The spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius : $b adapted to...

The main purpose of the first part of the Spiritual Exercises, or what St. Ignatius calls the first week, is to purify the soul from all stains of sin, and to strengthen it against all temptations to sin in future. Of course mortal sin is the principal evil to be destroyed, it is the greatest evil in the world. Since the religious life is essentially the way of perfection, it presupposes the destruction of mortal sin; being the way of the counsels, it supposes the observance of the Commandments.

Yet it is quite proper that religious in their yearly retreats should review the Exercises of the first week, the meditations regarding mortal sins and the fear of the Lord, not so much to obtain pardon of sins committed, as to strengthen their resolutions and to take precaution against committing sins in the future. In fact, as a rule, religious do not commit mortal sins; and, although they must be constantly on their guard against temptations,—because, while the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak,—yet it is a consoling truth that they rarely fall so low. A religious that frequently commits mortal sins lives far below the normal standard of his state of life. He is indeed greatly to be pitied, and is in serious danger of becoming a reprobate. Of course no one should ever be discouraged, but such a person should arouse himself to fervent prayer and vigorous exertions; he is walking on the brink of the precipice.

Whoever has come to the present part of the Spiritual Exercises is supposed to have conceived an intense horror of mortal sin. But we ought not to be satisfied with attaining this first degree of purity of conscience; we ought to strive seriously to attain the second degree, or to confirm ourselves in the same; that is, we ought also carefully to avoid the commission of all deliberate venial sins. We must distinguish between two kinds of venial sins, the deliberate and the indeliberate. Both kinds suppose that, while committing them, we are aware that we are doing something which God forbids, or omitting what He commands; else we do not really displease Him. But the sin is deliberate when we fully notice the evil, and do it nevertheless with full consent of our free will; else it may be called indeliberate. Indeliberate sins will escape from time to time even very virtuous persons, owing to our unruly passions and the weakness of the human will in consequence of Adam’s sin and of evil habits.

Each of such faults, singly considered, could be avoided; for whatever cannot be avoided at all cannot be laid to our blame; but all cannot be avoided together. Thus a beginner may be able to pronounce correctly every word on a page of his reader, but will not proceed far without making some mistakes.

But with the ordinary grace of God a virtuous person may avoid all deliberate venial sins. For this purpose we must first of all convince ourselves of the great evil contained in every wilful offense of God; for by such offense a poor mortal puts his will above the will of his Creator and Lord. This evil is so great that no creature, nor even all creatures united, could by their own power fully atone for it.

This becomes more evident when we consider some examples of the severe punishments inflicted by the Lord on those guilty of such offences. Thus when King David had committed an act of vanity by ordering an enumeration of all his subjects to see how great a monarch he had become, which seems to have been only a venial sin, the Lord sent to him the prophet Gad, to give him the choice between three punishments, namely three years of famine, three months of flight before his enemies or three days of pestilence on his people. He chose the pestilence, and it carried off seventy thousand men (I Paral. xxi).

Moses for a venial fault was refused the honor of leading the Chosen People into the promised land, which would have been a fitting crown of all his labors. His sister Mary, for some murmuring against her brother, was stricken with a leprosy and humiliated before all the people. In fact, leprosy is a striking figure of the effect of venial sin on the soul; for it disfigures the soul without depriving it of life. If a visible leprosy were usually the effect of wilful venial sin, men would be as anxious to avoid such an evil as they are now to escape that bodily plague.

Then there are the pains of Purgatory to be considered, which are deserved by venial sins; they are worse than any pain known to us in this life. For, as St. Thomas remarks, they are different in kind: the fire of Purgatory is not created for the service and comfort of man, but for his punishment and torture. The examples of its duration which have been made known by revelations to saintly souls are proofs of the terrible evil such offences are in the sight of the just, all-holy God. Father Faber, in his “All for Jesus” says: “In the revelations of Sister Frances of Pampeluna, we find that, among some hundreds of cases, by far the greater majority suffered 30, 40 or 60 years” (pp. 394, 395).

There results besides from venial sins a still worse consequence than any transitory suffering, namely that they expose us to the danger of committing mortal sins and losing our soul for eternity. This happens in two ways, naturally and supernaturally.

1. It is natural for man, when he does a good or a bad act, to become thereby more inclined to do the same again under similar influences and circumstances; thus habits are contracted of virtue and vice. The commission of venial sins therefore inclines the soul to sin more readily thereafter, and to sin, not only oftener, but also more grievously; and thus venial often lead to mortal sins. This is not theory only, but the teaching of constant experience. For instance, a religious has acquired great purity of conscience, he is a model of modesty; but he begins to neglect his rules, he gets accustomed to glance rather freely at indelicate objects, he becomes habituated to indulge his curiosity. Still he would shrink from anything impure. But his imagination becomes more indelicate, his passions less restrained, wilful venial sins multiply and grievous falls may follow sooner than he expected. Mortal sins themselves may become habitual, and who can tell where the evil will end? Even if only one mortal sin were thus brought about, the evil is the greatest of misfortunes. But this growing habit is likely to get still worse.

2. Supernaturally a similar process is going on. By every act of virtue we obtain, along with the merit, additional actual grace to merit more; but when we sin, we fail to obtain this new accession of grace; and thus it becomes less likely that we shall do better next time. We may thus lose more and more grace by repeated venial faults; and in face of an unusually strong temptation, we may be so weak as to yield assent. No one becomes very bad on a sudden; but many gradually lose their virtue and become reprobates. History is full of such examples, and daily experience ought to be a constant warning against such danger.

But even if there were no danger of mortal sin (which is, of course, a false supposition) a religious has a special reason to avoid all deliberate sin in the fact that he has been made a favorite disciple of the Blessed Saviour. When he wantonly offends the Lord, he deserves to some extent the reproach originally addressed to the Chosen People, and afterwards applied to Judas: “If my enemy had reviled me, I would verily have borne with it. And if he that hated me had spoken great things against me, I would perhaps have hidden myself from him. But thou a man of one mind, my guide and my familiar, who didst take sweetmeats together with me; in the house of the Lord we walked with consent” (Ps. 54). We would not willingly grieve or insult a friend; and is not Jesus our dearest and most devoted friend? Certainly it ought to be one of the principal resolutions of the retreat to strive earnestly and unceasingly to avoid all deliberate sins.