Tonight in Bible study we tried to focus on the book of Numbers. There is a really interesting parallel in this book over how God handled "venial" sin and "mortal" sin before Jesus and how now after Jesus we are lucky to have the amazing sacrament on confession....
In the book of Numbers 15:22-31 it talks about how the people are to be punished due to which level of seriousness of their betrayal.... If a community or a person inadvertently does something wrong without truly knowing what they are doing is wrong then the whole community, or the person that did the fault, has to offer a holocaust of one bull to be forgiven of that fault.... If a person knowingly realizes the seriousness of their fault and does it anyway then he is to be cut off from the community.... In the next section of that chapter verses 32-36 it speaks about a man who did indeed do something on purpose ended up being stoned to death through the orders of God to Moses and Aaron.
After Jesus came He brought to us the sacrament of confession. Even though both venial sin and mortal sin harms us spiritually as they did before, Jesus gave us a way of mercy... We are blessed to have the Sacrament of Reconciliation today. I for one find it very helpful and spiritually reviving to receive that sacrament on an annual basis. I do not know what I would do without it.
It was a very interesting Bible study night, as usual.
2 comments:
I so wish I could be there for these Bible studies. I love the book of Numbers. I am making my way through the OT right now and am simply amazed at how awesome so much of it is!
Yes, we are lucky to have this sacrament. I can't make it more than two weeks without it. There's a rumor that our Pope goes to confession every single day.
Mike
Mike,
I wish you could be there for them too... I think you would find them really interesting. There were eleven of us there tonight, which was a really nice crowd. I forgot how much I missed them over Christmas break.
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