Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast,

where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us, revealed in scripture and passed down

through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a year is brought to you by

Ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church discovering

our identity in God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. This is day 246.

We are reading paragraphs 1846 to 1853. As always, I am using the Ascension edition of the

Catechism, which includes the foundations of faith approach, but you can follow along with any

recent version of the Catholic Church. You can also download your own Catechism in a year reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com and I'm grateful for Ascension press to do this whole thing. It's so good. Make the catechism. They make the podcast available. Ascension makes all this content. It's so good. Lastly, you can click follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily updates and daily notifications. Today is day 246. I have that song. I think for the last

number of days, whenever I say today, I think, today's going to be the day, going to make it back

to you. Oh my gosh. So I apologize twice. One is for making that reference again. Secondly,

for kind of singing.

Okay, today 246, reading paragraphs 1846, 2853. We're talking about sin today, actually, for the next three days.

We're talking about sin from day 246 to 248. We're going to talk about what is not just the nature of sin and what sins are. That's good. We need to know those things. But also this article,

Article 8 on sin is the first half of it, the first part of it is called mercy and sin. And so one of the things we realize is we can't really understand mercy until we understand sin. We can't really

understand really what it is to be forgiven until we really grasp what it is we're forgiven of.

Does that make sense? And so, yes, the church

has to, we have to take this time in these next couple days to investigate deeply with the mystery,

the mystery of iniquity, right? The mystery of sin, the mystery of our own brokenness. So today we're

looking at not only mercy and sin. We're also looking at the definition of sin. And I'll read the Catechism's definitions because I have to. I'm obligated to do that, obviously, because it's so important. I'm just teasing. But also, I'm going to give my own definitions of sin, which you've heard a thousand times. You know, one of the things we oftentimes do, or maybe I oftentimes do, is here's my own kind of my take on this,

this deep and complicated and very complex issue. And then we realize, oh, here's the

catechism. Here's the church that has thought deeply through this. The catechism, the church

that has processed this and doesn't just have my own particular narrow definition of something,

...