Impenitence
“Lord, my daughter is even now dead.”—Matthew 9:18.
How great is God’s goodness! How hard it is to win pardon from a man we have offended, yet when sinners cast themselves at the feet of the Lord with humility and with sorrow for having offended him, he pardons and embraces them at once. “Turn to me, saith the Lord of Hosts, and I will turn to you” (Zech. 1:3). Sinners, says the Lord, I have turned my back on you because you first turned your back on me; return to me, and I will return to you and embrace you.
When the prophet Nathan rebuked David for his sin, David repented and said, “I have sinned against the Lord.” He was pardoned at once; for at the very moment he confessed his guilt, Nathan said to him, “The Lord also hath taken away thy sin” (2 Kings 12:13). But let us come to the gospel of the day, in which a certain ruler, whose daughter was dead, went straight to Jesus Christ and asked him to restore her to life: “Lord, my daughter is even now dead; but come, lay thy hand upon her, and she shall live.”
Explaining this passage, St. Bonaventure turns to the sinner and says: “Your daughter is your soul; she is even now dead from sin; hasten your conversion.” Brother, your soul is the daughter who has just died by committing sin. Return to God at once. Hasten; for if you delay, putting off your conversion from day to day, the wrath of God shall suddenly come upon you, and you shall be cast into hell. “Delay not to be converted to the Lord, and defer it not from day to day” (Ecclus. 5:8, 9). Behold the sermon for this day, in which I will show, first, the danger to which one who is in the state of sin and defers his conversion is exposed; and secondly, the remedy to be taken up by one who is in sin and wishes to save his soul.
First Point.—The danger to which a person in sin, who defers his conversion, is exposed.
1. St. Augustine considers three states of Christians. The first is the state of those who have always preserved their baptismal innocence; the second, of those who have fallen into sin but afterward returned to God and persevered in grace; the third, of those who have fallen and continually relapsed into sin, and are found in that unhappy state at death. Of the first and second class he pronounces their salvation secure; but of the third he says, Non dico, non praesumo, non promitto—“I do not say; I do not presume; I do not promise” (Hom. 41 int. 50). He neither says, nor presumes, nor promises that such sinners are saved—words that reveal his mind: that it is very unlikely they obtain eternal life.
St. Thomas teaches (Summa II-II, q. 109, a. 8) that one who is in the state of mortal sin cannot long hold out without committing some new sin. St. Gregory had said it before him: Peccatum quod poenitentia non deletur, mox suo pondere ad aliud trahit; unde fit quod non solum est peccatum, sed causa peccati—“A sin which is not blotted out by repentance, by its weight, soon draws to another sin; hence it is not only a sin, but the cause of sin” (Moralia, Bk. 3, ch. 9). One sin is the cause of another; and this happens because, in the sinner, the reason that inclines him to evil is disordered, so that he cannot long resist temptation.
So writes St. Anselm: Quando quis manet in peccato, ratio jam est deordinata et ideo veniente tentatione faciet id quod est facilius agere—“When one remains in sin, reason is already disordered, and therefore when temptation comes, he will do what is easier to do.” Hence St. Antoninus says that, although the sinner knows the good of standing in the grace of God, yet, being deprived of that grace, he always relapses however hard he strives not to fall: Per peccatum non potest prosequi bonum quod cognoscit, conatur et labitur—“Through sin he cannot pursue the good which he knows; he tries and he falls.” For how can the branch that is cut off from the vine bear fruit? The Lord said: “As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abide in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in me” (John 15:4).
2. But some young man may say, “I will give myself to God later on.” Behold the false hope of sinners, which keeps them in sin until death and from death leads them to hell! What do you mean, that you will give yourself to God later on? But tell me, who promises that you shall have time to give yourself to God, and that a sudden death will not carry you out of this world before you give yourself to him?
St. Gregory writes: Qui poenitenti veniam spopondit, peccanti diem crastinum non promisit—“He who has promised pardon to penitents has not promised tomorrow to sinners” (Hom. 12 in Ev.). The Lord has promised pardon to all who repent of their sins; but to those who wish to persist in sin he has not promised the time to be converted. Do you say, later on? But Jesus Christ tells you that time is not in our power, but in God’s. “It is not for you to know the times or moments which the Father has put in his own power” (Acts 1:7).
St. Luke writes that our Savior saw a fig tree which for three years had borne no fruit: “Behold, for these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none.” And so he said to the dresser of the vineyard, “Cut it down therefore. Why cumbereth it the ground?” (Luke 13:7). Tell me, you who say you will give yourself to God later on, why does the Lord keep you alive? That you may go on sinning? No; he gives you life that you may forsake sin and amend. “Knowest thou not that the benignity of God leadeth thee to penance?” (Rom. 2:4).
