EXPERIENȚA ȘI DISCERNĂMÂNTUL PATRISTIC CU PRIVIRE LA BOALA PĂCATULUI

Abstract

By losing the sense of dependence on God, contemporary man inexorably
loses the sense of sin. In reality, the sense of God and the sense of sin are intimately
linked in consciousness, because only in the face of God does man discover and feel
himself a profound sinner and because only in the face of God the Father does man
realize that he has sinned, that is, that he has failed in the love of God, violating a law
that transcends him, which is not an invention and to which he must obey. This is why
the sense of God and the sense of sin stand together or fall together. It is clear that
when God is erased or absent from consciousness, sin is no longer felt as such: at most it
remains there as an obscure feeling of guilt, but not as sin, which necessarily implies an
explicit reference to God and to a transcendent and heteronomous law. The process of
secularization, at the same time as it affected man’s sense of God, also affected the sense
of sin. Unable to eliminate sin as easily as he eliminated God, because sin is too human
a reality to deny, man secularized it, reducing it to a feeling of guilt and, ultimately,
to a mental illness. This is also the reason why psychoanalysis and psychiatry have
taken the official place of confession and spiritual guidance for many. Many people
today feel truly good, free and happy in this secularized world, without God. They do
not live against God, they do not harbor resentment against faith or against believers.
They live in an atheism that is anything but a militant anti‑theism, they are irreligious,
true “gentlemen“; in their thoughts and in their lives God occupies no place. They are
splendid pagans, perhaps at the peak of their professional lives, and also excellent,
helpful and exemplary neighbors, but as far as God is concerned, there are no signs of
his presence in their minds and lives. In reality, the mystery of sin is revealed to man
only when he places himself before God: by looking and allowing himself to be looked at
the situations of his life from the point of view of his relationship with God.