Cor. 10:13).
The Seven Deadly Sins are the capital sins because they’re the sources of all the other sins. Instead of merely resolving not to give into them, we should strengthen ourselves by striving to practice the opposite virtues. And since ultimately pride is in every sin, we should all cultivate humility. Pride leads to hell. Humility leads to heaven.
This involves having a humble mistrust of ourselves. Because of the frailty of fallen human nature, we should avoid the near occasions of sin. For example, working out a gym surrounded by women in lycra is going to be dangerous for you. The same goes for many things in life. Unnecessarily exposing yourself to spiritual danger is unwise. “He that loveth danger shall perish in it” (Sirach 3:26).
Whenever you’ve tempted, pray straightaway . It doesn’t need to be long. Frequent Holy Communion will also strengthen you. To live virtuously, we should prefer to suffer any evil, even death, rather than offend God by sin. If we’re in doubt about whether or not a certain action is sinful, we shouldn’t do it until we’ve made reasonable efforts to resolve the doubt.
The Incarnation
God didn’t need to restore man to His friendship after disobedience of Adam and Eve. He didn’t owe man another opportunity to gain heaven, but He willed to save man out of mercy and generosity.
But since man’s sin had offended God’s infinite dignity, only a person of infinite dignity could make full satisfaction for it. This required a divine Person. But a divine Person in His divine nature cannot suffer to make satisfaction, so the Son of God became man to suffer in our human nature. That is why the mystery of the Incarnation — “the being made flesh” — was necessary. It’s the strongest manifestation of God’s love for us. “God so loved the world that he gave His only-begotten Son” (John 3:16).
God allowed many centuries (perhaps hundreds) to pass from the beginning of the human race until the birth of Jesus Christ. This allowed the human race to learn from suffering the consequences of sin and realise that only God could raise up fallen man. Before the coming of the Redeemer, people could be saved if they had faith in God and kept His law. They received sanctifying grace through the anticipated merits of the Saviour.
God announced the coming of Our Saviour through an angel to a humble virgin of Nazareth named Mary. Preserved from Original Sin since her conception by a special grace of God, she was never under the devil’s dominion even for an instant. And when Christ began His preaching, He announced that He Himself was the true Son of God then proved it by His miracles, especially the Resurrection.
The Redemption
Through a life and death of suffering, Jesus Christ saved the world not only from the evil effects of original sin but also the actual sins of men by a life and death of suffering. Because of His infinite dignity, even the least of His sufferings —being treated with merely slight disrespect, for example — would have sufficed to redeem us. But He died the death of the cross to show us His great love and the great horror of sin.
So when we look at the crucifix, we should remember that we ourselves crucified Jesus through our own sins. It’s not merely something the Jews did. We did it. And we do it daily still.
Against the philosophical backdrop of the existence of God and the soul — both provable with certainty by natural reason alone — there are no rational arguments against the Resurrection. In particular, the idea that the disciples hid the body and went to their deaths for what they knew to be a lie is absurd. Ordinarily, men won’t even die for what they believe to be the truth.
In heaven, Our Lord is King of the entire universe even as a man. He is the only true model of masculinity, and the thought of His sufferings and subsequent glorification should remind us to patiently accept the sufferings God permits for our sanctification in our own lives. Men do hard things, and nothing is harder than getting to heaven because only total perfection is tolerated there.
Grace
God sanctifies us by the supernatural gift of grace. Sanctifying grace is a spiritual quality that dwells in ours souls to make them like God Himself. Only mortal sin can drive it out, and we can grow in it constantly because it increases every time we receive a sacrament worthily or perform a supernaturally meritorious work.
Sometimes we also receive special enlightenment of our minds and inspirations of our wills. This is actual grace — a direct force from God Himself — given to us for the performance of a good, supernatural action. We must respond to this precious gift quickly. If we don’t, we might lose out on a whole chain of graces that God has planned for us. Without actual grace, we can’t perform any supernatural good actions at all since our natural powers simply can’t reach the supernatural.
Even sinners receive actual grace when God inspires them to turn to Him: everyone receives enough grace to be saved. But some people get more grace than others do, and this isn’t an injustice since nobody deserves any. But we can merit an increase of sanctifying grace and claim a corresponding measure of glory in heaven.
All our ordinary daily activities can become meritorious. Not only prayer, the reception of the sacraments and attendance at Mass can help us get to heaven. Our family duties, our work and even our hobbies and meals can do as well. We simply have to be in the state of grace and offer our works to God out of love for Him. A quick morning prayer is all that’s required.
The Virtues and Gifts of The Holy Ghost
To help us become saints, God also gives us the virtues and gifts of the Holy Ghost. These are supernatural habits poured into the soul. These increase proportionately with the increase of sanctifying grace. We get the natural virtues by repeated good acts, and then the supernatural virtues strengthen and perfect them. We should have both the natural and supernatural virtues.
The three theological virtues — faith, hope and charity — help the soul believe in God’s revelations, hope to possess Him for all eternity, and love Him because of His infinite goodness. The infused moral virtues — grouped under the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance — then help us use created things well so that they help us gain heaven. The Holy Ghost also makes us docile to His movements in us so that we can serve God better.
The greatest theological virtue is charity. We should love God because of His infinite goodness and our neighbour because he shares (or at least can share) in God’s goodness through possessing sanctifying grace. Loving our neighbour as ourselves means doing so supernaturally. But we don’t need to love everyone to the same degree. We should love the people closest to us most.
Our Lord gave us the beatitudes — eight principles concerning the practice of virtue — to help us achieve happiness and peace. And the lives of the saints show us the theological and moral virtues practised heroically. Like them, we should strive to make progress in virtue daily. The best way to do this is to focus on the virtue we find most difficult to practice. We should seek opportunities to performs acts involving this virtue to build better habits.
In part 3, we’ll look at why God gave man the gift of the Catholic Church.
When I pray the sorrowful mysteries, I often close my eyes during the 4th mystery and imagine myself hammering those nails into the cross from all my sins.