But when you refuse to amend and say you will see to it later on, then God will say, “Cut it down. Why cumbereth it the ground?” What is this wicked man doing on the earth? Going on to offend me? Cut down this tree that bears no fruit, and cast it into the fire. “Every tree, therefore, that doth not yield good fruit, shall be cut down, and cast into the fire” (Matt. 3:10).
3. But grant that the Lord does give you time later on to be converted: if you are not converted now, will you be converted then? Sins are like so many ropes that bind the sinner fast. “He is first bound with the ropes of his own sins” (Prov. 5:22). My brother, if you do not trust yourself to break these ropes that bind you now, how will you trust yourself to break them later, when they are doubled by the new sins you will have committed?
The Lord showed this one day to the Abbot Arsenius, as Rosweyde relates in the Lives of the Fathers, to make him understand how far the madness of the impenitent reaches. He showed him an Ethiopian who, unable to lift a bundle of sticks, kept adding more to it, and so made himself ever less able to lift it. Sinners, said the Savior, act in just this way: they would gladly rid themselves of their past sins, yet they commit new ones. And these new sins draw them on to other excesses, greater in number and in malice.
Cain sinned against his brother first by envy, then by hatred, then by murder; and at last he despaired of the divine mercy, saying, “My iniquity is greater than that I may obtain pardon” (Gen. 4:13). So too Judas first sinned by avarice, then betrayed Jesus Christ, and afterward hanged himself. This is what sins do: they bind the sinner and make him so far their slave that the wretch knows his own ruin and yet wills it. “His own iniquities catch the wicked” (Prov. 5:22).
4. Moreover, his sins weigh the sinner down so heavily that he no longer looks toward heaven or his own salvation. “My iniquities,” wept David, “are growing over my head, and, as a heavy burden, are become heavy upon me” (Ps. 38:5). And so the wretched man loses his reason, looks only on the goods of this earth, and thereby forgets the divine judgments. “And they perverted their own minds, and turned away their eyes, that they might not look unto heaven, nor remember just judgments” (Dan. 13:9).
He comes even to hate the light, fearing that it will trouble his shameful pleasures. “Every one that doth evil hateth the light” (John 3:20). And so these wretches, grown blind, go round and round continually from sin to sin. “The wicked walk round about” (Ps. 12:9). They then despise everything—admonitions, divine calls, hell, heaven, and God. “The wicked, when he is come into the depth of sins, contemneth” (Prov. 18:3).
5. Job writes: “He hath torn me with wound upon wound, he hath rushed in upon me like a giant” (Job 16:15). When a man conquers one temptation, he gains greater strength to conquer others in time to come, and the devil loses some of his power. But when he yields to a temptation, the devil grows into a giant, and the man is left so weak that he has scarcely any strength to resist him.
If a man receives a wound from his enemy, his strength fails; and if he receives still more, he will be left so weakened that he can no longer defend himself. So it is with those fools who say, “I will give myself to God later on.” How could they resist the devil once they have lost their strength and their wounds have festered into gangrene? “My sores are putrefied and corrupted, because of my foolishness” (Ps. 38:6). A wound is easily healed at the outset; but once it has turned to gangrene the cure is most difficult; fire must be used, and even with the fire many are not healed.
6. But, you say, St. Paul teaches that God “will have all men to be saved” (1 Tim. 2:4), and that Jesus Christ came on earth to save sinners: “Jesus Christ came into this world to save sinners” (1 Tim. 1:15). I answer: God wills all to be saved—who denies it? But he wills the salvation of those who wish to save their souls, not of those who wish to destroy themselves. And Jesus Christ came to save sinners, but not the obstinate.
To save our souls, two things are needed: first, the grace of God; and secondly, our own cooperation. And so the Lord says: “Behold, I stand at the gate and knock: if any man shall hear my voice, and open to me the door, I will come unto him” (Rev. 3:20). Then, for God to enter into us by his grace, we must on our part obey his voice and open our heart to him. Likewise St. Paul says, “With fear and trembling work out your salvation” (Phil. 2:12). He says, work out; therefore we too must cooperate by our good works—otherwise the Lord will give us only sufficient grace, by which, since it remains sufficient and does not become efficacious (as the theologians speak), we could indeed be saved, but certainly will not be.
Behold the reason: he who is in the state of sin and goes on sinning binds himself ever more to the flesh and removes himself ever farther from God. Now how can God draw near to us by his grace when we are drawing farther from him? He then withdraws all the more and closes his hand upon his favors. “And I will make it desolate… and I will command the clouds to rain no rain upon it” (Isa. 5:6).
