Clyde was concentrating intensely as he tried carefully coloring heart-shaped decorations for their classroom.
“That’s some artwork there, Clyde . Keep it up!” I observed.
“Thanks, Father,” he smiled and gave me a wink before resuming with his work.
Stella was busy cutting Christmas tree-shaped decor. Others were having the time of their lives decking the walls and window panes with wreaths and snowflakes.
“Why are Santa’s clothes red, Father?” Alice asked.
“I guess, because he’s happy and very generous,” I said.
“And the devil is black, then?” Collins added.
“Well, not that he has any color….” I was amused by his reaction.
“And God must be white like a light bulb,” Floyd interrupted me.
“Father,” Stephen asked, “what’s the color of sin?”
I was totally unprepared for that one. I imagined their guardian angels prodding them to give me a surprise quiz.
“Yeh,” another boy joined in. “Like bad things must be black and good things are white?”
* * *
Their childish questions, however, got me thinking more about an interesting matter: how people seem to have a very restricted view of their moral life by giving sin a color. With this I’m referring to people who are only interested in knowing ‘what is sinful and what is not.’ Now what’s bad about that?
To start with, nothing really! The bad begins when one becomes satisfied with only comfortably living between one extreme and the other: I don’t want to sin big time, nor do I want to take the full consequences of my Christian vocation by striving to be holy. Result? Mediocre or lukewarm Christians.
They end up literally having a superficial idea of sin and how to deal with it. It becomes something that is aesthetically unacceptable, like a karma or a stigma. To which, like the children, they color sin as black for mortal and white for venial. As soon as they can ‘clean their consciences’ with some penance or a quick confession, they believe that’s really much of what there is about sin.
Moreover, they are unaware that their ‘colored approach to sin’ blurs their supernatural vision by limiting it within moral ‘avoidance’ and ‘compliance.’ Thus, they would reason: ‘as long as we follow the rules, as long as we don’t go overboard, as long as we don’t hurt anyone seriously, and so forth.’ The richness and thrilling adventure of the Christian vocation to love is reduced into one damp and suffocating perspective: simply not to sin.
By being obsessed –perhaps, due to ignorance– with treading a narrow and uncomfortable road towards Heaven some Christians fail to appreciate the ‘color of the sinner.’ It is the unique color that one’s spiritual life acquires depending on how he or she strives to discover how to constantly enrich it with its unlimited spiritual treasures (e.g. prayer, Sacraments, spiritual direction, corporal and spiritual works of mercy, etc.)
Principal to this ‘coloring’ of the Christian soul are the virtues. They offer a rainbow of possibilities as one struggles to refine them and grow in them. The virtues, are good stable qualities that help our operative powers (i.e. intelligence, will, passions, etc.) to easily obtain a particular good easily and acquire the perfection they were meant to possess.
Their exercise could be aptly described as the spokes of a bicycle wheel. These have to be equally tightened so that the axle is always centered and the wheel doesn’t wiggle. Thus, a person cannot be too focused with only one virtue even though he intends by it to overcome a particular vice. He must learn to strategically deploy their practice to achieve a more integrated character.
Another way of illustrating this would be to compare one’s concern for the ‘color of sin’ (morality of compliance) to the famous video game Temple Run and similar variants. The player simply has to try run the longest distance, get the most gems and perks. The goal is simple: stay alive! I amusingly would call this ‘morality in survival mode’ that is devoid of any rich engaging plot.
The view of the ‘color of the sinner’ (morality of excellence) is more associated with adventure or first person games. These have an introduction, a plot to resolve and a conclusion. Christian life is somewhat like this, but even more exciting! It’s not merely surviving monsters and dodging deadly traps, it has a story that unfolds constantly as the person virtuously colors it with more love.
In his homily at the closing of the Year of Faith, Pope Francis said, “Each of us has his or her own history: we think of our mistakes, our sins, our good times and our bleak times. We would do well, each one of us, on this day, to think about our own personal history, to look at Jesus and to keep telling him, sincerely and quietly: ‘Remember me, Lord, now that you are in your kingdom! Jesus, remember me, because I want to be good, but I just don’t have the strength: I am a sinner, I am a sinner. But remember me, Jesus! You can remember me because you are at the center, you are truly in your kingdom!’”
Thus, our souls are colored, so to speak, by everything we are before God and men. Despite some of the ‘darker’ colors of our defects, we can be assured that the light of Christ coming from the center, will sunburst into a constant kaleidoscope of joy, peace and optimism that will have its climax in our identification with Christ, union with God.
* * *
“I’m happy things aren’t as you say they are, kids. Imagine what would happen if I did something bad and turned black, and when I do good I turn white or some other color?”
“That’s coool, Father!” one of the children said. “You would be like the Christmas lights!” Then the children burst out laughing and giggling.