Danger to which tepidity exposes the soul
“But Jesus hid himself.”—John 8:59
Jesus Christ “is the true light which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world” (John 1:9). He enlightens all; but he cannot enlighten those who voluntarily shut their eyes to the light, and from them the Savior hides himself the more. How then, remaining in darkness and walking blindly, can they escape the many dangers of perdition that beset us in this present life, which God has given us as the road to life eternal?
I will try today to make you understand the great danger into which tepidity brings the soul. For through tepidity the Lord hides his divine light from her, and withholds his hand from the graces and helps without which she will find it very hard to complete the journey of this life without falling into some precipice—that is, without falling into mortal sin.
1. A tepid soul is not one that lives in enmity with God, nor one that sometimes commits a venial sin through mere frailty, without full consent of the will. From faults of this kind no one can be exempt, because of the corruption of our nature by original sin; and this corruption makes it impossible for us, without a most special grace—granted to the Mother of God alone—to avoid every light fault during our whole life. Hence St. John writes: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8).
God permits these stains even in the saints, to keep them humble and to make them feel that, just as they fall into such defects in spite of all their good purposes and promises, so too they would fall into grievous sins were it not for his divine hand upholding them. And therefore, when we find that we have fallen into such faults, we must humble ourselves; and, acknowledging our own weakness, we must continually take care to commend ourselves to God, that he may keep his hand upon us and not permit us to fall into more grievous sins, and that he may deliver us from those we have committed.
2. What, then, is meant by a tepid soul? It is one that often falls into fully deliberate venial sins—into deliberate lies, deliberate acts of impatience, deliberate imprecations, and the like. With the help of God, those good souls who are resolved to suffer death rather than deliberately commit a single venial sin can easily avoid such faults.
St. Teresa used to say that one venial sin does us more harm than all the devils in hell. Hence she would urge her nuns: “My children, from deliberate sin, however small it may be, may the Lord deliver you.” Some people complain that the Lord leaves them dry and barren, without any spiritual sweetness. But how can we expect God to be generous with his favors toward us, when we are so sparing toward him? We see well that this lie, this imprecation, this injury to our neighbor, this detraction, though not a grievous sin, is still displeasing to God; and yet we do not abstain from it—and then we expect that God should grant us his divine consolations?
3. But someone will say: Venial sins, however many they may be, do not deprive me of the grace of God; even with them all I shall still be saved, and it is enough for me to be saved. You say, “It is enough for me to be saved”? But listen to what St. Augustine says to you: Ubi dixisti sufficit, ibi periisti—“Where you have said, ‘It is enough,’ there you have perished.”
To understand rightly what St. Augustine means, and to see the danger that the state of tepidity carries with it for those who fall into deliberate and habitual venial sins—without troubling themselves over them and without thinking to amend—we must understand that the habit of light faults leads the soul insensibly to grow lax in grievous ones. For example, the habit of conceiving small aversions leads to a laxity that ends in grievous hatred; the habit of petty thefts leads to great ones; the habit of venial attachments toward some person of the other sex leads to a laxity that ends in mortal affections. “The soul,” says St. Gregory, “never lies where it falls” (Moralia, lib. 21). No; it goes on sinking ever deeper.
Mortal diseases for the most part do not arise from grave disorders, but from many slight disorders continued over time; and just so the fall of many souls into grievous sin often proceeds from habitual venial sins. For these so weaken the soul that, when some strong temptation afterward assails her, she has no strength to resist, and she falls.
4. Many are unwilling to part from God by mortal sin; they wish to follow him, but at a distance, taking no account of venial sins. But to such souls will easily happen what happened to St. Peter. When Jesus Christ was seized by the soldiers in the garden, St. Peter would not abandon him, but set himself to follow him at a distance: “Peter followed him afar off” (Matt. 26:58). Yet when he had come to the house of Caiphas, no sooner was he charged with being a disciple of Jesus Christ than he was seized with fear and denied his Master three times.
