The loss of the "sense of sin"


 

Jesus Christ made the Holy Spirit fully known to us as a Person distinct from the Father and the Son, as the personal Love within the Most Blessed Trinity, which is the source and model of all created love.


The Spirit is present in all the actions of Jesus, but it will be at the Last Supper when the Lord speaks of Him more clearly, as a Person distinct from the Father and the Son, and very close to the Redemption of the world. Jesus refers to Him as a paraclete or counselor, that is, an advocate and comforter. The word paraclete was used in the profane Greek world to refer to a person called to assist or speak for another, especially in legal proceedings. The Holy Spirit therefore has a particular mission with regard to the judgment of one's own conscience and that other very special judgment of Confession, in which the accused is forever absolved of his faults and filled with a new richness.

Divine mercy, which is exercised by this mysterious and salvific action of the Holy Spirit, "finds in the man who finds himself in this condition (of lack of openness to the action of grace) an interior resistance, like an impermeability of conscience, a state of mind that could be said to be consolidated by reason of a free choice: it is what Sacred Scripture usually calls hardness of heart (cf. Ps 81:13; Jer 7:24; Mk 3:5). In our time, this attitude of mind and heart perhaps corresponds to the loss of the sense of sin .


The opposite of hardness of heart is gentleness of conscience, which the soul has when it abhors all sin, even venial sin, and tries to be docile to the inspirations and graces of the Holy Spirit, which are countless throughout the day. When one has a healthy sense of smell in the soul," St. Augustine remarked, "he immediately perceives the bad odor of sins. " Are we sensitive to the offenses done to God? Do we react promptly to our faults and sins?


Hablar con Dios