Catechism on Sin

Sin is the executioner of the good God, and the assassin of the soul. It snatches us away from heaven, to precipitate us into hell. And we love it! What folly! If we thought seriously about it, we should have such a lively horror of sin that we could not commit it.

O my children, how ungrateful we are! The good God wishes to make us happy, that is very certain; He gave us His Law for no other end. The Law of God is great; it is broad. King David said that he found his delight in it, and that it was a treasure more precious to him than the greatest riches. He said also that he walked at large, because he had sought after the commandments of the Lord. The good God wishes, then, to make us happy, and we do not wish to be so. We turn away from Him, and give ourselves to the devil! We fly from our Friend, and we seek after our murderer! We commit sin; we plunge ourselves into the mire. Once sunk in this mire, we know not how to get out. If our fortune were in the case, we should soon find out how to get out of the difficulty; but because it only concerns our soul, we stay where we are.

We come to confession quite preoccupied with the shame that we shall feel. We accuse ourselves by steam. It is said that many confess, and few are converted. I believe it is so, my children, because few confess with tears of repentance.

See, the misfortune is that people do not reflect. If one said to those who work on Sundays, to a young person who had been dancing for two or three hours, to a man coming out of an alehouse drunk, “What have you been doing? You have been crucifying our Lord!” they would be quite astonished, because they do not think of it. My children, if we thought of it, we should be seized with horror; it would be impossible for us to do evil. For what has the good God done to us that we should grieve Him thus, and put Him to death afresh—Him, who has redeemed us from hell?

It would be well if all sinners, when they are going to their guilty pleasures, could, like St. Peter, meet our Lord on the way, who would say to them, “I am going to that place where thou art going thyself, to be there crucified afresh.” Perhaps that might make them reflect.

The saints understood how great an outrage sin is against God. Some of them passed their lives in weeping for their sins. St. Peter wept all his life; he was still weeping at his death. St. Bernard used to say, “Lord! Lord! it is I who fastened Thee to the cross!”

By sin we despise the good God, we crucify the good God! What a pity it is to lose our souls, which have cost our Lord so many sufferings! What harm has our Lord done us, that we should treat Him so? If the poor lost souls could come back to the earth! if they were in our place!

Oh, how senseless we are! the good God calls us to Him, and we fly from Him! He wishes to make us happy, and we will not have His happiness. He commands us to love Him, and we give our heart to the devil. We employ in ruining ourselves the time he gives us to save our souls. We make war upon Him with the means He gave us to serve Him.

When we offend the good God, if we were to look at our crucifix, we should hear our Lord saying to us in the depths of our soul, “Wilt thou too, then, take the side of My enemies? Wilt thou crucify Me afresh?” Cast your eyes on our Lord fastened to the Cross, and say to yourself, “That is what it cost my Saviour to repair the injury my sins have done to God!” A God coming down to earth to be the victim of our sins, a God suffering, a God dying, a God enduring every torment, because He would bear the weight of our crimes! At the sight of the Cross, let us understand the malice of sin, and the hatred we ought to feel for it. Let us enter into ourselves; let us see what we can do to make amends for our poor life.

“What a pity it is!” the good God will say to us at our death; “why hast thou offended Me—Me, who loved thee so much?” To offend the good God, who has never done us any thing but good; to please the devil, who can never do us any thing but evil! What folly!

Is it not real folly to choose to make ourselves worthy of hell by attaching ourselves to the devil, when we might taste the joys of heaven, even in this life, by uniting ourselves with God by love? One cannot understand this folly; it cannot be enough lamented. Poor sinners seem as if they could not wait for the sentence which will condemn them to the society of the devils; they condemn themselves to it.

There is a sort of foretaste in this life of paradise, of hell, and of purgatory. Purgatory is in those souls that are not dead to themselves; hell is in the heart of the impious; paradise in that of the perfect, who are closely united to our Lord.