Quite often, when people meet with tragedies in life, failures, illness and sufferings, their immediate conclusion is that God is punishing them for their sins.
This is not true because God does not desire us to suffer. He is not a vindictive God. Rather, He is a most compassionate and forgiving God. The Lord said, “Repent and turn from all your transgressions; otherwise iniquity will be your ruin. Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed against me, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! Why will you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, says the Lord God. Turn, then, and live.”
(Ez 18:30-32) In John’s gospel, Jesus said, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
(Jn 3:16)
So it is not true that God wants to inflict suffering on us. Rather, He wants to spare us from the punishment of sin.
When we sin, it is not so much that God is punishing us but sin that punishes us.
When we sin, it is not so much that God is punishing us but sin that punishes us.
St Paul wrote, “Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow. If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit.” (Gal 6:7f) Suffering is the consequence of our sins because it follows natural laws. As the Lord taught in the Sermon on the Mount, “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.” (Mt 7:12)
Jeremiah was sent by the Lord to warn his people of the imminent destruction of the Temple and the land if they did not repent. He repeated what he said earlier at the Temple, “The Lord himself sent me to say all the things you have heard against this Temple and this city. So now amend your behaviour and actions, listen to the voice of the Lord your God: if you do, he will relent and not bring down on you the disaster he has pronounced against you.” It was not true what the priests and prophets were accusing him of cursing the Temple and the city. He only warned them of the consequences so that if they repented, they would avoid the disasters. However, the religious leaders only focused on the bad news but not on the call to repentance. True enough, the Temple was eventually destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 BC and the priests and the prophets became beggars as they lost their positions.
King Herod Antipas also had to pay a huge price for his adulterous relationship with Herodias. By marrying Herodias, he brought a vicious woman into his life. The irony was that the woman he loved would be the woman who would ruin his life. By marrying her, he broke not just the law of the indissolubility of marriage; he broke the Mosaic Law of incest. (cf Lev 18:16; 20:21) Furthermore, by stealing his brother’s wife, he incurred the wrath both of the legal wife’s family and his brother as well. His wife, being a Nabatean Arab princess whom he married for political alliance to secure loyalty from the Nabatean subjects within his territory of Perea, now turned against him. He angered his father-in-law, the powerful Nabatean King Aretas. A war ensued and Herod was eventually defeated.
Most of all, Herod paid the price of a guilty conscience.When he heard about the influential ministry of Jesus, he said, “This is John the Baptist himself; he has risen from the dead, and that is why miraculous powers are at work in him.” The guilt of beheading a prophet of God whom he knew and recognized lay heavy on his shoulders. He carried this guilt all his life and it caused him to imagine that John the Baptist had come back to life to take revenge on him. Perhaps it could also be that John the Baptist, being the cousin of our Lord, also resembled Jesus and thus the confusion of identity. Regardless, it was his guilt that made him live in fear of punishment from God and retaliation from John.
We too are like King Herod. We have to pay a price for our sins and negligence.When we are irresponsible with our lives, we have to bear the consequences, whether it is with our studies, work or family life. When we do not study hard, all our peers will move forward in life whilst we are left behind. When we are negligent and slipshod in our work, we cannot expect to be promoted or have our salary increased. In fact, if the company does not dismiss us, we should be grateful for the compassion of our boss. However, saddest of all is that when we are irresponsible in our marriage and family life, we cause our family to break up and our spouse and children to leave us. This would be the most unforgivable mistake in our life. Above all, we will carry a guilty conscience for the rest of our life, unable to forgive ourselves because of what we have done or failed to do. We live in fear of God’s punishment and our conscience will have no peace even though we might try to suppress it. As a result, we hurt those whom we love besides ourselves.