When the soul goes on offending God, he abandons her and withholds his helps. Hence the wretched soul will cease to feel remorse of conscience; she will be left without light; and the blindness of her mind and the hardness of her heart will only increase. She will be made insensible to the calls of God, to the maxims of faith, and to the grievous examples of other rebellious souls like herself who have ended in hell.
7. “But who knows,” the obstinate sinner will say, “perhaps God will show me the same mercy he has already shown to certain great sinners.” St. Chrysostom answers him: Fortasse dabit, inquis: cur dicis fortasse? Contigit aliquando; sed cogita quod de anima deliberas?—“‘Perhaps he will give it,’ you say: why do you say perhaps? It has happened at times; but consider that you are deliberating about your soul” (Hom. 22 in 2 Cor.). You say, “But perhaps God will give me the grace of salvation.” Why do you say perhaps? Because it has sometimes happened? But remember, says the holy doctor, that the matter at stake is your soul, which, once lost, is lost forever.
I take you up and grant it: yes, it is true that God has by certain extraordinary graces saved some enormous sinners. But these cases are very rare; they are prodigies, miracles of grace, by which God wished to show how far his mercy reaches. Ordinarily, with those sinners who refuse to make an end of sin, God makes an end of them by sending them to hell, according to his many threats in the sacred Scriptures: “You have despised my counsels, and neglected my reprehensions. I also will laugh in your destruction…. Then they will call on me, and I will not hear” (Prov. 1:25, 26, 28).
I, says the Lord, called them again and again, and they would not hear me. “But they did not hear nor incline their ears; but hardened their neck, that they might not hear me” (Jer. 17:23). Now that they call on me, it is just that I do not hear them. God bears with us, but he does not bear forever; when the time of punishment comes, he chastises sins past and present. “For the Most High is a patient rewarder” (Ecclus. 5:4).
And the longer God has waited for the negligent sinner, says St. Augustine, the more severely he will punish him: Quanto diutius expectat Deus, ut emenderis; tanto gravius judicabit, si neglexeris—“The longer God waits for you to amend, the more severely he will judge if you neglect it” (On the Usefulness of Doing Penance). He who promises to be converted, and through his own negligence does not return to God, makes himself unworthy of the grace of a true conversion.
8. But God is full of mercy. He is full of mercy; but he is not so foolish as to act without reason. To show mercy to one who wishes to go on offending him would not be goodness but folly. The Lord says: “Is thy eye evil because I am good?” (Matt. 20:15). Because I am good, will you be wicked? God is good, but he is also just, and therefore exhorts us all to keep his law, if we wish to save our souls. “If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments” (Matt. 19:17).
Were God to show mercy to the wicked as well as to the good, giving all the grace of conversion before death, this would itself be a great temptation even to the good to sin. But no; when the term of his mercies has come, he punishes, and pardons no more. “And my eye shall not spare thee, and I will show thee no pity” (Ezek. 7:4). And so he warns us: “Pray that your flight may not be in the winter or on the Sabbath” (Matt. 24:20). In winter we cannot work because of the cold, and on the Sabbath because of the law; by which the Redeemer signifies that for impenitent sinners a time shall come when they would wish to give themselves to God, but shall find themselves hindered from doing so by their evil habits. Of this misfortune there are countless grievous examples. Cataneus, in his sermons on a happy death, relates that a dissolute young man, when admonished to give up his evil life, would answer: “I have a saint who is all-powerful, and this is the mercy of God.” The wretch came to die; he called for a confessor; and while he was preparing for confession, the devil set before his eyes a written list of all his sins. Then, struck with terror, he cried, “Alas! What a long list of sins!” And before he could confess, the unhappy man expired.
Campadelli, in his Sunday Sermons, further relates that another young nobleman, sunk in sins of the flesh, was warned by God and by men to amend his life, but despised every warning. He then fell gravely ill, confessed his sins, and promised to change his life; but once recovered, he returned to his vomit. Behold the chastisement of God! Being one day in a field during the vintage, he was seized with fever, withdrew to his house, and, as the illness was advancing, sent in haste for a priest who lived nearby. The priest comes, enters the room, and greets the sick man—but sees a frightful sight: the eyes open, the mouth gaping, the face black as a coal. He calls to him, and finds that he is dead.
My hearers, do not you too become wretched examples of the justice of God. Give up sin, but give it up at once; for if you go on putting it off, the same chastisement that has fallen on so many others will fall on you as well. Let us come to the remedy.
