 And welcome to this video series for your study of the King of Kings. My name is Father John Eckert. I want to tell you a little bit about going all the way back to the beginning of Genesis. When we look at our Lord, we look at God creating everything out of nothing, right? God's love so effusive, pouring out and wanting us to experience that as well. God loved us into existence. He is our Heavenly Father. He's all-knowing. He's all-powerful. He's present. He's loving us into existence all of the time. If you look back at those early chapters of Genesis, you see our first parents. God created them, Adam and Eve. They were with him in the garden, walking with him in the cool of the evening, knowing God, loving him all the time. And you'll remember that he told them one thing that they couldn't do, and that was to eat from a particular tree in the Garden of Eden. And unfortunately, the way the things happened, and we've been experiencing the effects of this ever since, the devil, the serpent, snuck in and tricked our first parents, didn't he? And he did it in such a sly and subtle way. It was really sad and it was terrible the way that it happened. He said, did God really say that you can't eat from any of the trees in the garden? Of course, he didn't say that. But unfortunately, Eve kind of bit back, right? She said, he didn't say we can't eat from any of the trees in the garden, we just can't eat from this one. In fact, we can't even touch it unless we die. And of course, he said, you will not die, you will become white God. And sad for all of us, Eve took the bait, right? She reached out, she took the fruit, she ate of it, she gave it to her husband, Adam, he ate of it too. We've been experiencing those troubles of the fall ever since. It's tough. We can feel that all the time. It was called the original sin. And unfortunately, all of us experience that each and every day. It wasn't your fault, we were born into it. It's sort of like being born into a family where you have a really short dad. You're probably going to be short too. It's not your fault, but you inherit it. We all do. We inherit the fall. Thanks be to God. We've been given the grace of something called baptism, right? The first of the seven sacraments to have that original sin washed away. It's a beautiful thing. But unfortunately, something called concupiscence sticks around. Unfortunately, we can still have this tendency to choose bad instead of choosing good. Not trusting God like we should. I mean, basically falling into the same trap as our first parents. And how sad that is when you think about it. And he had given them everything and they didn't trust him. And we can fall into the same trap too, right? We've been given so much. God loves us. Incredible degree. He gives us the church. He gives us the sacraments. He gives us himself, right? God the Father gave us his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, who gives us himself in the Eucharist. We have him, body, blood, soul and divinity. We can go to him. We can receive him. But still, there are just so many times that we basically say, you know, I'd rather trust myself here. I'd rather go about things the way that I want to go about them. You know, Lord, I just, I don't think I'm going to go that way. And I'll tell you too, it's an interesting thing. When you look at that tree in the garden that our first parents couldn't touch, like, well, wait, why did God tell them that? Why wouldn't he just give it to them from the beginning? One of the best things I've ever heard in that regard is, well, maybe He wanted to give it to them as a present, right? Ever thought about that? Maybe later on it was going to be something that He would present to them. Think about this. It's Christmas at your house, and the presents are all wrapped and underneath the tree. And let's say that it's December the 10th, right? You still have 15 more days until Christmas. But if you go, nah, you know what? I'm just going to go grab my present anyway. And you go in there and you take it and you open it on up and you just go ahead and see what's there. Well, yeah, I guess you can do that. But what happens to your relationship with your mom and dad? If you go about things in that way, rather than receiving them as a gift, God maybe wanted to give us a gift and that tree, and the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And our first parents, unfortunately, hurt that relationship with God and reached out and took it. Unfortunately, we can continue to do similar things this very day. And what that's called when we don't trust God and we take matters into our own hand and we just kind of go about things in a way that we shouldn't, it's called sin, isn't it? And we know that it's there. We can feel it and probably all fall into it. We fall into it all the time. And there's two types, right? There's something called venial sin. And that's a smaller sin. Let's just say that I like to come over to your house and play with good friends, right? And there's one time I met your house and I'm like, oh, wow, look at all these great books that you have. And I just think, you know what? I think I'm just going to take this one, not tell you about it. And I'm just going to go ahead and take that on home and I don't say anything about it, right? It was one book, all right? I mean, you still have a bunch of other books, right? But what's that going to do to our relationship? If you figure out that I've been taking books from you, it doesn't really help us, does it? Now maybe if I took that one book, well, that kind of nicks at our relationship a little bit, but maybe it doesn't destroy it, right? It just kind of hurts it. That's called venial sin. It's sort of like what we do when we do those little things against God, it nicks at it. It's sort of like a paper