Daily Reading for February 5 • The Martyrs of Japan, 1597
Shrove Tuesday calls us to think about sin in preparation for the season of repentance, yet the tradition of revelry associated with Mardi Gras militates against deadly seriousness. Can we let ourselves into the subject of sin a little lightly?
Ogden Nash has a delightful poem called “Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man” that explores comically the classic distinction between sins of commission and sins of omission. He warns us not to bother our heads about the first kind, “because however sinful, they must at least be fun or else you wouldn’t be committing them.” It is through the sins of omission that we get bitten. These are the things that “lay eggs under our skin.” What we do wrong is often less harmful than our failure to do good. Our wrongdoing is so often powered by an energy that can be converted to good. The secret of sin does not lie in our energetic but misdirected action; it lies in our inertia and forgetfulness, in our inner deadness, denial, and boredom. The secret of hell lies in our not loving, in our not risking, in our withholding. Evil is our paralysis in the face of love’s invitation, our great refusal.
From “What Shall We Do For Lent?” in Nativities and Passions: Words for Transformation by Martin L. Smith (Cowley Publications, 1995).