Malice of mortal sins
“Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing.”—Luke 2:48
Most holy Mary lost her Son for three days, and during that time she did nothing but weep for having lost sight of Jesus, and she did not cease to seek him until she found him. How then does it happen that so many sinners not only lose sight of Jesus, but even lose his divine grace; and instead of weeping for so great a loss, sleep in peace, and make no effort to recover so great a blessing? This happens because they do not understand what it is to lose God by sin. One man says: I commit this sin, not to lose God, but to take this pleasure, this property of another, this revenge. Whoever speaks this way shows that he does not understand the malice of mortal sin. What is mortal sin?
First Point.—It is a great contempt shown to God.
Second Point.—It is a great offense given to God.
First Point.—Mortal sin is a great contempt shown to God.
1. The Lord calls upon Heaven and Earth to detest the ingratitude of those who commit mortal sin, after he had created them, nourished them with his blood, and exalted them to the dignity of his adopted children. “Hear, O ye Heavens, and give ear, O Earth, for the Lord hath spoken. I have brought up children and exalted them; but they have despised me” (Isa. 1:2). Who is this God whom sinners despise? He is a Majesty infinite, before whom all the kings of the Earth and all the blessed in Heaven are less than a drop of water and less than a grain of sand. “As a drop of a bucket, as a little dust” (Isa. 40:15). In a word, God is so great that, before him, all creatures are as small as if they did not exist. “All nations are before him as if they had no being at all” (Isa. 40:17).
And what is the man who offends him? St. Bernard answers: Saccus vermium, cibus vermium—“a sack of worms, the food of worms,” which shall devour him in the grave. “Thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked” (Rev. 3:17). He is a wretch who can do nothing, blind, who can know nothing, naked, who has nothing. And this worm dares to despise a God, and to provoke him to wrath! “Vile dust dares to irritate so tremendous a Majesty,” says the same St. Bernard. Justly, then, does St. Thomas the Angelic write that the malice of mortal sin is, as it were, infinite: Peccatum habet quandam infinitatem malitiae ex infinitate divinae majestatis—“Sin has a certain infinity of malice from the infinity of divine majesty” (Part 3, q. 2, a. 2, ad. 2). And St. Augustine calls sin simply an infinite evil. And therefore Hell, and a thousand Hells, are not enough to punish a single mortal sin.
2. Mortal sin is commonly defined by theologians as “a turning away from the immutable good” (Summa I, q. 24, a. 4). A turning away—that is, a turning of one’s back upon the sovereign good. Of this God complains to the sinner, saying: “Thou hast forsaken me, saith the Lord; thou art gone backward” (Jer. 15:6). Ungrateful man, God says, I would never have separated myself from you; you have been the first to leave me. Thou art gone backward—you have turned your back upon me.
3. Whoever despises the divine law despises God; for he already knows that, by despising the law, he loses the divine grace. “By transgression of the law, thou dishonorest God” (Rom. 2:23). God, because he has created all things, is therefore the Lord of all. “All things are in thy power… Thou hast made Heaven and Earth” (Esther 13:9). Hence all the senseless creatures—the winds, the sea, the fire, the rains—obey God. “The winds and the sea obey him” (Matt. 8:27). “Fire, hail, snow, ice, stormy winds, which fulfill his word” (Ps. 148:8).
But man, when he sins, says to God: Lord, you command me, but I will not obey you; you command me to pardon that injury, but I will avenge myself; you command me to leave the property of another, but I will take it for myself; you wish me to abstain from that forbidden pleasure, but I will not abstain from it. “Thou hast broken my yoke, thou hast burst my bands, and thou saidst: I will not serve” (Jer. 2:20). In short, the sinner, when he breaks the commandment, says to God: I do not acknowledge you for my Lord. Just so did Pharaoh answer Moses, when Moses, on the part of God, commanded him to set the people of the Lord at liberty: “Who is the Lord, that I should hear his voice, and let Israel go?” (Exod. 5:2).
4. The contempt offered to God by sin grows when we consider the vileness of the goods for which the sinner offends him. “Wherefore hath the wicked provoked God?” (Ps. 10:13). Why do so many offend God? For a puff of smoke, for an outburst of anger, for the pleasure of a beast! “They violate me among my people for a handful of barley and a piece of bread” (Ezek. 13:19). God is despised for a handful of barley, for a morsel of bread! O God, why do we let ourselves be deceived so easily by the Devil? “There is,” says the prophet Hosea, “a deceitful balance in his hand” (Hos. 12:7). Why do we not weigh things in the balance of God, which cannot deceive us, but choose to weigh them in the balance of the enemy, who seeks nothing but to deceive us and to lead us with himself into Hell?
