Sin Intervention - It’s Complicated

10 January 2026  1 John 5:14-21

“All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin which is not deadly.” (1 John 5:17)

Some sin requires an intervention.

The Catholic Church has long recognized a difference between mortal sin and venial sin. We have long recognized that some sins are more significant than others. Flipping someone off on the highway for an inconsiderate lane change is not the same as cheating on your wife. Venial sin usually refers to acts that are small, impulsive, and almost immediately recognized as wrong. If they become habitual, and because of that not recognized as wrong, they can add up to mortal sin, but impulsive, thoughtless acts generally don’t amount to that, and so can be addressed by prompt prayers of apology and repentance.

But some sins require an intervention. Mortal sins are much more serious matters, and because they are more serious we often seek to justify them rather than repent of them: “You have to understand the circumstances,” we say; “It’s complicated,” we say. No doubt the circumstances do need to be explained, and no doubt it is complicated.

Mortal sin means we are always sicker than we know, and so a wildly broad-spectrum mercy is applied. It is a mercy so wide that anyone paying attention should be completely blown away by it – our sin certainly is blown away, replaced by the breath of God Himself.

It is, after all, a serious matter. But none of that makes sin not sinful. People who have been involed in death or serious injury almost always appeal to special circumstances, and want those circumstances to absolve them. But their very appeal, and the frequency of that appeal, to special circumstances indicates that absolution has eluded them. People divorce, concluding that they never should have married in the first place because they were so unsuited to each other. But where does that leave the kids? Does the divorce mean the parents wish the children didn’t exist? The drip-drip spiritual hemorhhage continues, sometimes to the point of mental and spiritual illness.

It’s complicated.

That’s because some sins require an intervention.

The Sacrament of Reconciliation – “Going to Confession” – is the intervention. Serious sin always hurts someone else. There is always a social dimension to our sinning, so there must be a social dimension to our reconciliation. The social dimension of reconciliation is sitting in front of a priest who has been empowered by Jesus to hear our confessions, and to receive from him Jesus’ own mercy, not just for the sins we confess, but for all the sins of our lives, including the ones we can no longer remember. Mortal sin means we are always sicker than we know, and so a wildly broad-spectrum mercy is applied. It is a mercy so wide that anyone paying attention should be completely blown away by it – our sin certainly is blown away, replaced by the breath of God Himself.

Every good confession means that God is breathing in us.

“We are in the One Who is True” (1 John 5:20) because He is continually breathing in us. Some sins require intervention, and we know Who the intervention is. Come and see.