Last week, we spoke about the dangers of “scrupulosity” — which we defined as a kind of spiritual sickness where we become so obsessive, so particular, and so anxious over what we perceive to be potential sins, that we drive ourselves absolutely nuts, and end up believing EVERYTHING we do is somehow offensive to God. This is obviously NOT the Gospel…NOT the Good News! It’s just another form of spiritual slavery that Jesus absolutely wants to rescue us from!!!

This week, I’d like to address the OPPOSITE extreme — which is probably just as prevalent, if not more so perhaps these days. I am referring to another spiritual sickness where we try to convince ourselves that pretty much NOTHING we do is all that sinful, and very nearly NOTHING is very offensive to God… and thus NOTHING is capable of actually damaging our relationship with Him!

This spiritual sickness is called “laxity.”

The word “lax” originates from a Latin root meaning “looseness” or “slackness” — it’s also related to the word for “wideness.”

Jesus, we recall, tells us very clearly: “The gate is ‘wide’ and the road broad that leads to destruction” — we might say that the road is “lax” that leads to destruction.

The person giving in to laxity is therefore playing sort of “fast and loose” with God’s grace. …Cheap grace, really. It’s “cheap” because if nothing is all that sinful… if nothing we ever do is all THAT problematic in the eyes of the Lord and nobody’s soul is in any ACTUAL danger, well then… grace is cheap, isn’t it? Everyone is saved no matter what! God would never allow anyone to ever go to Hell. So… we arrive at Universalism.

From this perspective… The Precious Blood Jesus shed to forgive all the sins of the world ends up not being all that impressive or costly, right? Because it’s almost impossible to sin anyways… So what’s the big deal?

Laxity, in this sense, leads straight to apathy… because if there’s no extremely bad news about sin, then what’s the point of the extremely Good News of God’s mercy and forgiveness?

But another dangerous symptom of laxity is this, and it’s a bit more subtle:

The lax-Catholic can begin to get really annoyed at the people who are simply trying very hard to be faithful and obedient to the Lord and His Church. 

They say: “Oh, those super Catholic people are so weird. They’re too scrupulous! All they want to do is follow a bunch of rules and rubrics! They’re so particular… so RIGID…so JUDGMENTAL… they want the Church to go backwards! They need to LIGHTEN UP already…! Take it easy!!! Stop being so INTENSE about everything…!!!!”

Perhaps this is the sort of attitude the prophet Jeremiah was up against in our first reading, when he kept preaching the word of the Lord to the people of Judah… who had by all accounts become very lax, very loose in their faith.

Jeremiah’s message was inconvenient. It came across as quite harsh and challenging. It warned of terrible things to come if they did not repent and return to the Lord… but the people just did NOT want to hear any of it. His message was OBNOXIOUS to them… “he is demoralizing the soldiers who are left in this city, and all the people, by speaking such things to them!”

So… as our first reading told us, they decided to throw him down into a muddy cistern!

This is a great temptation of laxity — to cast aside, to throw out the difficult teachings of the Lord precisely because they come across as so difficult, so demanding! We prefer to give in to a kind of casualness. A carelessness towards the sacred. We try to brush it aside… “Oh, the Lord is kind and merciful… He doesn’t care about this or that detail. He won’t mind if I cut this corner… If I totally blow off that commandment! It’ll all work out! Besides, that’s what the Church used to teach, but the times, they are a-changing… blah blah blah… Vatican II… blah blah blah.”

But then… in comes Jesus.

“I have come to set the earth on fire,” he says “and how I wish it were already blazing!!!!”

This is the Good News:

Jesus came to bring FIRE… the FIRE of the most intense zeal, the most intense love, the most intense freedom, the most intense joy! But it’s also the FIRE of the most intense repulsion of sin in all its many forms!!!

Turns out… The Seven Deadly Sins are still deadly! Pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth! These actually do harm us. They weigh us down! But Jesus came to cast FIRE upon the earth and to rid us completely of EVERY one of those burdens that cling so close to us! He doesn’t want us to TOLERATE our sin or PSYCHOLOGIZE it into oblivion… he wants us to be DEAD to it, and on FIRE with God.

Another word we might use for “laxity” is “lukewarmness.” …And Jesus, we know, came to OBLITERATE lukewarmness! In the book of Revelation he said pointblank: “I wish you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth!!!!”

Pope Francis once said: “A lukewarm heart becomes self-absorbed in lazy living and it stifles the fire of love. The lukewarm person lives to satisfy his or her own convenience, which is never enough, and in that way is never satisfied; gradually such a Christian ends up being content with a mediocre life.”

Jesus didn’t come to give us a mediocre life! He didn’t come to establish a bland and boring “peace” that ignores truth. He came to make us HOLY. He came to make us SAINTS. And SAINTS are anything but lukewarm! They are ANYTHING but lax! Saints don’t make compromises with sin! They’re willing to lose everything and everyone, they’re willing to shed their own blood in their struggles and temptations… before they would freely betray their Lord!

“We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,” our second reading said…We are surrounded by so many SAINTS in Heaven who were set on fire by Jesus and with Jesus… they are here to help us and cheer us on, and catch US on fire as well.

So, I’m just gonna end this homily today, by asking God for more fire. If we find ourselves lax… if our hearts have in any way become sort of lukewarm… then I believe Jesus wants to turn up the HEAT today!