THIRTY-FIFTH LESSON
On Sin.
"Take heed thou never consent to sin, nor trespass the commandments of the Lord our God."—TOBIAS 4:6.
To sin is to disobey God, either by committing the evil He forbids, or by not doing the good He commands: it is, in a word, not following His law.
To follow God's law, my children, you must study it well, and this duty necessitates a full knowledge of your religion; you must therefore read the holy Gospel, and listen attentively and with docility to those who are willing to try and make you understand it. Your ignorance, supposing it were voluntary, would not serve you as an excuse for failing in your duty and committing sin.
There are, as you know, two sorts of sin: original sin and actual sin. Original sin is the one we are guilty of in coming into the world, the penalty inflicted on us through the disobedience of our first parents. This fault is transmitted to their children, to their children's children, and thence to all men; we are thus born guilty and the enemies of God, subjected, like Adam, to the miseries, sufferings of the body, to the bad impulses of the will and heart. It is this original sin which is the sad source of all our miseries as well as of all our faults.
To be guilty of a sin, which we have not committed, and of which we suffer the penalty, must astonish you, my children: this terrible destiny most certainly contains a hidden mystery. It is nevertheless one of those truths of faith which we cannot contest. It is, besides, quite impossible that God should act unjustly towards his creatures: this would be still more difficult to believe than even to believe in original sin. And then God did not forsake man in this fearful extremity: the sacrament of baptism purifies our souls from the original stain, and to struggle with its sad results, divine grace will ever be granted us.
Actual sin is what we commit by our own free will, after we have reached the age of reason, and when we know how to discern good from evil. Actual sin may be committed in four different ways: in thought, word, action, or omission.
To sin in thought, is to revolt in spirit against the law of God, or the commands of our superiors: it is to wish to do wrong, to have feelings of pride, of envy, etc. All these bad thoughts, and others besides, my children, may nevertheless not be sins; they only become so when we allow them voluntarily to take possession of us; but if they only pass through our minds rapidly, against our will, we do not offend God; and if, when they enter our minds, we firmly repel them, they may become a source of merit in the eyes of the Lord, on account of the victory that we have obtained over these temptations. You must not then, you see, mistake sin for temptation: the latter is prompted by Satan, God allows it to try us; we cannot escape from it; but sin is a voluntary act, and it is in our power not to commit it.
To sin in word is to lie, to swear, to speak evil of your neighbor, to insult him, to answer your parents impertinently, or without respect.
To sin in action is to commit a forbidden action, to take what is not our own, to be given to greediness, to strike our companions, etc. To sin from omission is to neglect our duties, not to say our prayers, or to say them inattentively, to have no heart in our daily tasks, not to give as much as we can in charity.
Our duties, as you must perceive, my children, not being all of similar importance: our sins are also of more or less consequence: in the first place, according as the duty in which we have failed was more or less important, and then according as the guilty will which leads to disobey the Lord was more or less strong in our mind. It is often almost against his will that a poor child is led into evil: he only half consents to it; perhaps a young friend has been guilty of influencing him: who can tell? Perhaps he resisted long before falling into sin. He would then be more excusable, certainly, than if he had committed a fault with premeditation, firmly intending to do wrong.
Mortal sins are so called when the faults are of very great importance in themselves, and if they are committed quite voluntarily. These faults ought to inspire us with the deepest horror. They would kill our soul by depriving it of God's grace, which is its true life; and mortal sin, when not expiated here below by penance, will be punished hereafter by eternal chastisements.
The faults which are of less importance are called venial sins. These sins do not take away grace, but they weaken it in us. It would be very wrong, my children, for us not to try to shun what we call small faults; they lead us by degrees to faults of greater consequence.
It is true that you do not become exceedingly guilty all at once; it is insensibly, by degrees, and as the holy Scripture says: those who despise minor faults, will little by little commit greater ones.
Would it not also be showing little gratitude towards God, to keep no watch over what displeases him even slightly? What would you say, for instance, of a child who, without wishing really to grieve his father, would not cease to cause him every day a thousand small vexations?
And you cannot doubt that sin displeases God extremely, and that it is the greatest insult we can offer him. We can never even understand to what a degree God hates evil; but what ought in some way to give us an idea of this, my children, is that it required nothing less than the death of our Saviour to expiate sin; and that, to punish it, God notwithstanding his goodness, prepares eternal chastisement! My dear children, avoid sin and all occasions that may lead you to commit it. Correct those faults which so often expose you to offend God. Offend God! There is no greater misfortune in this world.
Queen Blanche, the pious mother of St. Louis, was so convinced of this truth, that notwithstanding her maternal tenderness, she often told her son, that she should prefer seeing him dead than guilty of a mortal sin. This holy king remembered faithfully his mother's pious instructions, and transmitted them himself to his own son. As he felt his end approaching, say the chronicles of the time, in their quaint language, he sent for his son: "Very sweet son," did he say, "the first thing that I teach you, is that you set your heart to love God, because without this, no one can be saved: take care not to do anything which would displease God, and be you ever ready to suffer all sorts of dreadful torments rather than commit one mortal sin."
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