However, this is not yet the biggest punishment for our sins. If we are carrying the consequences of our sins, and we learn from them, then the punishment has done us good.Indeed, as the author of Hebrews tells us, “Endure trials for the sake of discipline. God is treating you as children; for what child is there whom a parent does not discipline? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share his holiness. Now, discipline always seems painful rather than pleasant at the time, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” (Heb 12:7,10,11)
The real punishment of sin is sin itself. We grow in sinfulness if we do nothing to stop it.When we are blind, we will end up doing more harmful things to ourselves because we cannot see. So too when sin enters our heart, has a foothold in us, like cancer cells, it will grow from strength to strength. A person who denies God will only have himself to rely on. He becomes insecure and trusts no one but himself. This leads him to commit more crimes. He seeks to justify himself and rationalizes his evil deeds. Eventually, he becomes hostile to God and blind to the truth. We see this happening in the world. Secularism which denies God leads to relativism of values. This leads to materialism and a hedonistic life. Eventually, so consumed by the world and our sensuality, we forget that our spirit thirsts for fulfillment. It leads us to self-destruction and self-annihilation, the final step to take to end our misery.
We see this in Herod and Herodias, how one sin led to another sin.From his adulterous marriage with Herodias, he lived in guilt and shame. John the Baptist constantly reprimanded him for his immoral misconduct. This also caused tension in his relationship with Herodias on one hand, and tension with the first wife’s family. He failed to realize that Herodias was a vicious woman who could not tolerate the public shame that John the Baptist had done to her. She planned and connived with her daughter, Salome, to shamelessly dance before the King on his birthday. Herod was taken by surprise and was amused at the outrageous suggestive dancing of his step-daughter that he promised her any request she made. Instigated by her mother she said, “Give me John the Baptist’s head, here, on a dish.” Again, King Herod could have rejected the immoral request but he was a weak king with no values. He was more worried about how people might gauge him than whether he was doing the right thing. So “he ordered it to be given her, and sent and had John beheaded in the prison.”
The moral of today’s scripture lesson is that if we commit sin, we will have to bear the consequences of our sins. If we do not learn from the mistakes we have made, then our sins will cause us to sin even further, leading us from the frying pan into the fire. Perhaps the other great lesson we can learn is never to destroy the person whom we love. Herodias loved Herod but her love for Herod led her to cause Herod to sin further because of her vindictiveness. If we love someone, we must protect the person we love, that our love will not destroy him or her. This is true of parental love for their children and our love for our loved ones. By spoiling them, they do not grow in maturity and in love. We must love them rightly.
Jeremiah was sent by the Lord to warn his people of the imminent destruction of the Temple and the land if they did not repent. He repeated what he said earlier at the Temple, “The Lord himself sent me to say all the things you have heard against this Temple and this city. So now amend your behaviour and actions, listen to the voice of the Lord your God: if you do, he will relent and not bring down on you the disaster he has pronounced against you.” It was not true what the priests and prophets were accusing him of cursing the Temple and the city. He only warned them of the consequences so that if they repented, they would avoid the disasters. However, the religious leaders only focused on the bad news but not on the call to repentance. True enough, the Temple was eventually destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 BC and the priests and the prophets became beggars as they lost their positions.
King Herod Antipas also had to pay a huge price for his adulterous relationship with Herodias. By marrying Herodias, he brought a vicious woman into his life. The irony was that the woman he loved would be the woman who would ruin his life. By marrying her, he broke not just the law of the indissolubility of marriage; he broke the Mosaic Law of incest. (cf Lev 18:16; 20:21) Furthermore, by stealing his brother’s wife, he incurred the wrath both of the legal wife’s family and his brother as well. His wife, being a Nabatean Arab princess whom he married for political alliance to secure loyalty from the Nabatean subjects within his territory of Perea, now turned against him. He angered his father-in-law, the powerful Nabatean King Aretas. A war ensued and Herod was eventually defeated.
