WE HAVE to be most aware of this condition in our life here on earth. For as long as we live, we will always have some conflict in our inner selves as described vividly by no less than St. Paul. Considering that St. Paul was already a very fervent, active and holy apostle, we can just imagine how we will fare.
It might be worthwhile to quote the whole passage in St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans where this description is made, so that we can be prepared to deal with this condition of ours and try to do something about it with God’s grace. To wit, he said:
“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.
“For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.
“What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature, a slave to the law of sin.”
Let us hope that with these words, we can feel reassured somehow that what we experience when we find ourselves precisely wanting to do what we know we should not do, is nothing to be surprised about. We should not waste too much time getting sad because of it and lamenting over it.
We just have to accept that fact of life and instead make it the reason to know more and to be consistent with God’s law, if not, to get closer to God himself through Christ in the Holy Spirit. We just have to help one another instead of wasting time blaming each other for whatever damage and inconvenience our sins may cause.
Fact is we are all sinners, no matter how saintly and holy we want to be. Precisely, St. John in his first letter said as much: “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” (1, 8)
This does not mean that we should just be cavalier about our proneness to sin. We should fight sin as much as we can. We should struggle against temptations whenever they come. But when we fall in spite of our efforts, we have to know that there is always hope, and that God somehow allows us to fall for some reason. He can always derive a greater good out of the misery we can suffer in this life.
We have to let people know about the proper attitude we ought to have toward this condition of our inner conflict. Without this proper attitude, the devil would have a heyday taking advantage of our weakness.
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Fr. Roy Cimagala is the Chaplain of the Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise, Talamban, Cebu City (roycimagala@gmail.com)/PN
