“BLACKCATHOLIC Fervorinos 4: Jesus Died for the Sins of the Baptized Too” Video Transcript

The following is an approximate transcript of my “BLACKCATHOLIC Fervorinos 4: Jesus Died for the Sins of the Baptized Too” video released on my Facebook page and spread to Twitter on March 21, 2021. The transcript below strives for a balance of both a word-for-word account and careful editing for better reading. With [notes] and [additions] for clarity and flow. After this check out more of my BLACKCATHOLIC Fervorinos.

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How you doing? This is Justin the BLACKCATHOLIC, and I’m coming at you with another BLACKCATHOLIC Fevorino.

And the title of this fervorino is called “Jesus Died for the Sins of the Baptized Too.” And the idea the, impetus for this talk came from like a thought I’ve been having for a couple years now that I hope as we continue to go further into Lent and further into our penances and penitential practices, as we approach the culmination of the paschal mystery, death of Jesus and His rising on the Easter morning hopefully this is something that would continue those meditations.

The impetus of this meditation came from the fact that when we think about Jesus’s death on the cross and Jesus dying for the sins of the world, especially during this time of Lent, it’s easy to think about how Jesus’s death on the cross applied for the sins of the unbeliever, whether the unbeliever is someone coming from a situation of complete non-belief or somebody who’s a pagan or somebody who worships a false god or part of some false religion that has the ability to come to believe in Jesus and come to be reconciled with God by Jesus’s death on the cross and have his sins forgiven because, yes, Jesus died for the sins of those who do not believe in Christ, a nonbeliever.

But we think about how Jesus died for the sins of the world, Jesus died for the sins of every human being that would ever live because Jesus died for all sins past, present, and future. That’s how we today can have a claim on the redemption of Christ because Christ died for our sins that we commit in 2022. But who is all included in that? Yes, the unbeliever, but do we as believers stop sinning when we become baptized? When we receive the sacraments do we become immaculate like Our Lady and stop sinning? No. I know as we all know that even though we come to believe we still sin. Jesus died for the sins of the world, right? And so those sins will be covered too. Not just the sins of the unbeliever, but the sins of those who would already come to believe, those sins are covered, too, by Christ.

And I think that fact, especially during Lent, especially when we come to recollect our own sinfulness and our own need for Jesus, is something that we can’t overlook. Yes, as we recognize, Jesus died for the sins of the world, especially for those who need to come to believe in Christ. Jesus died also for the sins of the believer as well, those who know better.

So I’ll say that again.

Jesus not only died so that unbelievers may come to believe, Jesus died also so that believers can come to repent.

And so I think that goes back to the title of this fervorino. Jesus died for the sins of the baptized as well because I’m sure when Jesus was on the cross He not only had in mind the sins of those who needed to believe, but Jesus also had in mind from His eternal perspective on the cross (because the cross of Christ and His redemption is an eternal action happening not only in time but also outside of time; that’s how it applies for all sins past present and future) the sins of you and me as baptized believers who have the sacraments, have the grace of baptism, clothed with the very life of Christ, and have the benefits of the faith, have the Church’s teaching, have the Church’s counsel, have the Church’s guidance of us as believers, have the fullness of the faith as Catholics, and have all these treasures, and have the example not only of Christ but Our Lady and all the saints, and yet with all these treasures we still sin. We still fall into mortal sin.

And I think Jesus died at least as much for the sins of the unbeliever as much as the sins of the believer who comes to believe but sins. And (in a certain sense, in a very certain qualified sense) maybe even more so precisely because we know better, precisely because of that kind of added gravity to a sinner who sins but knows better. Think about the age of reason and how a kid may commit things that are a misstep but the kid doesn’t know better. But as a person grows older they begin to be more culpable for their sins because they know better. So that’s just like with us believers. An unbeliever like somebody who may be baptized this Easter they, at least beforehand, don’t have all the fullness of the faith. They don’t know better in a sense, at least in the sense that we know better as believers, and they come to the knowledge of these things and then begin to live the Christian life for the first time. But as believers we’ve been raised in this or who have come to this through conversion and who has spent at least some years in the game trying to practice this Christian life. We know better at this point, and yet we still choose to sin. But I think during this Lent we need to consider how Jesus died for our sins too, and we can’t overlook the fact that the sins of the baptized need the death and the redeeming acts of Christ as much as the sins of those who have never come to believe.

And I think that’s something to consider as we go further into Lent and get closer to the paschal mystery, get closer to the sacrifice of Christ that we’re going to celebrate on Good Friday and lead us into the celebration of Easter.

That’s something I’m just tossing out there, and hopefully that can benefit somebody out there this Lent as we continue our trek towards Calvary by our penances, especially the use of the sacrament of confession.

So that’s my ferverino for today.

This is Justin the BLACKCATHOLIC.

Peace.