cut, but it doesn't say cut off our whole finger, right? And hopefully if I were to say, oh, I'm really sorry. Here's your book back. Hopefully all is well. We're all good again, right? But let's say this. Let's say that I come to your house and you have to step outside for a few moments and I take the whole shelf. I take everything home and I don't talk to you again. I just steal all of your books and take them home. Well, that's a little bit more serious, right? That's when we get into something called mortal sin. When we get into a sin, it's a big problem, a grave error. If I steal a whole bunch of your stuff and I don't say I'm sorry, right? And I know that you love those books because you love to read. And I think to myself, I know this is going to hurt your feelings, but you know what? I'm going to do it anyway. That's a problem. That's called mortal sin. And when we do that against God, when it's something that's serious, when we know what we're doing and we choose to do it freely anyway, that's a big problem. And you know that there's a difference, right? Between taking one book and taking the whole thing. But thanks be to God, he's given us a way to be reconciled to him. Just like when our first parents fell, it wasn't as though, okay, we're done. You're just gone and we're never going to bring you back. Oh, what do you do? He said, he gave us the sacraments. We have baptism where he washes away original sin. And all of our sins up to that point if you get baptized later in life. But he also gave us what's called the sacrament of confession. We can go and say, Lord, I'm sorry. And when it's a big, serious one like I talked about, like those mortal sins, you do something really big and really bad. What's so great is that you can have it all forgiven in confession. All you have to do is go and say, I'm sorry. To go and say, I'm sorry that I fell so grievously. I'm sorry that I committed a mortal sin. Now, venial sins, especially they can kind of build up over time, right? Like if I keep coming to your house and I keep stealing a book each time that I come, well, those add up. And if I don't say, I'm sorry, well, there's going to be problems. And it's a good idea when you go to confession to confess the small stuff too. Because hey, a bunch of little paper cuts, they can add up with time. And that gets more and more painful, doesn't it? But the beautiful thing is, is that even though we know that we're falling, even though that we know that we do have this tendency to keep falling into sin, God doesn't just leave us to sit in that sin. He gives us the chance to keep coming back to Him. He gives us a chance to have those sins washed away. And how grateful I am, and I hope you're grateful too, I can go to Him and say, my God, I'm sorry. And the beautiful thing is, when you go to confession and you are sincerely sorry for your sins, the priest is probably going to give you a little bit of advice, right? He's going to say, this is what I would recommend to do to avoid the near occasion of sin in the future. Like if you keep falling into the same venial sin, let's say it's, you keep looking at stuff on the internet that you shouldn't be looking at. He's going to say, hey, stop going on the internet, especially at particular times. If you're going to go on the internet, do it when you're around other people. Sit at the kitchen table. Don't take your computer or your phone into your room. He's going to give you some advice. He's going to help you along the way. And then he's going to give you something called a penance to help you to stay away from that near occasion of sin and also to reconcile you with God and also with those around you. Like let's say that that sin was, you keep stealing a book from a friend. He's going to say, you know what? You're going to want to take that book back. You're going to want to tell your friend you're sorry. And finally, he'll give you that penance to pray and ask to be healed. Lord, help me not to want to keep stealing. Let's say I would say, maybe if someone came to me and said, hey, father, I keep stealing books from this person. I'd say, you know what you need to do is you need to stop and pay attention to all the things that you have to be thankful for and to stop looking at everybody else has and maybe pray a decade of the rosary. Let's say the first joyful mystery of the Annunciation and ask our blessed mother who trusted in God, who is so thankful for what God gave her in his very presence, to help you to be thankful too, to trust in that love of God that's with you all the time. So you don't have to look for happiness and stealing books, but rather to look to always have a better and better relationship with our Heavenly Father. And there's the big thing. We have mortal and venial sins. Remember, mortal are those big, serious ones that can cut off the relationship. In fact, that word mortal has to do with like deadly and killing off a relationship with God. Like I said, God doesn't leave us down in there. All we have to do is say we're sorry to come back to Him and to receive absolution in the confessional and how beautiful it is when I get to as a priest give that prayer of absolution and reconcile someone to our Heavenly Father who loves us so much, who created us out of nothing, who's loving us into existence right at this very moment. My friends, how blessed we are with the faith we've been given that even though our first parents fell into sin, even though we inherited that original sin, God doesn't just leave us in that. Whether they're small sins or big ones, He wants us rather to have those forgiven and washed away through repentance. He wants to forgive them, especially in the sacrament of confession. He wants to draw us ever closer into His love. How blessed we are to have that love. Don't take it for granted.