A Homily for the First Sunday of Lent
Readings: Genesis 2:7-9; 3:1-7  Romans 5:12-19  Matthew 4:1-11

A man steals a loaf of bread. He needs to feed his sister’s seven hungry children. In Victor Hugo’s massive morality tale, Les Misérables, Jean Valjean is sentenced to five years in prison for the crime. But because he repeatedly tries to escape, he serves a total of 19 years.

You cannot preach salvation without explaining sin. What does salvation from sin mean? What is sin? What lamentable facet of human life does it bespeak? 

The Catechism of the Catholic Church identifies sin as:

an offense against reason, truth, and right conscience; it is failure in genuine love for God and neighbor caused by a perverse attachment to certain goods. It wounds the nature of man and injures human solidarity. It has been defined as “an utterance, a deed, or a desire contrary to the eternal law” (No. 1849).

By this standard, Jean Valjean commits a crime, but he does not sin. Sound reasoning tells us that the preservation of life is more important than the value of a loaf of bread. We must distinguish between human law, which cannot possibly cover every contingency, and divine law, which is based on “reason, truth, and right conscience.”

So, for example, while someone might violate a country’s legitimate laws on immigration, we cannot ascribe evil to the action without consideration of the circumstances. For who among us would not violate such a human law to save our family’s life? 

The catechism views the actions of Adam and Eve as the clearest example of sin.

Sin is an offense against God: “Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done that which is evil in your sight.” Sin sets itself against God’s love for us and turns our hearts away from it. Like the first sin, it is disobedience, a revolt against God through the will to become “like gods,” knowing and determining good and evil. Sin is thus “love of oneself even to contempt of God.” In this proud self-exaltation, sin is diametrically opposed to the obedience of Jesus, which achieves our salvation (No. 1850).

The world God created reflects God’s own goodness. It is only when we subvert that goodness, that good ordering, that we sin, that we choose something other than God. 

The catechism also links awareness of sin to the gift of conversion. 

Conversion requires convincing of sin; it includes the interior judgment of conscience, and this, being a proof of the action of the Spirit of truth in man’s inmost being, becomes at the same time the start of a new grant of grace and love: “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Thus in this “convincing concerning sin” we discover a double gift: the gift of the truth of conscience and the gift of the certainty of redemption. The Spirit of truth is the Consoler (No. 1848).

Sin so distorts reality that we lose our ability to see what is real, to recognize the ruptures in our world. The “new grant of grace and love” who is Christ reveals both our sinfulness and the offer of salvation. Put another way, you do not know that you need a savior until he arrives, until you see the promise of a new world in his eyes.

When he is finally released from prison, Jean Valjean tries to re-enter society. He takes a job unloading bales, but because he is a former convict, he is only paid half of what he has been promised. 

Here is the church’s other great doctrine on sin: It is, as we say, “original.” It is larger than us, inherent in the life to which we are born, the humanity we join. We are sinned against before we ever decide to sin. 

Jean Valjean receives a night’s shelter and a meal in the home of a pious priest. Convinced that society will never set him free, he steals a set of silverware. Arrested again, he is brought to the priest so that his identity might be verified. 

But in God’s providence, Jean Valjean, who knows so well what sin—his own and others—means for his life, is about to learn that he has a savior. The man Valjean thought was a simple priest is the bishop, someone who confounds both guards and prisoner.

“Ah! here you are!” he exclaimed, looking at Jean Valjean. “I am glad to see you. Well, but how is this? I gave you the candlesticks too, which are of silver like the rest, and for which you can certainly get two hundred francs. Why did you not carry them away with your forks and spoons?”

Jean Valjean opened his eyes wide, and stared at the venerable Bishop with an expression which no human tongue can render any account of. “Monseigneur,” said the brigadier of gendarmes, “so what this man said is true, then? We came across him. He was walking like a man who is running away. We stopped him to look into the matter. He had this silver—”

“And he told you,” interposed the Bishop with a smile, “that it had been given to him by a kind old fellow of a priest with whom he had passed the night? I see how the matter stands. And you have brought him back here? It is a mistake.”

“In that case,” replied the brigadier, “we can let him go?”

“Certainly,” replied the Bishop.

One could say that sin knew Jean Valjean before he knew it. Because it is “original” to human life, it seized him and his family. Stealing bread to bar starvation was not a sin, but the societal punishment it carried hardened Valjean’s heart. It set him against all order, all truth, even God’s own. Yet the man only sees sin for what it is when he sees his savior in the person of the old bishop. 

The gendarmes retired.

Jean Valjean was like a man on the point of fainting.

The Bishop drew near to him, and said in a low voice:

“Do not forget, never forget, that you have promised to use this money in becoming an honest man.”

Jean Valjean, who had no recollection of ever having promised anything, remained speechless. The Bishop had emphasized the words when he uttered them. He resumed with solemnity:—

“Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I buy from you; I withdraw it from black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God.”

On this first Sunday of Lent, we are asked to look again at sin, to see what it does to our lives. The twisted consciousness we call “sin” says that the world must be this way. It is “us against the world” until, by the grace of God, we encounter the savior who tells us of a world, both ancient and still awakening. The world is not meant to be as it is. Not for me, or you, or anyone else.

The Rev. Terrance W. Klein is a priest of the Diocese of Dodge City and author of Vanity Faith.