Most of all, Herod paid the price of a guilty conscience.When he heard about the influential ministry of Jesus, he said, “This is John the Baptist himself; he has risen from the dead, and that is why miraculous powers are at work in him.” The guilt of beheading a prophet of God whom he knew and recognized lay heavy on his shoulders. He carried this guilt all his life and it caused him to imagine that John the Baptist had come back to life to take revenge on him. Perhaps it could also be that John the Baptist, being the cousin of our Lord, also resembled Jesus and thus the confusion of identity. Regardless, it was his guilt that made him live in fear of punishment from God and retaliation from John.
We too are like King Herod. We have to pay a price for our sins and negligence.When we are irresponsible with our lives, we have to bear the consequences, whether it is with our studies, work or family life. When we do not study hard, all our peers will move forward in life whilst we are left behind. When we are negligent and slipshod in our work, we cannot expect to be promoted or have our salary increased. In fact, if the company does not dismiss us, we should be grateful for the compassion of our boss. However, saddest of all is that when we are irresponsible in our marriage and family life, we cause our family to break up and our spouse and children to leave us. This would be the most unforgivable mistake in our life. Above all, we will carry a guilty conscience for the rest of our life, unable to forgive ourselves because of what we have done or failed to do. We live in fear of God’s punishment and our conscience will have no peace even though we might try to suppress it. As a result, we hurt those whom we love besides ourselves.
However, this is not yet the biggest punishment for our sins. If we are carrying the consequences of our sins, and we learn from them, then the punishment has done us good.Indeed, as the author of Hebrews tells us, “Endure trials for the sake of discipline. God is treating you as children; for what child is there whom a parent does not discipline? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share his holiness. Now, discipline always seems painful rather than pleasant at the time, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” (Heb 12:7,10,11)
The real punishment of sin is sin itself. We grow in sinfulness if we do nothing to stop it.When we are blind, we will end up doing more harmful things to ourselves because we cannot see. So too when sin enters our heart, has a foothold in us, like cancer cells, it will grow from strength to strength. A person who denies God will only have himself to rely on. He becomes insecure and trusts no one but himself. This leads him to commit more crimes. He seeks to justify himself and rationalizes his evil deeds. Eventually, he becomes hostile to God and blind to the truth. We see this happening in the world. Secularism which denies God leads to relativism of values. This leads to materialism and a hedonistic life. Eventually, so consumed by the world and our sensuality, we forget that our spirit thirsts for fulfillment. It leads us to self-destruction and self-annihilation, the final step to take to end our misery.
We see this in Herod and Herodias, how one sin led to another sin.From his adulterous marriage with Herodias, he lived in guilt and shame. John the Baptist constantly reprimanded him for his immoral misconduct. This also caused tension in his relationship with Herodias on one hand, and tension with the first wife’s family. He failed to realize that Herodias was a vicious woman who could not tolerate the public shame that John the Baptist had done to her. She planned and connived with her daughter, Salome, to shamelessly dance before the King on his birthday. Herod was taken by surprise and was amused at the outrageous suggestive dancing of his step-daughter that he promised her any request she made. Instigated by her mother she said, “Give me John the Baptist’s head, here, on a dish.” Again, King Herod could have rejected the immoral request but he was a weak king with no values. He was more worried about how people might gauge him than whether he was doing the right thing. So “he ordered it to be given her, and sent and had John beheaded in the prison.”
The moral of today’s scripture lesson is that if we commit sin, we will have to bear the consequences of our sins. If we do not learn from the mistakes we have made, then our sins will cause us to sin even further, leading us from the frying pan into the fire. Perhaps the other great lesson we can learn is never to destroy the person whom we love. Herodias loved Herod but her love for Herod led her to cause Herod to sin further because of her vindictiveness. If we love someone, we must protect the person we love, that our love will not destroy him or her. This is true of parental love for their children and our love for our loved ones. By spoiling them, they do not grow in maturity and in love. We must love them rightly.
𝐇𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐚 𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐝𝐚𝐲,
𝐒𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐬....
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