Angel of the Annunciation (detail), Sano di Pietro; 1430-1440

WHAT IS the most serious problem in the world?

Is it poverty? Is it income inequality? Is it unhappiness? Is it sickness? Is it bad weather? Is it mass immigration? Is it cultural decline?

It is none of these things, except to the extent that they are caused by a deeper and more elemental phenomenon. The most serious problem in the world is sin.

Sin is an injustice against God. Every sin — my sin or your sin or the next person’s — tips the scales of justice. To use another analogy, sin is a tear in the cord that connects man with God. The tear must be stitched together or man is cut off from the source of his being. The damage must be repaired in this life or the next. Sin wouldn’t matter if we were not immortal. The concept is rejected by materialists. But it does matter in this life too, as God can at anytime demand restitution.

Though sin is an old-fashioned word, the thing itself will never be old-fashioned. It is not possible for a person to sin without believing he is doing something good. This desire for something good does not change the objective reality. The moral order is like the physical order. It is created and unchangeable. “It is because of his creatureliness that man is capable of sinning,” said Josef Pieper. We cannot destroy our innate tendency toward sin anymore than we can destroy the molecular structure of the universe. We cannot make sin good.

Ratio culpae consistit in voluntaria aversione a Deo, St. Thomas Aquinas said. “The essence of guilt consists in voluntarily turning away from God.”

Since sin is a turning away from God, the injury can be satisfied by a turning toward God.

It is one of the sacred mysteries of the Catholic Church that one can satisfy the injustice done not just by one’s own sins, but by the sins of others. This is the concept of “reparation.” In the encyclical Miserentissimus Redemptor Pope Pius XI explained:

“The creature’s love should be given in return for the love of the Creator, another thing follows from this at once, namely that to the same uncreated Love, if so be it has been neglected by forgetfulness or violated by offense, some sort of compensation must be rendered for the injury, and this debt is commonly called by the name of reparation”.

We can pay our own debts and help pay the debts of others.

Reparation is the most beautiful of all mysteries. It is so right. It is so generous. It is so attuned to human nature. It is a masterpiece.

Reparation is based in love: God’s love for us and our love for others.

We love those we know and even those we don’t know (not in the sentimental sense of the word but in the sense of good will). We ardently want, or should ardently want, all seven billion people on earth to go to heaven. But many cannot go in their current condition. There is a pervasive sickness that we can help heal.

Prayer is not the only way but it is an important way. We can make reparation for the sins of others through prayer, as the three shepherd children in Fatima, Portugal were taught to do by an angel one hundred years ago.

He called himself the Angel of Peace and taught them the first of these Fatima prayers, also known as the Pardon Prayer, that spring:

My God, I believe, I adore, I hope and I love Thee! I ask pardon for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not hope and do not love Thee. [Source]

The children were also asked to make reparation when Our Lady appeared to them. She asked them to pray — and to accept suffering in reparation.

The gravity on the faces of the children is understandable. The Virgin showed them a vision of hell. This so deeply impressed them, the horror of it, that they devoted themselves, as requested, to undoing the damage of sin. They felt a grave responsibility. With all the innocence of children, they understood the concept of reparation as clearly as theologians.

Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta

They suffered persecution, imprisonment, unwanted attention and separation from their families with forbearance. Jacinto and Francisco died not long after, as children, in pain.

We don’t need to go through spectacular trials as these children did in order to pay off the debts of others and prevent catastrophe. Whatever sufferings come our way, we can welcome and offer as sacrifices to God in reparation for our own sins and the sins of others. From daily minor irritations to poverty, loneliness and illness, all are useful in making reparation. We don’t have to be saints.

Efforts at reparation must explain why God has not yet consumed America in a great flood or other disaster. Is it possible we can prevent disaster?

The following Fatima prayers came from Our Lady herself. When she appeared to the children in July, 1917 she taught them this prayer, to be said when offering up personal sufferings, sacrifices, or acts of penance:

Oh my Jesus, I offer this for love of Thee, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for the sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

This last of our Fatima prayers followed shortly, after Mary opened her hands and showed the children a terrifying vision of Hell. She then taught them to say this after each decade of the rosary:

Oh My Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of Hell, lead all souls to Heaven, especially those who have most need of Thy mercy.

Do you find this all … strange? Too pious?

Your feelings don’t matter. They don’t matter, just as the feelings of a person paying off a loan don’t matter to the lender as long as he gets his repayment.

It is in the nature of a mystery to be odd. Naturalists (those who reject the existence of the supernatural) are offended by mystery. They want everything as plain as an anatomy textbook. Reparation satisfies God and that is all we need to know. It also answers a deep longing in the human heart for social solidarity. It is as exquisitely beautiful and mysterious as love itself.

In Mark Signorelli’s poem “The Monk by the Sea,” a person sees the light of reparation in a dim world:

The Monk by the Sea*

by Mark Anthony Signorelli

There lived a monk by the sea –
He walked along the sand,
He wandered silently
Without a friend at hand,

And when the last gray swatch
Of day hung in the sky,
He’d wander there and watch
The ships go sailing by;

And sometimes it would happen
When winter storms would blow,
Some rash and foolish captain
Would bring his ship to woe;

And the monk would see the boat
That floundered in the tide,
And he would hear the shout
The desperate sailors cried,

And helpless to give aid
In the black and icy shoals,
To the Lord God he prayed
For mercy on their souls.

I too have walked alone
Along that very strand,
And heard the ocean groan
When winter was at hand,

And seen the gray sky lit
With the sun’s last waning rays,
And thought a little bit
On the ever-darkening days-

On the vileness and the hate,
The chaos and the rage,
And all the sins that weight
The sinking of the age;

And finding myself frail
To rescue humankind,
To Him behind the veil
I’ve raised my faltering mind,

And sadly lingering there
Where the dying current curled,
I have prayed a little prayer
For the shipwreck of the world.

* From Distant Lands Near and Far; with permission by the author.

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