How Expensive is Sin?

Article 1
Too Expensive! Beyond My Budget!

Terrifying Scriptures
Some of the most moving Scriptural passages on sin are to be found in the book of the prophet Ezechiel, where God, in very clear and simple language, tells us His thoughts on sin. A look at those in a minute! However, St. Paul puts it in a nutshell when he writes to the Romans, saying: "The wages of sin is death!" (Romans 6:23). It is a cold, stark, blunt and brutal statement and truth! Sin deserves death! Sin begets death! "Wherefore as by one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death; and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned” (Romans 5:12).

Tell My People Their Sins
God puts it this way through Ezechiel, who is meant to pass on the message from God to His people: “I fell upon my face, and I heard the voice of one that spoke. And he said to me: ‘Son of man, stand upon thy feet, and I will speak to thee!’ And the Spirit entered into me after that He spoke to me, and I heard Him speaking to me, and saying: ‘Son of man, I send thee to the children of Israel, to a rebellious people, that hath revolted from Me, they, and their fathers, have transgressed My covenant even unto this day” ... And thou shalt speak My words to them, for they provoke Me to anger (Ezechiel 2:1-3, 2:7).

“But the house of Israel will not hearken to thee: because they will not hearken to Me: for all the house of Israel are of a hard forehead and an obstinate heart. Behold I have made thy face stronger than their faces: and thy forehead harder than their foreheads. I have made thy face like an adamant and like flint: fear them not, neither be thou dismayed at their presence: for they are a provoking house” (Ezechiel 3:7-9).

Just Like Our Lady
What God says next is strikingly similar to what Our Lady has said at her modern-day apparitions at Rue-du-Bac (1830); La Salette (1848); Fatima (1917) and Akita (1973).

Souls Must Be Warned or We Pay the Price
“If, when I say to the wicked, Thou shalt surely die: thou declare it not to him, nor speak to him, that he may be converted from his wicked way, and live: the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but I will require his blood at thy hand. But if thou give warning to the wicked, and he be not converted from his wickedness, and from his evil way: he indeed shall die in his iniquity, but thou hast delivered thy soul. Moreover if the just man shall turn away from his justice, and shall commit iniquity: I will lay a stumbling block before him, he shall die, because thou hast not given him warning: he shall die in his sin, and his justices which he hath done, shall not be remembered: but I will require his blood at thy hand. But if thou warn the just man, that the just may not sin, and he doth not sin: living he shall live, because thou hast warned him, and thou hast delivered thy soul” (Ezechiel 3:18-21)

Enough is Enough!
“Therefore thus saith the Lord God: ‘Because you have surpassed the Gentiles that are round about you, and have not walked in My commandments, and have not kept My judgments: behold, I come against thee, and I myself will execute judgments in the midst of thee in the sight of the Gentiles. I will execute judgments in thee, and I will scatter thy whole remnant into every wind. Therefore as I live,’ saith the Lord God: ‘Because thou hast violated My sanctuary with all thy offences, and with all thy abominations: I will also break thee in pieces, and My Eye shall not spare, and I will not have any pity. A third part of thee shall die with the pestilence, and shall be consumed with famine: and a third part of thee shall fall by the sword: and a third part of thee will I scatter into every wind, and I will draw out a sword after them. And I will accomplish My fury, and will cause My indignation to rest upon them, and I will be comforted when I shall have accomplished My indignation in them. And I will make thee desolate, and a reproach among the nations and thou shalt be a reproach, and a scoff, an example, and an astonishment amongst the nations when I shall have executed judgments in thee in anger, and in indignation, and in wrathful rebukes. I the Lord have spoken it: When I shall send upon them the grievous arrows of famine, which shall bring death, and which I will send to destroy you: and I will gather together famine against you: and I will break among you the staff of bread. And I will send in upon you famine, and evil beasts unto utter destruction: and pestilence, and blood shall pass through thee, and I will bring in the sword upon thee. I the Lord have spoken it” (Ezechiel 5:7-17).