The Holy Spirit says: “He that contemneth small things shall fall by little and little” (Ecclus. 19:1). Whoever despises small falls will easily find himself one day fallen into some precipice; for, having made it a habit, as I said, to give God many slight displeasures, he will feel little reluctance afterward to give him some grievous one.
5. The Lord says: “Catch us the little foxes that destroy the vines” (Cant. 2:15). He does not say, catch the lions or the bears, but the little foxes. Lions and bears strike terror, and so everyone keeps far from them for fear of being devoured; but the little foxes cause no alarm, and meanwhile they ruin the vine, for by their burrowing they dry up the roots of the vines.
Mortal sin terrifies the soul that fears God; but if she grows lax in committing many venial sins with open eyes, without thinking to amend, these are the little foxes that will dry up the roots—that is, the remorse of conscience, the fear of displeasing God, the good desires of advancing in divine love. And so it will not be hard for the soul, finding herself grown cold, to be driven by some passion and abandon herself to the wretched loss of divine grace.
6. Add to this: deliberate and habitual venial sins not only take from us the strength to resist temptations, but also deprive us of those special helps of God without which we fall into grievous sins. Be attentive, brethren, for this is a point of great weight. It is certain, on the one hand, that of ourselves we have not strength enough to resist the temptations of the devil, the flesh, and the world. It is God who keeps our enemies from assailing us with those temptations by which we would be overcome. This is why Jesus Christ taught us to pray: “And lead us not into temptation”—that is, that God may deliver us from those temptations by which we would lose his grace.
Now venial sins, when they are deliberate and habitual, deprive us of those special helps of God that are necessary for us to persevere in his grace. I say necessary, since the Council of Trent condemns whoever asserts that we can persevere in grace without a special help of God: Si quis dixerit, justificatum vel sine speciali auxilio Dei in accepta justitia perseverare posse, vel cum eo non posse; anathema sit—“If anyone says that the justified can persevere in justice without a special help of God, or cannot persevere with it; let him be anathema” (Session 6, canon 22). Thus, with the ordinary help of God alone, we cannot keep ourselves from falling into some grievous sin; we need a special help. And this special help the Lord will justly deny to those negligent souls who make nothing of committing, with open eyes, many venial sins; and so these wretched souls will not persevere in grace.
7. Whoever is sparing toward God well deserves that God should be sparing toward him. “He who soweth sparingly, shall also reap sparingly” (2 Cor. 9:6). To such souls the Lord will give only the common help he gives to all; but he will easily withhold his special help, and, deprived of this, the soul—as we have said—cannot persevere without falling into some grievous sin.
God himself revealed to Blessed Henry Suso that, for those tepid souls who are content to live without mortal sin but do not cease to commit many venial sins with open eyes, it is very difficult to keep themselves in his grace. The venerable Father Luis da Ponte used to say: “I have committed many defects, but I have never made peace with my defects.” Woe to those who make peace with their defects! St. Bernard writes that, as long as a person who fails still detests his faults, there is hope that he will one day amend and set himself on the good road; but when he commits them and does not seek to amend, he will go ever from bad to worse, until he loses the grace of God.
Hence St. Augustine says that habitual venial sins, left unamended, are like the scab; and as the scab makes the body loathsome, so these make the soul loathsome to God, in such a way that they remove her from his embraces: Sunt velut scabies, et nostrum decus ita exterminant ut a sponsi amplexibus separent—“They are like a scab, and they so destroy our beauty that they separate us from the embraces of the spouse” (Hom. 50, chapter 3). And so it will come to pass that the soul, finding no more nourishment and consolation in her devout exercises—in prayer, in communion, in her visits to the Blessed Sacrament—will easily give them up; and thus, neglecting the means of her eternal salvation, she will easily be lost.
8. This danger will be greater still in those who commit many venial sins through attachment to some passion—such as pride, ambition, aversion to some person, or a disordered affection for one. St. Francis of Assisi says that, in dealing with someone who fears to be out of God’s grace, the devil does not seek at the outset to bind him with a slave’s chain by tempting him to commit a mortal sin, for that person would shrink from it in horror and be on his guard. Instead the devil seeks to bind him with a single hair; then more easily he will bind him with a thread, then with a string, then with a rope, and at last with a chain of hell—which is mortal sin—and so he makes him his slave.
