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Question

Hello Father,

I wanted to ask you if it is possible that some of our errors that distance us from communion with the Lord can reflect on others.

Answer from the priest

Dear Son,

1. Yes, this is clear from Holy Scripture.

Adam’s sin had repercussions on all of humanity, which is still suffering its consequences.

Furthermore, sin opens a breach for our adversary. In the book of Job, Satan accuses God as he is not able to have negative power over Job, because God had surrounded him with his protection like a hedge (Job 1:10). This hedge is a symbol of grace.

When we deprive ourselves of grace, we open the door to our adversary who “comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy” (Jn 10:10).

2. Now, in various ways those close to us can feel the effects of this devastation wrought by the devil.

Sometimes it is seen in a tangible and external way, as when someone loses money by gambling and throws his family into poverty.

Or for those who end up in prison because of a serious injustice so that their whole family is struck by shame and dishonor.

Sometimes our sin, causing nervousness or intractability in those who commit it, also makes other people who must put up with us pay the price.

3. Then there is another aspect of the reflection of our sins highlighted by John Paul II in Reconciliatio et paenitentia when he speaks of social sin.

It is an invisible but real reflection.

This saint Pope says that we must “recognize that by virtue of a human solidarity that is as mysterious and imperceptible as it is real and concrete, the sin of each person has repercussions in some way on the other ones. This is the other side of that solidarity which, on a religious level, develops in the profound and magnificent mystery of the communion of saints, thanks to which it was possible to say that “every soul that elevates itself also elevates the world” (Elisabetta Leseur).

Unfortunately, a law of descent corresponds to this law of ascent, so that we can speak of a communion in sin by which a soul who debases itself because of sin debases with itself the Church and, in some way, the whole world.

In other words, there is no sin, even the most intimate and secret, the most strictly individual, that exclusively concerns the one who commits it.

Every sin has repercussions, with greater or lesser vehemence, with greater or lesser damage, on the entire ecclesial structure and on the entire human family.

According to this (first) meaning, each sin can indisputably be attributed the character of social sin” (RP 17).

4. It can also happen that the sin committed is so serious as to cause a profound deprivation of grace which also affects others.

For example: the sin of the pharaoh who had ordered the extermination of the newborn male Jews; death will have a negative reflection on all the people: the death of all the firstborn of the Egyptians.

The pharaoh, by depriving himself of grace, deprived of its defenses also the people who had obeyed him.

Only the midwives who had made objections of conscience were spared (Ex 1,17.21).

5. So also David, for the serious sin that he had committed (cf. 2 Sam 12:9), deprived his house of the divine blessing and opened it to the incursions of the common adversary.

This is the meaning of what we read: “But since you have utterly spurned the LORD by this deed, the child born to you must surely die” (2 Sam 12:14).

6. It is not a matter of bringing up God’s punishment. This language, which is present in Sacred Scripture, is always an anthropomorphic language. And therefore, it must be translated.

The reality, instead, is this: man is always the architect of his own ills, directly or indirectly.

He is an indirect cause when through sin he opens himself up to the devastation wrought by Satan.

7. Instead, it is true that God, precisely to counter the action of Satan and even though we are so eager to open the door to him, sends the Angels and in particular our Guardian Angel to help in our defense and protection.

But sometimes man does not accept, on the contrary, he rejects the help that comes from Heaven. By withdrawing from grace, he remains without defense for himself and for others. And with supreme foolishness he unwittingly prefers to surrender himself to his enemy, who comes only “to steal and slaughter and destroy” (Jn 10:10).

With the hope that you will always be protected by the hedge that guarded Job (Job 1:10), I assure you of my prayers and I bless you.

Father Angelo