The Anger of God Towards Sin
“And I will throw down your altars, and your idols shall be broken in pieces: and I will cast down your slain before your idols. And I will lay the dead carcasses of the children of Israel before your idols: and I will scatter your bones round about your altars in all your dwelling places. The cities shall be laid waste, and the high places shall be thrown down, and destroyed, and your altars shall be abolished, and shall be broken in pieces: and your idols shall be no more, and your temples shall be destroyed, and your works shall be defaced. And the slain shall fall in the midst of you: and you shall know that I am the Lord. And I will leave in you some that shall escape the sword among the nations, when I shall have scattered you, through the countries. And they that are saved of you shall remember Me amongst the nations to which they are carried captives: because I have broken their heart that was faithless, and revolted from Me: and their eyes that went a fornicating after their idols: and they shall be displeased with themselves because of the evils which they have committed in all their abominations. And they shall know that I the Lord have not spoken in vain that I would do this evil to them” (Ezechiel 6:4-10).

“Now very shortly I will pour out My wrath upon thee, and I will accomplish My anger in thee: and I will judge thee according to thy ways, and I will lay upon thee all thy crimes. And My Eye shall not spare, neither will I shew mercy: but I will lay thy ways upon thee, and thy abominations shall be in the midst of thee: and you shall know that I am the Lord that strike. Behold the day, behold it is come: destruction is gone forth, the rod hath blossomed, pride hath budded” (Ezechiel 7:8-10).

You Choose!
“Therefore say to the house of Israel: ‘Thus saith the Lord God: Be converted, and depart from your idols, and turn away your faces from all your abominations! ... That the house of Israel may go no more astray from me, nor be polluted with all their transgressions: but may be my people, and I may be their God ... Son of man, when a land shall sin against me, so as to transgress grievously, I will stretch forth my hand upon it, and will break the staff of the bread thereof: and I will send famine upon it, and will destroy man and beast out of it’” (Ezechiel 14:6; 14:11-13).

Sin Brings Death; Penance Brings Life
“The soul that sinneth, the same shall die. But if the wicked do penance for all his sins which he hath committed, and keep all My commandments, and do judgment, and justice, living he shall live, and shall not die. I will not remember all his iniquities that he hath done: in his justice which he hath wrought, he shall live. Is it My will that a sinner should die, saith the Lord God, and not that he should be converted from his ways, and live? But if the just man turn himself away from his justice, and do iniquity according to all the abominations which the wicked man useth to work, shall he live? All his justices which he hath done, shall not be remembered: in the prevarication, by which he hath prevaricated, and in his sin, which he hath committed, in them he shall die” (Ezechiel 18:20-24).

Don't Criticize God's Ways!
“And you have said: ‘The way of the Lord is not right.!’ Hear ye, therefore, O house of Israel: Is it My way that is not right, and are not rather your ways perverse? For when the just turneth himself away from his justice, and committeth iniquity, he shall die therein: in the injustice that he hath wrought he shall die. And when the wicked turneth himself away from his wickedness, which he hath wrought, and doeth judgment, and justice: he shall save his soul alive. Because he considereth and turneth away himself from all his iniquities which he hath wrought, he shall surely live, and not die. And the children of Israel say: ‘The way of the Lord is not right!’ Are not My ways right, O house of Israel, and are not rather your ways perverse? Therefore will I judge every man according to his ways, O house of Israel, saith the Lord God. Be converted, and do penance for all your iniquities: and iniquity shall not be your ruin. Cast away from you all your transgressions, by which you have transgressed, and make to yourselves a new heart, and a new spirit: and why will you die, O house of Israel? For I desire not the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord God, return ye and live” (Ezechiel 18:25-32).

Attitudes to Sin
Man, in his pride, tends to take one of several attitudes with regard to sin:

(1) The ATHEIST will laugh it off and think it to be a ridiculous concept.

(2) The NATURALIST or HUMANIST will only see 'sins' against people and nature, but ignores such ideas or concepts as "sins against God."

(3) The LIBERAL believer is one who is an authority to himself (like the Adam and Eve syndrome of wanting to be like gods), and he will rationalize his 'sins' away under one pretext or another—in short, he lies to himself, he makes up his own religion with its personal moral code.

(4) The MODERNIST believer, similarly to the Liberal, is a "man of change"—for him things change over time, truth changes over time, therefore notions of 'sin' change over time. So what was a 'sin' before, is no longer a 'sin' today, though, who knows, it may be a 'sin' again tomorrow! Just gotta keep up with the times! Live and let live!

