various calamities (i.e. sins)
Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy,
for we have had more than enough of contempt,
Too much of the scorn of the indolent rich,
and of the derision of the proud.
Psalm 123
When we pray and think about sin, it can be helpful to recall the Church’s traditional teaching about the two varieties: mortal sin vs. venial sin. Mortal sins work deliberately against the will and goodness of God and compromise the state of the soul. Venial sins chip away at our dignity – less frightening, maybe, than the other sort, but damaging when we let them pile up.
But I also think of sin in terms of two different species. I call these the “far country sins” and the “neighborhood sins.” Rather than being static lists of which deviance fits where, these two categories look different for each of us.
Far country sins are things we don’t immediately associate with our own struggles or brokenness. Murder, for example, isn’t a temptation for me. Best as I try, I cannot recall a singular minute where I was genuinely experiencing a desire to kill. This sin is in the “far country” for me. I don’t think about it much. I don’t really worry about it in the immediate circumstances of my heart’s own lesser tendencies. Maybe a different sin is in the far country for you.
Neighborhood sins are the sins that live close by. They may even live next-door to us. We see them every day, and perhaps we even invite them in. We know the intimacies of their lawn ornaments or the junk they’ve left on their porch. We may wave at them as we get the mail or go about our morning trek to the car, the bus, or the subway. Whether we greet them daily, weekly, or otherwise, they are familiar to us, and we know their names.
Note that the difference here between far country sins and neighborhood sins is no question of severity. Murder could be a far country sin for me and a neighborhood sin for someone else. It is a question of spiritual real estate: what lives where, and what is the distance between our soul and a sin’s particular heart of darkness.
All of that to say: today at Mass, I was struck by verse four of the appointed 123rd psalm. “Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy. For we have had more than enough of contempt.” The contempt in question is revealed in verse five to be that of the “indolent rich” and “the proud” whose derision has burdened the speaker to a point of breakage. Too much. Too awful. Too humiliating to bear. Lord, have mercy.
Contempt, I think, is all too common a neighborhood sin. It languishes with its brother, bitterness, in familiar places all too easy to forget to tend. Contempt – in its recreational form – is gossip. In its higher evolutions, it is like warfare via poison.
The most insidious sins aren’t the sins that clip the flowers or trample the harvest, but the sins that contaminate the soil. Some sins are devastating indeed, but God does not waste any opportunity to help us learn from them. The only real devastation is when nothing at all can grow. Bitterness and contempt are poisoned seeds. They turn us inward, cut us off from others and from God, and disrupt the appointed order of divine authority. Nothing can grow there.
Contempt is a deliberate refusal to recognize the dignity of others. It places oneself above another, and as harmless as it may seem, it lures our spirits quickly toward desolation. It presumes that we possess an authority for judgement that belongs only to God, and it forecloses any opportunity for genuine relationship. How can we know another whom we have already presumed unworthy? How can we respect the dignity of a person whose dignity we have refused to recognize?
The Holy Spirit is always in the business of liberating and building. It frees us from limited vision. It builds bonds of kinship and affection between people and between God and creation. Freedom. Relationship. Affinity. Peace. Fruitfulness. These are the abundance of the Holy Spirit.
Contempt is human desecration of the Holy Spirit’s authority and desire. It impedes affection and reverence, and it hardens the hearts of those who cling to it. It is a land of barren imagination and petty tyranny. Nothing at all can grow there.
Happily, Psalm 123 provides the antidote right away: “Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy.”
While God’s mercy soothes all sins, I think it is a particular joy that contempt is something we can turn over him, whether we are its victims or its perpetrators. When we cannot break free from it, when our hearts are consumed by it, when we are barely even willing to recognize that it is contempt from which we are suffering, it is always already our sweet and present Lord who meets us and shakes us free.
Mercy waits for each of us. Our God is greatest compassion. Freedom in the expanse of his own heart is our natural condition, and when sins - far country or otherwise - send us wandering, we need only to ask to come home.