Second Point.—The remedy for those who find themselves in sin and wish to save their souls.
9. Jesus Christ was one day asked whether those who are saved are few: “Lord, are they few that are saved?” He answered: “Strive to enter by the narrow gate; for many, I say to you, shall seek to enter, and they shall not be able” (Luke 13:23, 24). He says that many seek to enter heaven and do not enter; and why? Because they wish to enter it without trouble, without doing violence to themselves to abstain from forbidden pleasures. Therefore he said, “Strive to enter by the narrow gate.” The gate of heaven is narrow; to enter it we must labor and do violence to ourselves.
And we must be persuaded that what we can do today we shall not always be able to do later on. This is the delusion that sends so many souls to hell; for later on, as we have already said, the soul will be weaker, more darkened, more hardened, the divine helps gone—and so she will die in her sin.
You say, “I will return to God later on.” Then you already know that, to save your soul, you must give up sin; and since you must give it up, why not now, while God is calling you? “If at some time” you must repent, said St. Augustine, “why not now?” The time you now have to repair the past you will not have later on; and the mercy God shows you now he will not show you then. If, then, you wish to save your soul, do at once what you must one day do. Go to confession as soon as you can, and tremble lest every delay you take should be the eternal ruin of your soul.
10. St. Fulgentius writes: Nullus sub spe misericordiae debet diutius in peccatis remanere, cum nolit in corpore sub spe diutius aegrotare—“No one should remain longer in sins under the hope of mercy, since he would not wish to lie longer sick in body under a like hope” (St. Fulg. ad Petr. Diac.). If you were ill, says the saint, and the physician offered you a sure remedy to heal you, would you say, “I do not wish to be cured now, for I hope to be cured later on”? And when it is the health of your soul, will you choose to remain in sin, saying, “I hope that God will show me mercy later on too”? But if, according to his just judgments, the Lord should not show it to you then, what will become of you—shall you not be damned?
Let us, then, says the Apostle, do good while we have the time. “Therefore, whilst we have time, let us work good to all men” (Gal. 6:10). For later on we may no longer have this time. And so the Lord exhorts us to keep watch with care over our souls, since we know not the hour when he will come to take account of our life. “Watch ye, therefore, because you know not the day nor the hour” (Matt. 25:13).
11. “My soul is continually in my hands” (Ps. 119:109). He who wears on his finger a ring set with a diamond of great value looks at it again and again to see that the diamond is still there; so too we ought to keep watch over our souls. And if we see that the soul has been lost by sin, we ought at once to use every diligence to recover it.
We ought to turn at once to Jesus, our Savior, as Magdalene did, who, as soon as she knew that he was at table, ran to him, cast herself at his feet, and by her tears obtained pardon (Luke 7:37). “Now the axe is laid to the root of the tree” (Luke 3:9). For all who are found in sin, the axe of divine justice stands ready to take away their life as soon as the time of vengeance comes.
Up, then, Christian soul; if you find yourself bound by any evil habit, free yourself quickly, and be no longer the slave of the devil. “Loose the bonds from off thy neck, captive daughter of Zion” (Isa. 52:2). St. Ambrose adds: Posuisti vestigium supra voraginem culpae, cito aufer pedem—“You have set your foot upon the abyss of sin; quickly take it away.” You have set your foot on the mouth of the abyss, which is sin, the very mouth of hell; lift it away and draw back, or else you shall fall into a pit beyond recovery.
12. But I find myself bound by an evil habit. Yet if you wish to give up sin, who can force you to commit it? All evil habits and all the temptations of hell are conquered by the grace of God. Commend yourself with all your heart to Jesus Christ, and he will give you strength to conquer them. But should you ever be in some proximate occasion of sin, you must cut it off at once, or else you will fall again. St. Jerome writes: Potius praescinde, quam solve—“Rather cut it off than loosen it.” Do not linger to untie it little by little; sever it at a single stroke. This is just what the devil seeks—that you take your time.
Go and find a good confessor, and he will tell you what to do. And if hereafter you have the misfortune of falling into some mortal sin, go at once to confess it—the same day if you can, the same night. Hear, finally, what I now tell you: God is ready to help you; it rests with you, if you wish to save yourself. Tremble, my brother, lest these words of mine, if you despise them, become for you so many swords in hell for all eternity.
Points for Reflection
1. “Delay not to be converted to the Lord, and defer it not from day to day” (§2)
2. “‘If at some time’ you must repent, said St. Augustine, ‘why not now?’ The time you now have to repair the past you will not have later on” (§9)
3. “Go to confession as soon as you can, and tremble lest every delay you take should be the eternal ruin of your soul” (§9)