Even thought Lent is a few weeks away, it is not too early to begin to prepare ourselves to enter into the true spirit of this sacred season. A major focus of this penitential time is the uprooting of sin in our lives. In an October 1946 Radio Message to the Participants in the National Catechetical Congress of the United States in Boston, Pope Pius XII spoke a prophetic word: "Perhaps the greatest sin in the world today is that men have begun to lose the sense of sin." 

Early in his pontificate, on January 1, 2014, Pope Francis echoed his predecessor in a homily, when he said: "When you lose the sense of sin, you lose the sense of the kingdom of God."

Personally, have I lost a sense of sin? Have I allowed the infection of sin to cause a spiritual cancer in my life, which I leave untreated? Have I become comfortable with certain habitual sins in my life? Have my moral standards changed to fit the current cultural acceptances of previously inappropriate behavior? Is there an objective moral truth or is morality left to subjective interpretation?

Lent is a time to confront the reality of sin in my own life, seeing sin for what it is: an abomination before God.