(5) The LUKEWARM believer might well accept the truth and reality of sin; they may also accept the consequences of sin in theory; but, in practice, they sweep everything under the carpet or banish it to the darkest recesses of the mind and memory. The lukewarm soul will deceive itself by inordinately focusing on the aspect of God being love and mercy (which He is of course), but to the neglect of God also being justice and truth. At best, the lukewarm soul comforts itself with its hasty superficial confessions and is satisfied with the mere 'token' and flimsy penances received from the priest as payment for sin, and, at worst, entertains thoughts of paying for sin in Purgatory, but not in this life—however, their idea of Purgatory is a 'soft' one, and not at all conformed to reality.

(6) The DEVOUT but DISCOURAGED believer clearly sees the gravity and magnitude of sin, but is so discouraged at the sight of its sins, that it loses confidence in God's mercy and goes to the opposite pendulum swing of the Lukewarm Soul, focusing only the strict justice of God, while downplaying His love and mercy.

(7) The TRUE BELIEVER, just like the "Discouraged" believer, clearly sees the gravity and magnitude of sin and clearly sees the enormous debt its sins have pile up; but the soul is not discouraged, for it is moved by a spirit of humility on account of its sins, and spirit of charity towards God, Whom it knows to be unbelievably merciful, yet, Who, at the same time, will exact the full price for all the sins that the soul has committed. It sees this love and mercy of God, inseparably united to His strict justice, in the person of Jesus Christ, Who, at the same time showed the mercy and justice of God in His Passion and Death.

There are varying degrees within each degree, which generate a myriad of attitudes reflecting the endless variety and many temperaments of human beings.

Flee Sin!
"Flee from sins as from the face of a serpent: for if thou comest near them, they will take hold of thee. The teeth thereof are the teeth of a lion, killing the souls of men. All iniquity is like a two-edged sword, there is no remedy for the wound thereof" (Ecclesiasticus 21:2-4).

Article 2
Ignorance is Not Bliss, but Painfully Expensive!

Ignorance is blindness that leads to the pit
The catechism asks us: "Why did God make us?" The answer, depending on which catechism you consult, is along the lines of "God made me to know Him. to love Him and to serve Him in this world, so that I may be happy with Him in the next."

Notice what comes first: to KNOW! The second element (to love God) cannot exist without the foundation of the first element (to know God). We cannot love what we do not know. We cannot love a person if we do not know that they exist, or if we know nothing about them; we cannot love a book without first reading it; we cannot love a food without first tasting it; we cannot love a sport or a hobby without first experiencing it. As for serving, if do not love someone we find it very difficult to serve them.

Little Knowledge begets Little Love
St. Therese of Lisieux complained that Jesus is so little loved because He is so little known. If He is little known and little loved, then He will also receive little service. If we don't spend time getting to know Jesus (thereby leading to a greater love and a better service of Him), then we are spending time getting to know other things. For our whole life is spent in one kind of knowledge or another; we spend our whole day seeking to know things—whether it be noble things, like studying in the spiritual or secular domain, or ignoble things, like seeking to know the latest gossip, or sinful knowledge, or plotting and planning sinful things; or trivial things like seeking to know inconsequential news, sports results, etc.

If we fill our minds with all these secondary things, then there is little room or time in our minds for the primary, essential things, namely, God.

God Wants to be Known
If the catechism tells us that we must know God, then the Bible does also: “Thou shalt know that the Lord thy God” (Deuteronomy 7:9). Not only know Him, but to know how important He should be to us: “Know that the Lord he is God, and there is no other besides Him” (Deuteronomy 4:35). And this permits no exceptions: “That all the people of the earth may know, that the Lord He is God, and there is no other besides Him” (3 Kings 8:60).

Knowledge Requires Love and Service
“If you love Me, keep My commandments.” (John 14:15). Otherwise, we become what St. Paul calls an abomination: “They profess that they know God: but in their works they deny Him: being abominable...” (Titus 1:16). “...for they have proceeded from evil to evil, and Me they have not known, saith the Lord.” (Jeremias 9:3). “...for the spirit of fornication is in the midst of them, and they have not known the Lord.” (Osee 5:4).

