Pastor Eric J. Trozzo
Purgatory? The Seven Deadly Sins? Being virtuous? Those are not Lutheran things to talk about, are they? Yet this is precisely what will be talked about this Lent. I will be leading a series, The Christian Life and the Seven Deadly Sins, as an adult forum time during Lent. While the series is best if you can make it to all of the sessions, it is not a requirement. Come as you are able.
The “deadly” or “mortal” sins are a traditional way of speaking of different ways that sin manifests itself in our lives. From a Lutheran perspective, sin is a break in our relationship in God and the break in the relationship is of greater concern than the specific naming of individual types of sin. Because of that, we avoid over-emphasizing ideas like “seven deadly sins.” Nonetheless, it is helpful to explore different ways that sin can impact our lives, often in ways that we are unlikely to notice. Over this season, then, I will be pointing to some of these traditional ways of speaking of sin and how we can understand them in our lives today.
Purgatory is not part of Lutheran theology, but Purgatorio, the epic poem by Dante Alighieri, gives an incredible vision of what spirituality can look like. It deals with the deadly sins and the ways that Christian virtue overcomes them. This is a work guided by the Holy Spirit and not of human effort. I find the vision of the poem a helpful guide to considering our Christian life and how it can be moved towards being virtuous through the work of the Spirit. I will be using the poem as a guide to the class sessions. If you want to follow along, I recommend the recent translation by Mary Jo Bang as being much easier to understand than most translations.
As we move through Lent this year, may it be a year in which we come to a greater sense of who God has called us to be. By looking into who we are and the struggles we have, along with looking at what God can do through our lives, we can come to a greater sense of God moving through our lives.