Oct 20 Tue
Are there 99 righteous ones and only one sinner?
“There will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.”
Let us be clear: there are righteous ones. If there were not, Jesus would never have said those words.
And there are many more righteous ones than sinners. There is more wheat than tares.
The ratio is very revealing: for every 99 righteous ones –or saints, according to the terminology of the Scriptures– there is only one sinner.
In other words, for every 99,000 good ones, there are 1,000 bad.
Experience and daily life demonstrate the accuracy of this ratio: there are far more good people than bad in the world.
As for the pessimistic, paralyzing phrase we repeat with false compunction, "We are all sinners", well, okay, so what?
We fail to recall that we are, above all, redeemed. That is, saved, free of charge, to begin with. We are all in the process of accessing and applying that redemption to our souls.
And, secondly, like all ‘definitive pronouncements,’ that phrase is a cruel lie. Because the sinner who is fighting to get out of the mire of vices is not the same as the sinner who is close to mystical union with God; there are degrees.
The sinner who –naturally– desires to do God’s Will is not the same as the saint who has no other desire than to do God's Will.
A monk said that so many people think they have invented sin, sadness, headache, and apathy: so many revolve around their navel, thinking that they are the center of the world. They think that only they are tempted.
The world is saved. The amount of good is far greater than the amount of evil -in that ratio of 1 to 99.
And if it seems to you that the world is very bad, blame, secondly, the media, the press, that invention of the enlightened century that replaced the reading of praises to God, of Lauds and Vespers: if God is not the first thing for us, or even the first or the last thing we read, then things will not go well.
Evil makes a lot of noise... Still, who will turn us away from the Love of Christ? Put yourselves in the "worst-case scenario": martyrdom? But if that scenario is the direct way to Heaven, do not be ashamed.
Yet the bloodless martyrdom of everyday ordinary work is the martyrdom of the good ones, the immense majority, all of us.
CODA: You can do the math, if you wish. Look, pornography in the world is driven by a few individuals, somewhere. Very few.
But they make a lot of noise and a lot of damage.
The proportion of 99 to 1 is maintained.
And the same proportion remains if we analyze governments, mafias, or economic power groups. It would be good to collect the contact details of those few and send them prayers personally.
As Jesus did with Zacchaeus the tax collector.