Knowing, but not Doing, begets God's Anger
“Thus saith the Lord God: ‘Because you have surpassed the Gentiles that are round about you, and have not walked in My commandments, and have not kept My judgments, Behold I come against thee, and I myself will execute judgments in the midst of thee in the sight of the Gentiles. And I will do in thee that which I have not done: and the like to which I will do no more, because of all thy abominations.” (Ezechiel 5:7-9). “You shall bear the sins of your idols: and you shall know that I am the Lord God” (Ezechiel 23:49). “I will make thee everlasting desolations, and thou shalt know that I am the Lord God” (Ezechiel 35:9).

Sin Brings Bitterness
“Know thou, and see that it is an evil and a bitter thing for thee, to have left the Lord thy God” (Jeremias 2:19). St. Paul speaks of the fate of those who fail to know and serve Our Lord, saying that God will put them: “In a flame of fire, giving vengeance to them who know not God, and who obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall suffer eternal punishment in destruction, from the face of the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 1:8).

“A curse, if you obey not the commandments of the Lord your God, but revolt from the way which now I show you, and walk after strange gods which you know not” (Deuteronomy 11:28).

Most Prefer the Darkness of Ignorance
In that beautiful, yet sad, opening passage of the Gospel of St. John, we see that most people prefer the darkness of ignorance than the light of knowledge, in matters religious.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him: and without Him was made nothing that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. And the Light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. This man came for a witness, to give testimony of the Light, that all men might believe through him. He was not the Light, but was to give testimony of the Light. That was the true Light, which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world. He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. But as many as received Him, He gave them power to be made the sons of God, to them that believe in His name. Who are born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, the glory as it were of the Only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:1-14)

Ignorance is 'Pitiful' Blindness
Ignorance is akin to blindness. A limited knowledge is a severe handicap in navigating our way to Heaven. As they say, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing!” This is true in so many different ways. The Venerable Fr. Faber calls lukewarmness a spiritual blindness. Lukewarmness is basically an indifference shown towards God and the spiritual duties and obligations we should have towards Him. God finds it so detestable to be “brushed-off” in this way, that He says those frightening words in the Apocalypse (3:16-17): “I know thy works, that thou art neither cold, nor hot. I would thou wert cold, or hot. But because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold, not hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth.” This blindness of attitude, that the lukewarm soul has, leads it to terrible fate. Our Lord, speaking of the ‘blind’ Pharisees, who sought to “brush-off” Our Lord: “Let them alone: they are blind, and leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into the pit” (Matthew 15:14).

Jesus Wants to Cure Us
We were made to know, love and serve God, yet, sadly, we are blind, deaf, dumb and lame about the ways and paths of God. Our Lord, as we saw above, is our light, Who came into this world that we might be able to see out of our darkness: “I am the light of the world: he that followeth Me, walketh not in darkness, but shall have the light of life” (John 8:12). He is the Word of God, to Whom we must open our deaf ears and listen to: “Not in bread alone doth man live, but in every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). He comes to loosen our tongue in spiritual matters, that we might stop talking so much about worldly things and use the tongue to praise and glorify God more: “And immediately his mouth was opened, and his tongue loosed, and he spoke, blessing God” (Luke 1:64). He has come to help us with our spiritual limping and hobbling or even paralysis: “Jesus saith to him: ‘Arise, take up thy bed, and walk!’” (John 5:8).

“The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead rise again, the poor have the Gospel preached to them” (Matthew 11:5).

Woe to Those Who Refuse to be Cured!
The Pharisees did not want to be cured. They did not want to change. They wanted Jesus to change to their ways, rather than themselves changing to Jesus’ ways. God’s ways were not their ways, and their ways were not God’s ways. As a result of this obstinacy and pride, Jesus hurls an unprecedented series of invectives at the Pharisees in chapter 23 of St. Matthew. The entire chapter is dedicated to the verbal onslaught and woeful predictions that Jesus makes in their regard. It is worth looking at this angry outburst in its entirety, which is an echo of the above quote from the Book of Apocalypse concerning the lukewarm being vomited out from God’s mouth.

