 | Charlie Traffas has been involved in marketing, media, publishing and insurance for more than 40 years. In addition to being a fully-licensed life, health, property and casualty agent, he is also President and Owner of Chart Marketing, Inc. (CMI). CMI operates and markets several different products and services that help B2B and B2C businesses throughout the country create customers...profitably. You may contact Charlie by phone at (316) 721-9200, by e-mail at ctraffas@chartmarketing.com, or you may visit at www.chartmarketing.com. |
Religion
2004-06-01 09:59:00
Why repent when you’re going to commit the same sins again?
: What's the point of repenting your sins when you just know you will commit the same sins over and over again?
ANSWER: Repentance means to feel remorse or regret for something done or not done. It includes contrition: sorrow for having done wrong; to change one's mind concerning a past action. And it includes a detestation of the offense committed, along with the resolution to not commit that sin again. God creates human beings, each with a free will, and provides commandments and directives about how to use that will freely and correctly. But that freedom includes also the freedom to abuse God's gifts. Knowing that humans are weak and prone to evil from birth, God nevertheless provides a remedy for sin, namely repentance. Repentance ought to be sincere. This means that at the time of repentance the person is not only sorry, but also rejects that sin and intends to not repeat it. Often it happens that gradually this repentance is forgotten or ignored. Under the pressures of passion or the urging of other persons, the once-repentant individual again and again and again and again commits the same sins. These later sins do not void the earlier acts of repentance. Jesus and his Apostles and the Church urges the sinner to repent again and again and again, even if they are prone to repeat sinful actions. The point of repentance is the continuing struggle of a weak individual to please God. Human existence involves many struggles, not least the struggle between good and evil, between virtue and vice. The Bible reminds us that "even a just person sins seven times a day." While that is an exaggeration, it does convey the truth that humans are prone to evil. Yet God in his mercy is willing to forgive again and again and again. Repeated acts of repentance help the individual sinner to recognize his/her weakness and their dependence on God. Repeated acts of repentance help an individual to diminish the frequency of sinning, and gradually to arrive at that blessed state of union with God, where there is no more sin.As old age creeps upon a person, there takes place in our body a lessening of the passions and urges for sin. Still, we continue to practice repentance, expressing to God our sorrow for past sins; and also we ought to express to our neighbors: our regret for any hurts or injustice we might have inflicted on them in the past. Such acts of repentance and reconciliation prepare the soul for the life of heaven, where there is no need for regret, nor any enmity or offense; because in heaven all sins and offenses will have been repented and forgiven. If an individual person is so proud or arrogant as to assume they have never sinned and need not repent, that person can only go to hell, to join all the damned who died unrepentant. In hell they experience eternal regret and pain, but then it is too late for repentance. Good parents, teachers and guardians teach their children and pupils to pray every night, before they go to sleep, a prayer of repentance: "O my God, I am sorry for having offended You, and I detest all my sins: because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell. But, most of all, because they have offended you, my God, who are all-good and deserving of all my love."