“Lord, who is like to thee?” said David (Ps. 34:10). God is an infinite good; and so, when he sees himself set by sinners on a level with that little patch of earth, with that miserable satisfaction, he justly complains by Isaiah and says to them: “To whom have you likened me, or made me equal? saith the Holy One” (Isa. 40:25). So then, in your eyes, that vile pleasure was worth more than my grace? And for this you have set me below it? “Thou hast cast me off behind thy back” (Ezek. 23:35). So then, adds Salvian, “there is almost no one among men held more cheaply than God” (Against Avarice, Bk. 5). Has God been so vile in your eyes that he deserves to be set below the miserable things of this earth?
5. The tyrant had a heap of gold, of silver, and of gems placed before St. Clement, to give them to him if he would renounce the faith of Jesus Christ. The saint then heaved a deep sigh, considering the blindness of men, who set a little patch of earth on a level with God. But many sinners, for far less than this, exchange the grace of God; they cling to certain miserable goods, and forsake God, who is an infinite good, and who alone can make them happy.
Of this the Lord complains by Jeremiah, and first he speaks to the Heavens, that they may be astonished, and that their gates may be laid waste for horror: “Be astonished, O ye Heavens, at this; and ye gates thereof, be very desolate, saith the Lord.” And then he adds: “For my people have done two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and have digged to themselves cisterns—broken cisterns that can hold no water” (Jer. 2:12–13). We marvel at the injustice the Jews did to Jesus Christ when, Pilate offering them their choice of whom they would have set free, Jesus or Barabbas, they answered: “Not this man, but Barabbas” (John 18:40). The sinners do worse, for when the Devil sets before them their choice—that satisfaction of revenge, that loathsome pleasure, the winning of that point of pride, or Jesus Christ—they answer: “Not this man, but Barabbas”; that is, sin.
6. “There shall be no new God in thee,” says the Lord (Ps. 80:10). I do not wish you to leave me, your true God, and make yourself a new god, whom you set yourself to serve. For, as St. Cyprian says, whatever a man prefers to God, he makes his god, since he makes it his last end, when our last end is God alone: Quidquid homo Deo anteponit, Deum sibi facit—“Whatever man prefers to God, he makes his god.” And St. Jerome writes: Unusquisque quod cupit, si veneratur, hoc illi Deus est. Vitium in corde, est idolum in altari—“Whatever each one desires, if he venerates it, this is his god. Vice in the heart is an idol on the altar” (On Psalm 80). The creature that someone prefers to God becomes, for him, his god.
Hence the holy doctor says that, as the Gentiles adored idols upon their altars, so the wicked adore sin in their hearts. When King Jeroboam rebelled against God, he sought to draw the people to adore idols, as he himself did; and so, setting his idols before them one day, he said: “Behold thy gods, O Israel!” (1 Kings 12:28). So does the Devil: he presents that satisfaction to the sinner and says: What do you want with God? Behold your god—this delight, this money, this revenge; take this, and leave God. And the sinner, when he consents, does just this: he leaves God, and in his heart adores that satisfaction as his god. Vitium in corde, est idolum in altari—“Vice in the heart is an idol on the altar.”
7. The contempt the sinner shows to God grows still greater when he sins in God’s presence. St. Cyril of Jerusalem writes that certain peoples had set up the sun as their god, so that during the night, when there is no sun, they might do whatever they pleased, thinking that then there was no God to punish them: “Some set up the sun as their god, that, after the setting of the sun, they might be without a God” (Catechesis 4). These wretched, deluded men, in doing so, sinned indeed; but at least they had this much regard, not to sin in the presence of their god. But the Christian knows that God is everywhere and sees all things. “Do not I fill Heaven and Earth? saith the Lord” (Jer. 23:24); and with all this, the sinner does not refrain from offending God and provoking him to wrath before his very eyes: “A people that continually provoke me to anger before my face” (Isa. 65:3). Hence the Lord says that the sinner, by not shrinking from sinning before him who is his judge, even makes God a witness of his sins: “I am the judge and the witness, saith the Lord” (Jer. 29:23). St. Peter Chrysologus writes: “Whoever commits a crime in the presence of his very judge can offer no defense.” For whoever commits a crime of which his own judge is witness has no excuse that can avail him. This thought, of having offended God before his very eyes, was what most made David weep, when he said to God: “To thee only have I sinned, and have done evil before thee” (Ps. 51:6). But let us pass to the second point, in which we shall see still more clearly how great is the malice of mortal sin.