“Then Jesus spoke to the multitudes and to His disciples, saying: ‘The scribes and the Pharisees have sat on the chair of Moses ... All their works they do for to be seen of men. For they make their phylacteries broad, and enlarge their fringes. [Phylacteries: that is, parchments, on which they wrote the Ten Commandments, and carried them on their foreheads before their eyes: which the Pharisees loved to wear broader than other men; so to seem more zealous for the Law].

"And they love the first places at feasts, and the first chairs in the synagogues, and salutations in the market place, and to be called by men, Rabbi. He that is the greatest among you shall be your servant. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be humbled: and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted. But woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you shut the Kingdom of Heaven against men, for you yourselves do not enter in; and those that are going in, you suffer not to enter.

Woe, Woe and more than thrice Woe!
"Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites: because you devour the houses of widows, praying long prayers. For this you shall receive the greater judgment.

"Woe to you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you go round about the sea and the land to make one proselyte; and when he is made, you make him the child of Hell twofold more than yourselves.

"Woe to you blind guides that say, ‘Whosoever shall swear by the Temple, it is nothing; but he that shall swear by the gold of the Temple, is a debtor.’ Ye foolish and blind; for whether is greater, the gold, or the Temple that sanctifieth the gold?

"Woe to you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you tithe mint, and anise, and cumin, and have left the weightier things of the law; judgment, and mercy, and faith. These things you ought to have done, and not to leave those undone. Blind guides, who strain out a gnat, and swallow a camel.

"Woe to you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you make clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but within you are full of rapine and uncleanness. Thou blind Pharisee, first make clean the inside of the cup and of the dish, that the outside may become clean.

"Woe to you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you are like to whited sepulchers, which outwardly appear to men beautiful, but within are full of dead men’ s bones, and of all filthiness. So you also outwardly indeed appear to men just; but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

"Woe to you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; that build the sepulchers of the prophets, and adorn the monuments of the just, and say: If we had been in the days of our Fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore you are witnesses against yourselves, that you are the sons of them that killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. You serpents, generation of vipers, how will you flee from the judgment of Hell?

"Therefore behold I send to you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them you will put to death and crucify, and some you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city: that upon you may come all the just blood that hath been shed upon the earth, from the blood of Abel the just, even unto the blood of Zacharias the son of Barachias, whom you killed between the temple and the altar.

He Would Have Cured, They Wanted it Not!
"Amen I say to you, all these things shall come upon this generation. Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered together thy children, as the hen doth gather her chickens under her wings, and thou wouldest not? Behold, your house shall be left to you, desolate." (Matthew, chapter 23).

“Again therefore Jesus said to them: ‘I go, and you shall seek Me, and you shall die in your sin. Whither I go, you cannot come!’ The Jews therefore said: ‘Will He kill Himself, because He said: “Whither I go, you cannot come?”’ And He said to them: You are from beneath, I am from above. You are of this world, I am not of this world. Therefore I said to you, that you shall die in your sins. For if you believe not that I am He, you shall die in your sin” (John 8:21-24).

Their rejection of Jesus turned out to be very expensive! Jerusalem was razed to the ground just over thirty years after they killed Jesus (in 70 AD) and over 1 million Jews were slaughtered by the Romans. Expensive indifference!

Article 3
The Killer Disease—Killed Around 67 Million in 2023
THE NATURE OF SIN
Adapted from Sin and Its Consequences by Cardinal Henry Edward Manning

“It is expedient for you that I go: for if I go not, the Paraclete will not come unto you; but if I go, I will send Him to you; and when He is come, He shall convince the world of sin” — John 16:7-8

Millions Have Died Since Last Lent
Since last Lent began, how many souls that were gathered here have passed into eternity. It is estimated that, in 2023, around 67 million people died. And before another Lent begins, how many will stand before the Great White Throne. Who among us shall be the first to go to judgment? There are 127 worldwide deaths per minute or 2.1 deaths every second (estimate for the year 2023). Approximately 1 out of every 120 persons died last year.

