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weekly Letter from the Archbishop of Barcelona

for Sunday 27 March 2011

Sin is a very present reality, and the season of Lent is a time to remember and realize this. Jesus came to forgive sins. This has been the primary mission of the Son of God made man. The angel said so Joseph before the first Christmas story: "You have to put his name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins."

The more we know God the more we know what sin is. The man, sin, rejects the love of God or looking to build his self and his world apart from God, as if it did not exist. The concept of sin can only be properly interpreted in the context of relationships with God. In the context of God's love led to the end we discover the truth of our sins and we recognize ourselves as sinners really.

read the Bible we realize that in each of its pages is found to exist sin, which explains the nature and malice. But the Bible also describes the constant love and unfailing mercy of God. The history of salvation is the story of repeated attempts by God the Creator to start the man of sin.

Nobody escapes the tendency to sin, as it is in each and every one of us. Universality and radical nature of sin is so great that Scripture speaks of the sin of the world, state of original sin and universal drop is performed on pre-existing personal sins, by which each is about this sin and sin within itself.

Sin has a dimension personal and social. Sin, in its proper sense, is a free act of the individual person has a personal origin and its consequences in the sinner himself. Every sin, however, even the most strictly individual, intimate and secret in some way affects others, since it has a social character.

not be confused consciousness of sin with a guilt complex. They are two different things. The first springs from a heart conscious of the primacy of love in Christian life and involves an act of responsibility. A person who has this consciousness, Christianity offers forgiveness and mercy. You need to be aware of sin to feel a desire operational conversion and change of life, as only those who recognize the disease sets off to find the appropriate remedy.

The guilt complex, however, born of fear, destroy the joy, immersed in sorrow and anxiety generated and self-contempt. Perhaps the evil of our time is that it takes a lot of awareness of sin and guilt very complex, as highlighted in the literature, art and psychology.

God is Father and does not want us locked up in a guilt complex that we ourselves and cloistered in a sterile anguish. John Paul II, in one of his encyclicals, reminded us that God is "rich in mercy" and constantly manifests his omnipotence forgiving our sins. Therefore, John Paul II wanted the second Sunday of Easter was also called "Divine Mercy Sunday." It is significant that it is precisely at this event, which this year falls on the first day of May, when it will be beatified, the first Polish pope in history.

Lluís Martínez † Sistach

Metropolitan Archbishop of Barcelona