Take an example. A man cherishes an affection for a woman, prompted at first by courtesy, or by gratitude, or by her good qualities; then follow mutual gifts; then tender words; and at one more violent assault of the devil the wretch is left fallen into mortal sin. And there happens to him what happens to those gamblers who, after losing large sums of money, at last say, driven on by passion, “Let it all go,” and end by losing everything they had.
9. Wretched the soul that lets herself be led by any passion! St. James says: “Behold how small a fire what a great wood it kindleth!” (Jas. 3:5). A small spark, if it is not put out, will set the whole forest ablaze; that is, an unmortified passion will bring the soul to ruin. Passion blinds; and when a man is blind, it is very easy for him to find himself fallen into a precipice when he least expects it.
St. Ambrose writes that the devil goes spying out which passion reigns in us, and which pleasure most draws us; and that one he sets before us, and then, stirring up concupiscence, he makes ready the chain to make us his slaves: Tunc maxime insidiatur adversarius quando videt in nobis passiones aliquas generari: tunc fomites movet, laqueos parat—“Then especially does the adversary lie in wait, when he sees some passions arise in us: then he stirs up the fuel and prepares his snares.”
10. St. Chrysostom asserts that he himself knew several persons endowed with great virtue who, because they took no account of light faults, then fell into an abyss of iniquity. When the devil cannot at first get much from us, he is content with little at a time, since by those many small gains he will more easily win the great one. No one, says St. Bernard, becomes wicked all at once; those who afterward rush headlong into the greatest disorders begin first with the least: Nemo repente fit turpissimus: a minimis incipiunt qui in maxima proruunt—“No one becomes most vile all at once: they who rush into the greatest things begin from the smallest” (Tract on the Orderly Life).
We must understand, moreover, that when a soul that has been favored by God with special lights and graces afterward falls into mortal sin, her fall will not be a simple fall, from which she will easily rise again, but a headlong plunge, from which she will rise again to God only with great difficulty.
11. Speaking of the tepid soul in the Apocalypse, the Lord says: “I would that thou wert cold or hot; but because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth” (Rev. 3:15–16). “I would thou wert cold”—that is, it would be better for thee to be deprived of my grace, for in that case there would be greater hope of thy amendment; but, since thou livest in thy tepidity, with no thought of amending, “I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth”—that is, to abandon thee; for the food that is vomited up is taken back again only with horror.
12. A certain author says that tepidity is a wasting fever which causes little alarm, because it is scarcely felt; but it is so malignant that hardly anyone is cured of it. The comparison is very apt; for tepidity makes the soul insensible to the remorse of conscience, so that, as she grows insensible to the remorse of venial sins, in time she will become insensible to the remorse of mortal ones.
13. Let us come to the remedy. It is hard, indeed, for a tepid soul to amend; but there are remedies for those who will embrace them. And what are they? First, the tepid soul must desire to see herself freed from a state so wretched and dangerous, as we have seen; otherwise, if she has no true desire of this, she will never force herself to take the means. Secondly, she must resolve to remove the occasions of her falls; otherwise she will always return to the same defects.
Thirdly, she must earnestly beg the Lord to raise her from such a state. By her own strength she can do nothing, but she can do all things with the help of God, who has promised to hear whoever prays to him: “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find” (Luke 11:9). We must pray, and go on praying without ceasing. If we cease to pray, we shall again be overcome; but if we go on praying, we shall remain victorious.
Points for Reflection
1. “I have committed many defects, but I have never made peace with my defects” (§7)
2. “She must resolve to remove the occasions of her falls; otherwise she will always return to the same defects” (§13)
3. “We must pray, and go on praying without ceasing. If we cease to pray, we shall again be overcome; but if we go on praying, we shall remain victorious” (§13)