What is the disease that kills so many people each year? It is the disease of sin! As Holy Scripture says: “Wherefore as, by one man, sin entered into this world, and by sin death; and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned” (Romans 5:12). “There is a sin unto death” (1 John 5:17). “For the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). “The soul that sinneth, the same shall die” (Ezechiel 18:20). “Now the sting of death is sin” (1 Corinthians 15:56).

Let us, therefore, profit from this Lent, as if knowing it to be our last; let us begin this time of conversion to God as if we were sure that another would never be granted to us. “Bring forth, therefore, fruits worthy of penance, for now the axe is laid to the root of the tree; every tree, therefore, that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.” (Matthew 3:8, 10).

We Must Understand and Evaluate Sin
These thoughts have made me choose a subject, sad indeed and severe in all its parts, but vital to every one of us, necessary for our salvation, the root and foundation of all — I mean sin, its nature, its effects, its consequences. Sin is the greatest evil—in fact, the only real evil—in the world. All the other evils that we suffer are merely consequences or the effects of sin.

This subject is chosen because there can be none other so necessary, and because the precept of the Church, binding us all to Confession and Communion at Easter, begins more urgently to warn the conscience of every member of the Catholic Church. I therefore appeal to you all. I appeal to your conscience to fulfill, each one of you for yourselves, this duty of salvation; and not for yourselves alone. Fathers and mothers, warn your families and households; friends and neighbors, warn with humility and charity all whom you know to be neglecting the practice of their duty to God.

The Holy Ghost Convinces of Sin
The words of our Divine Savior reveal to us what is the work and office of the Holy Ghost: “He shall convince the world of sin.” To the end of the world, the work and the office of the Holy Ghost is to convince the world of sin; that is to say, to convince the intellect, and to illuminate the reason of man to know and to understand what sin is; and also to convict the consciences of men, one by one, of their sinfulness, and to make them, each one, conscious that they are guilty before God.

This is the office of the Holy Ghost; and in all time, from the beginning of the world, the Holy Spirit of God has illuminated and convinced the intellect and the conscience of men to know God and themselves, and thereby to understand in some degree the nature of sin. But the fullness of that light and illumination was reserved unto the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Ghost came in person to dwell forever in the Mystical Body of Christ.

A Time When There Was No Sin
In the beginning, when God made man, He made him sinless, and He gave him the light of the Holy Spirit; so that man knew God, His holiness and perfections; and he knew himself, and the nature in which God had created him. He knew the law of God; but he did not know sin, because as yet the law had not been broken. He could not know it, because he had as yet no experience of breaking God’s law, with its bitterness and its fatal consequences.

But when man sinned against God, then all was changed. Then he was conscious of his guilt, and strove to hide himself from the face of his Maker; but he only hid God from his own conscience. He could not escape from the presence nor from the eye of God; but he could hide the light of God’s presence from himself — and this he did. Therefore, from the beginning of time, God in His mercy, by the working and light of His Spirit, taught men to know, in some measure at least, His own perfections and their own sinfulness; but it was only like the twilight preceding the noonday. We are in the noonday; and if in the noonday we are blind to the perfections of God and to our own sinfulness, woe to us in the Day of Judgment.

Therefore, let us begin by the most general outline of what sin is, and to lay down certain broad but simple principles, which shall be applied to future subjects. We must first, therefore, speak of the nature of sin, of what it is, and of certain distinctions of sin, which will be necessary for us hereafter to refer to.

What is Sin?
First, then, what is sin? There are many definitions of it, and one is this: it is the transgression of the law. “Sin is the transgression of the law” (1 John 3:4). God is a law to Himself; and God wrote upon the conscience of man the outline of His basic law—we call it the Natural Law. Even pagans have this basic Law written in their hearts. He made man to know right from wrong; He made him to understand the nature of purity, justice, truth and mercy. These are perfections of God, and on the conscience of man the obligations of this law are written. Every man born into the world has this outline of God’s law written upon him, and sin is the transgression of that law.

Holiness and Hideousness
Another definition of sin is: any thought, word, or deed contrary to the will of God. Now, the will of God is the perfection of God Himself — holy, just, pure, merciful, true; and anything contrary to these perfections in thought, word, or deed is sin. The conformity of man to the will of God is the sanctity or the perfection of the human soul; and the more he is conformed to the will of God, the holier and more perfect he is.

