Sin is costly.

As I live adulthood, I realize how my views on life evolve, as they should. One thing I have learned is that life lived in God has its challenges. It is still worth the adventure and sacrifice. Life apart from God is often filled with anxiety and uncertainty.

Many good people give in to distractions. They want the newest phone to consume all their time. They stay at a job that provides anxiety and stress. They hold on to toxic relationships. In the Letter of James, it is explicit that there are wealthy people. These people have allowed their wealth to withhold a just wage from the farmer. They fill their lives with luxury. They also condemn the righteous. Augustine of Hippo points out these greedy people when he said, “Lovers of the world … who are kept from good works by some evil desire, lie sick and listless, and it is this sickness that deprives them of any strength to accomplish good works.” This sin and greed for wealth will devour flesh like fire.

Sin makes us slaves to ourselves. We must reawaken our senses to sin. We need to cut off these things that do not make us accessible to love and serve God. We need to reach out to God who is the only one who can fight our interior battles. Jesus, while graphic in his imagery today, speaks about a spiritual reality for those consumed by sin.

Those consumed by sin go to Gehenna with their two feet and two eyes. Historically, Gehenna is the southern valley outside Jerusalem linked to idolatrous practice. In Gehenna, people sacrificed children to the god Moloch, a Canaanite god. In the Mosaic law, worship of Moloch was explicitly forbidden (Leviticus 18:21). The spiritual understanding of Gehenna evolved into the spiritual place of the damned. Gehenna is the ultimate consequence of choosing sin and rejecting God’s love and mercy.

To reject sin is to choose God. The psalmist proclaims, “The precepts of the Lord give joy to the heart.” A precept is a command meant to guide or regulate behavior. It comes from the Latin praeceptum, which translates to foresee or to instruct. There is joy when I internalize the precepts of the Lord in my heart. In the last strophe, the psalmist desires a detachment from sin. He declares, “From wanton sin especially, restrain your servant; let it not rule over me. Then shall I be blameless and innocent of serious sin.”

When one clings to the precepts of the Lord, you find security and life. Psalm 1 gives this imagery of being rooted like a strong tree:

Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, Nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in company with scoffers. Rather, the law of the LORD is his joy; and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted near streams of water, that yields its fruit in season; Its leaves never wither; whatever he does prospers. But not so are the wicked, not so! They are like chaff driven by the wind. Therefore the wicked will not arise at the judgment, nor will sinners in the assembly of the just. Because the LORD knows the way of the just, but the way of the wicked leads to ruin.

The psalmist offers two ways of life. Living in God by being rooted in him or being uprooted by the winds of life, finding no stability, wandering that leads to ruin.

If we want life, stability, and security, we must turn to Jesus who is always waiting with immense patience and love. His cross is the tree of Psalm 1. The fruit of Mary’s womb is the fruit of the cross, where we find new life and baptismal waters that refresh us for the Eucharistic celebration. Let us run to Jesus, who awaits us in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Let us run to Jesus, who lives in our hearts. This is the greatest journey of life … the journey within.