judging not

This morning, in the ladies' room at church was a sign: "Will whoever took the full bottle of liquid Soft Soap that I put here, please return it. Stealing is a sin. Thank you!" Sin was underlined. My cantor Amanda saw it first and told me after Mass she'd had a very negative reaction to it. She said it seemed so inhospitable to write such a note. After all, it was only soap. If someone really needed the soap, shouldn't we be gracious and let her have it? I agreed with her. It started me remembering all the times something has been taken from the center. The last was last week when someone took the roll of toilet paper off the holder AND discarded or took the holder itself. (I wasn't about to look in the trash to see if it had been thrown away there! When I went to buy a replacement, I discovered it only cost $1 and was REALLY glad then that I hadn't bothered!) I have always thought that whoever took whatever it was they took must have been in desperate need of the object. (It is usually toilet paper or soap or pregnancy wheels that tell due dates or baby models.) Can you imagine being so poor that you have to go without toilet paper?

Why must we think that what we have is strictly ours? To be sure, attachment to things is not where Our Lord was in His life. And, every single thing we "own" is really not ours anyway. Things are given to us by our generous God and they can be taken away in a blink of an eye, given circumstances.

This whole thing goes along with what the bishop taught us about self-denial, doesn't it? If we really want to give ourselves completely to God, our reaction in such situations might be, "okay, Lord...thanks for letting me have it temporarily!"

Too, we must remember the three conditions of a (mortal)sin: it is a sin of grave matter, it is committed with full knowledge of the sinner and is committed with deliberate consent of the sinner. So, in order for us to judge someone as committing a sin, we must have knowledge of his or her intention. How can we in this situation? How can we really, in any situation?

I am amazed how just one seemingly small lesson from the bishop reverberates through my life in so many ways. From now on, I will always try to remember that the things I have are not important. If they are taken away from me tomorrow, I will thank God for allowing me access to them for the time I had them.

PS to this: I bought a bottle of Soft Soap and will put it in the ladies' room at church tomorrow when I go for morning Mass. It was only $1--and the exact name brand! Such a steal! (Pardon the pun!)