Original Sin calls each of u to fight evil spiritually; Second Sunday of Lent

Original Sin calls each of us to fight evil spiritually;  Second Sunday of Lent

Although it is proper to each individual, original sin does not have the character of a personal fault in any of Adam’s descendants.  It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted:  it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it; subject to ignorance, suffering, and the dominion of death; and inclined to sin, - an inclination to evil that is called “concupiscence.”  Baptism, by imparting the life of Chrst’s grace, erases original sin and turns a man back toward God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle.  (CCC 405).

I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne, with a train of his garment filling the temple.  Seraphim were stationed above; each of them had six wings: with two they veiled their faces, with two they veiled their feet, and with two they hovered aloft.  “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts!”  they cried one to the other, “All the earth is filled with his glory!”  Then I said, “Woe is me, I am a man of unclean lips, living among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”  Then one of the seraphim flew to me, holding an ember which he had taken with tongs from the altar.  He touched my mouth with it.  “See,”  he said, “now that this has touched your lips, your wickedness is removed, your sin purged.”  Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send?  Who will go for us?”  “Here I am;”  I said; “send me!”  And he replied: Go and say to this people:  Listen carefully, but you shall not understand!  Look intently, but you shall know nothing!  You are to make this people sluggish, to dull their ears and close their eyes; Else their eyes will see, and their ears hear, their heart understand , and they will be healed.  “How long, O Lord?”   I asked.  And he replied: Until the cities are desolate, without inhabitants, houses without a man, and the earth is a desolate waste.

(Is 6: 1b - 11).  

Leading to the passion that Christ is about to enter; we see already the predictions of the evil that Isaiah saw through visions and just why the people of all ages must prepare, pray to the Lord of heaven that our sacrifices of soul and body are to the coming of the Son of God.

While we sit and ponder the events that led to the passion of Christ, we should also adhere to the elements of our current world that also relate to cities that  are also on the verge of destruction through the apostasy of what evil structures are impending. 

Christ is about to enter our world through incarnating himself in the womb of his Mother, Mary.  This very essential action of God is what we now are looking to with his suffering, crucifixion, and becoming the Lamb of God; a sacrifice to appease the scourge of sin on mankind.

Ralph B. Hathaway