Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever
The days will come when there will not be a stone upon a stone that will not be thrown down.
Our Lord here foretells the destruction of the temple at the hands of the Romans which took place in the year 70 AD.
And years earlier, years earlier, precisely to prevent that, to prevent the Romans from coming and destroying the nation, the high priest that advised the Sanhedrin to condemn Jesus.
It is better for one man to unjustly die than for the whole nation to be destroyed.
And that's what the Sanhedrin did.
They put our Lord to death to prevent the Romans from destroying their nation.
But the Romans did it anyway.
Why?
Because doing evil to prevent evil never works.
Sinning to prevent evil never works.
Sinning for any purpose never works.
It's difficult for the faithful to grasp this, I mean to grasp it really practically speaking, to really live your life according to that truth that God does not need sin for anything.
We don't need sin for anything.
It's really difficult to live our life coherently according to that principle.
It's difficult, it's difficult even for priests to act coherently according to that principle, to that principle.
That's why the faithful sometimes hear from priests things along the lines of like, yeah, you can and maybe even should commit adultery to prevent some greater evil.
You hear that.
Or the faithful sometimes hear, yeah, you can, and you should attend and celebrate your child's, your son's pseudo marriage, and I say pseudo marriage, one of these situations in which there is a divorce and a so-called remarriage or a so-called same-sex marriage.
Yeah, you can, and you should celebrate that to prevent some greater evil from happening.
Unfortunately, not abstract examples.
And for venial sin, ooh, it's even worse, you know, we can think of ourselves how many times we think that theoretically, yeah, sin never, but in this instance, it just fixes the problem, so I'll do it and confess it later.
This lie that I'm going to tell, it really is going to fix the problem, so I'll do it.
I'll confess it later.
You know, this little act of revenge, man, it'll really solve the problem.
I'm going to do it, confess it later.
Or in prayer, distractions, right?
Oh, this thought, it's weird that I'm getting this inspiration right there in prayer, but I'm just going to get distracted for a few minutes and then pray better next time because this distraction really just solves my problems.
Wow, maybe that's most frequently something that we can relate to.
And it's weird because we don't think that if a thought comes from God, so this is just about the example of distractions.
If a thought really comes from God, we shouldn't be afraid of losing it by turning all the more to God.
The more we focus on God, the more we'll find that thought.
And if it doesn't come from God, is it good in the first place?
Well, again, that tests our practical conviction of whether we really think we need sin or not.
Not theoretically, but practically speaking, do we need it or not?
Again, it's difficult for us to form that conviction.
And yet, at least in theory, it's so simple, then we need to experience it to see how true it is.
But in theory, if sin is against God's will and God's will is the only good thing for us, how can it ever be good for us to go against God's will?
That's what sin is.
I don't know, but in this situation, this really fixes my problem, so I'll do it, and I'll confess it later.
Unfortunately, we have that incoherence in life, especially when it comes to venial sin.
So I preach about it to remind myself of it, of course, because if it's already a conviction that we have, we need to constantly strengthen ourselves in that conviction.
Strengthen it theoretically, but also by experience, by avoiding evil, even the least evil, even the least sin at all costs.
To strengthen it theoretically and experientially.
It's difficult to be convinced of this.
I'll keep trying to convince people of this and to strengthen people's convictions about this.
And of course, in the end, it's something that we can grasp only through grace.
So may Our Lady, the Immaculate Mediatrix of all graces, pray for us and give us this conviction, and help us to live our lives in accordance with it.
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.