Avoiding Near Occasions of Sin

July 20th Readings Reflection: Saturday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Today’s Gospel tells of Jesus’ healing many people who were following Him. Meanwhile the Pharisees, with hardened hearts, were plotting how to kill Jesus. As He “cured” the multitudes of people who thronged about Him, Jesus “warned them not to make [H]im known.”

This is something we hear often throughout the Gospels; when He performed miracles for individual people, Our Lord often ordered them not to tell anyone about it. This can be difficult to understand, for we know that Jesus came into the world to spread the gospel of salvation and call all men to repentance. Why, then, would He not want people to know about His healing the sick and driving out demons, since these miracles demonstrate His divinity?

The Fathers of the Church taught that the reason for Our Lord’s request was to “remove from the Pharisees all opportunity of sin,” to quote St. Jerome’s own words. The Pharisees hardened their hearts every time they heard of a miracle that Jesus had performed, and they would use every opportunity they could get to plan His death. Sacred Scripture tells us that God does not “will that a sinner should die…and not…be converted from his ways” (Ezek 18:23 DRB). Our Lord did not want the Pharisees to sin, and thus He strove to remove from them as many occasions of sin as possible. Christ knows all things, and He thus knew that the Pharisees would remain unrepentant and ultimately put Him to death; however, He nonetheless wanted to give the Pharisees every opportunity to repent and avoid sin.

Our Lord’s example is one that we should follow in our own lives and circumstances. We must avoid being a near occasion of sin to others, and we must avoid all near occasions of sin to ourselves. A near occasion of sin is any person, place, or thing that is likely to lead us into sin.

Avoiding near occasions of sin often requires sacrifice on our part; like the people in today’s Gospel who wanted to share the joyous news of their healing, we must sometimes avoid doing something for which we earnestly long. Sometimes, we must even sacrifice a friendship for the sake of preserving our soul. Perhaps this person makes us doubt our Faith in a serious way or makes demands of us that endanger our purity or the practice of our Faith. Whatever the case may be, if we judge a certain person to be a near occasion of sin to us, we must do all that we can to avoid this near occasion of sin as much as possible.

Avoiding near occasions of sin is never easy, but we must do so in order to avoid falling into sin. The temporal sufferings of this life are nothing compared to an eternity of torments in Hell. Like the people in today’s Gospel whom Jesus commanded to remain silent in order to avoid causing the Pharisees to sin, may we always be willing to sacrifice our desires rather than endanger our souls.

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