Twelfth Sunday of Ordinary Time -A
The second reading from St. Paul to the Romans encapsulates the existential problem of all humanity in one sentence. “Through one man sin entered the world, and through sin, death, and thus death came to all men, inasmuch as all sinned, or up to the time of the law, sin was in the world.”
Through just one man. Just one person. Of course, St. Paul is speaking about Adam and his wandering in the garden. The beginning of humanity’s constant and continual drifting from God and his love. Intellectually, it is hard to fathom; emotionally, it seems quite unfair because how could one person have such a negative effect on my life?
Of course, the knee-jerk reaction fails to take into account how our own actions and dispositions affect other people and the world. Once we consider that fact, we should, as the cliché reminds us, “pull in our horns”.
Through one person, and honestly, that one person is me. In times when our negative inclinations win out over virtue and charity, the sinful actions I commit harm me and others. There is no such thing as a sin that does not have a negative connotation on the rest. All the more when the victim is the Body of Christ, of which we claim to be a member. Through one sin, through one individual.
Broken relationships, biting words, falsehoods, dreams smashed, life extinguished, can all come about through one man. These small and big transgressions have one ending—death. Once it happens, how impotent we are to reverse its course or to fix it. The sins we commit without repentance are inviting death into our lives. How pitiful it is when we are blind to this demise and even more pathetic when we continue to harm ourselves and others with no sense of remorse.
St. Paul minces no words about how much harm the actions of just one man can cause. Neither does he abstain in the same passage about speaking about the goodness of God by sending his only begotten Son to save us from this calamity. “But the gift is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one the many died, how much more did the grace of God and the gracious gift of the one man Jesus Christ overflow for the many.”
Just as one man caused death and suffering, it is through one man, Jesus Christ, that life is restored. Through disobedience, one person has brought death; through the obedience of one, sin and death are destroyed.
It happened definitively and irrevocably in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, God’s only Son, the Word made flesh, who was raised from the dead. He sent his Spirit to continue the saving actions through his Church and his disciples.
And so, just as death came into the world through one, so life has come into the world through Christ. And as through human generation we inherited sin, it is through Jesus and His Spirit that we have been gifted life, changing our destiny from hopelessness to joy.
The gift is nothing like the transgression. The gift is what brings healing and reconciliation. The gift affords confidence and happiness that a sinful world can never supply.
It only takes one, and that one is Jesus Christ. With that promise, choose to be the one person bringing light and hope to those God has placed in your life.
To all fathers, Happy Father’s Day!
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