Second Point: Mortal sin is a great offense given to God.
8. There is no offense more bitter than to see oneself ill-treated by a person loved and favored. Whom does the sinner despise? He despises a God who has done him so many favors, and who loved him even to die crucified for love of him; and man, by committing a mortal sin, drives God from his heart. A soul that loves God is loved by God, and God himself comes to dwell within her. “If any one love me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and will make our abode with him” (John 14:23). So then the Lord does not depart from that soul unless she drives him away, even though God knows that before long she is to drive him away. “He deserts not, unless he is deserted,” as the Council of Trent speaks.
9. But when the soul consents to mortal sin, then the ingrate says to God: Lord, depart from me. “The wicked have said to God: Depart from us” (Job 21:14). She does not say it with her mouth, but by her deed, as St. Gregory notes: Recede, non verbis, sed moribus—“Depart, not in words, but in deeds.” The sinner already knows that God cannot remain together with sin; and so he already sees that, in his sinning, God must depart; and he says to him: since you cannot remain any longer with me, depart—farewell.
And by that very door through which God goes out of the soul, the Devil enters to take possession of her. When the priest baptizes an infant, he commands the demon to depart from that soul: “Go out of him, unclean spirit, and give place to the Holy Ghost,” as the ritual says. But when a man consents to mortal sin, he says to God: Go out of me, O Lord; give place to the Devil, whom I wish to serve.
10. St. Bernard writes that mortal sin is so contrary to God that, if God were capable of death, sin would deprive him of life: Peccatum quantum in se est Deum perimit—“Sin, as far as lies in itself, destroys God.” Hence Job said that man, when he commits a mortal sin, takes up arms against God and stretches forth his hand against him: “For he hath stretched out his hand against God, and hath strengthened himself against the Almighty” (Job 15:25).
11. St. Bernard says that whoever sins by his own will, as far as the malice in that will extends, takes away the life of God: Quantum in ipsa est Deum perimit propria voluntas—“As far as lies in it, one’s own will destroys God” (Sermon 3 On the Resurrection). And then he adds the reason: such a will “would wish God to see its own sins, and to be unable to take vengeance on them.” The sinner already knows that, in committing that sin, God condemns him to Hell; and so, because he is resolutely set on sinning, he would wish then that there were no God; and consequently he would wish to take away his life, that he might not be able to punish him.
“He hath run against him,” Job continues, “with his neck raised up, and is armed with a fat neck” (Job 15:26). Then he raises his neck—that is, his pride—and runs to offend God; and because he takes up the quarrel with one who is greatly powerful, he arms himself; and with what does he arm himself? He arms himself “with a fat neck,” with a thick skull. The fat is the symbol of ignorance; and so he arms himself with ignorance, saying: This is not a great sin; God is merciful; we are flesh; the Lord will bear with us. Oh, the rashness! Oh, the deceit that carries so many Christians to Hell!
Moreover, what does the man who commits a mortal sin do? He afflicts the heart of God. “But they provoked to wrath, and afflicted the spirit of the Holy One” (Isa. 63:10). What pain would you feel, if you knew that someone greatly loved and favored by you had sought to take away your life? God is not capable of grief; but if he were capable of it, a single mortal sin would be enough to make him die of sorrow, as Father Medina says: “Mortal sin, if it were possible, would destroy God himself, because it would be the cause of infinite sadness in God.” My brother, then, as often as you committed a mortal sin, if God could have died, you would already have made him die of sorrow; for you saw that you were insulting him and turning your back upon him, after he had done you so much good, and had gone so far as to give all his blood and his life for you.
[An act of sorrow, etc.]
Points for Reflection
1. “Why do we not weigh things in the balance of God, which cannot deceive us, but choose to weigh them in the balance of the enemy, who seeks nothing but to deceive us and to lead us with himself into Hell?” (§4)
2. “And the sinner, when he consents, does just this: he leaves God, and in his heart adores that satisfaction as his god” (§6)
3. “So then the Lord does not depart from that soul unless she drives him away, even though God knows that before long she is to drive him away” (§8)