The Holy Innocents, Martyrs
1 John 1:5—2:2  +  Matthew 2:13-18

If we say, “We have not sinned,” we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

There are two ways to remove sin from people’s lives.  The first, as the Beloved Disciple preaches in today’s First Reading, is to bring one’s sins before God so that the Blood of Jesus might wash them away.  The second is to claim that there neither is nor ever has been any such thing as sin.

The modern world that surrounds us seeks credibility by claiming that there is no such thing as sin.  Some moderns go so far as to claim that there is nothing spiritual at all in existence:  not even God.  Sin and the Almighty are nothing but fables, they claim.

Yet if nothing spiritual exists, then love does not exist.  Pure love is nothing if not spiritual.  Love can take certain material forms, of course, such as loving words or loving works.  Yet pure love is what animates those words and works, and pure love is what can endure after words grow silent and works fade.  This love, the Beloved Disciple explains to us in his epistles, is who God Himself is.  It is this love Who, if “we acknowledge our sins,” will “cleanse us from every wrongdoing.”