My sins are as plentiful and as terrible as the flies that plagued us on that Spring Day.
It is almost Summer and though the weather is warming up, we are still technically in the Spring season.
At the start of Spring every year, there is a sudden explosion of flies. Little flies seem to hatch during late September and early October each year, and cause a dreadful nuisance of themselves buzzing around during the increasingly warm Spring days.
The other day – during this fly explosion season – my family and I happened to take a day trip into the city. We spent the day wandering around the city streets. It was a lovely warm day and a lot of fun for the whole family. However, it just so happened that the timing of that little trip coincided with the huge outburst of flies…
And so there we were, wandering around the city of Sydney, rapidly showing the flies away as they landed their sticky little bodies on any part of our skin they could find.
And we were not the only people with a fly-problem that day. Every other person we passed was busy showing the flies away. One other family – in fact – had broken off some small branches of nearby trees and were rapidly fanning their faces with those branches as they wandered through the streets so that they could swish the flies away…
And I have been thinking about that day and about those flies…
You see, the flies on that day reminded me of sin. And just as we wandered around uselessly swishing at the flies and not actually managing to send them away, so too do sinners like me, wander around uselessly wishing that we sinned a little less.
And the wishing is as ineffectual as the swishing of the flies had been. And where I might have the best of intentions not to sin again, just as I might swish at the flies, those intentions will amount to nothing useful in preventing my sinfulness.
Rather, just as the people we passed had broken off small branches from trees that they passed, so too do Saints make changes – often drastic ones – to fight against the temptation to sin. And while those branches did not entirely eliminate the flies, their existence meant that it was certainly easier for the people using them to keep the flies away.
And I have been thinking about that today, because it seems that just as I did not bother using a branch to swish the flies away that day, I do not use anything to help me resist the temptation to sin. And when I think of the wealth of Heaven contained in the Blessed Sacraments, and my unwillingness to fully participate in those sacraments in a meaningful manner, then I hang my head in shame. For it seems that my sins are as plentiful and as terrible as the flies that plagued us on that Spring Day. And I shudder to think that I am causing my Beloved some pain because of this…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
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