The Hopelessness of Sin by Jorge Mario Bergoglio

WE NEED TO MEDITATE on what is the fundamental contradiction of our lives: the opposition between God's desire to integrate us firmly into his Church and the sinfulness that destroys our relationship to the Lord and to our holy Mother the hierarchical Church. Conscious of our humble state, let us enter into this meditation by realizing we are "the People of God immersed in the world, and often tempted by idols. As God's people we always need to hear the proclamation of the ‘mighty works of God' (Acts 2: 11) which first converted us to the Lord; we always need to be called together afresh by him and reunited" (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 15). Our humility is born of our consciousness of how seriously and how frequently we have sinned against the Gospel.

In this meditation, let us ask the Lord for the grace to realize how our sin puts limits on holy Mother Church's power to reach out to people, for she is "a universal Church without boundaries or frontiers except, alas, those of the heart and mind of sinful man" (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 61). Our sin is not ours alone; rather, it affects the whole Church. By our sin we obscure her holiness; we make the Church less fruitful and less disciplined. Let us ask for the grace to "experience the emptiness of all idols" (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 26), especially those that are found within "the frequent situations of dechristianization in our day" (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 52). These situations, in which we ourselves take part, attack our faith, which "is nearly always exposed today to secularism, even to militant atheism. It is a faith exposed to trials and threats, and even more, a faith besieged and actively opposed. It runs the risk of perishing from suffocation or starvation if it is not fed and sustained each day" (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 54).