Therefore, to be at variance with God is to be deformed; and the most imaginable monstrous deformity of the human body is not more humbling nor more hideous than the monstrous deformity of a sinful soul. When the soul is unlike to God, when it is departed from the perfection of God, when instead of purity there is impurity, instead of justice there is injustice, instead of truth there is falsehood, instead of mercy there is cruelty, instead of the perfections of God there is the direct contrary of those perfections: no deformity or hideousness that can strike the eye is so terrible.

Malice of Sin
The malice, then, of sin consists in a conscious variance with the will of God. God made us to His own image and to His own likeness; He gave us all that He could bestow upon us. He could not bestow upon us His own nature, because that is uncreated, and no creature can partake of the uncreated nature of God; but God could bestow, and He did by His omnipotence with His mercy, bestow upon us His likeness, His image, an intelligence and a will, a heart and a conscience, so that we become intelligent and moral beings.

The malice of sin consists, then, in this: that an intelligent creature, having a power of will, deliberately and consciously opposes the will of its Maker. The malice of sin is essentially internal to the soul. The external action whereby the sinner puts his sin into action, adds to this internal deformity; but the essence, the life of the malice, consists in the act of the soul itself.

An Abuse of Human Nature
We see, then, that sin is the conscious departure of our moral being from the will of God. We abuse our whole nature: we abuse our intellect by acting irrationally, in violation of the will of God, which is written upon the conscience; we abuse our will, because we deliberately abuse the power of the will, whereby we make ourselves the origin of our actions in opposition to the will of God who gave it.

We apply our intellect and will, with our eyes open and with freedom and choice, to the performance of acts, or the utterance of words, or the harboring of thoughts which are known to be contrary to the will of God; and, therefore, in every sin, there is the knowledge of the intellect of what we are doing, the consent of the will in doing it, and the consciousness of the mind fixed upon the action despite these two objects: the law and the Lawgiver — the law of God known to us, and the Giver of that law, who is God Himself; so that we deliberately, with our eyes open and of our own free will, break God’s law in God’s face. Now, that is the plain definition and description of sin; and here I must, for a moment, turn aside from our path.

The World Gets Worse
These last generations have become impious and immoral in a stupendous way, with an audacity never before known in the Christian world. Men and women today are attacking the foundations of human society and of Divine Law. They have talked of late of what they call independent morality. And what do you suppose is independent morality? It means the law of morals separated from the Lawgiver. It is a proud philosophical claim to account for right and wrong without reference to God, who is the Giver of the Law. It is usurping the role of God. Like Adam and Eve, men and women want to be gods unto themselves.

And what is the ultimate goal of this theory? It is to get rid of Christianity, and of God, and of right and wrong altogether, and to resolve all morality by mere human reason. It tells us, the dictates of human reason are variable all over the world, and change from generation to generation—what was bad yesterday can be good today, and what was good yesterday, can be bad today—this philosophy denies and destroys the foundations of morality itself.

As Holy Scripture says: “Woe to you that call evil good, and good evil: that put darkness for light, and light for darkness: that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter” (Isaias 5:20). As St. Peter writes: “Knowing this first, that in the last days there shall come deceitful scoffers, walking after their own lusts” (2 Peter 3:3). To which St. Paul adds: “Know also this, that, in the last days, shall come dangerous times. Men shall be lovers of themselves, covetous, haughty, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, wicked, without affection, without peace, slanderers, incontinent, unmerciful, without kindness, traitors, stubborn, puffed up, and lovers of pleasures more than of God: having an appearance indeed of godliness, but denying the power thereof. Now these avoid” (2 Timothy 3:1-5).

Two Chief Kinds of Sin
There are two chief distinctions in the nature of sin. There are what are called formal sins, and what are called material sins. The importance of this distinction you will see below.

1. Formal Sin
What is formal sin? It means a sin committed with a full knowledge of what we do, and a full consent to do it; so that in proportion as men have light, and know the law and the Lawgiver, in that proportion the sinfulness of their disobedience is increased. The holy angels were created by God in the full knowledge and light of His presence; and those who fell from their perfection by rebellion were formally guilty, in proportion to that angelic knowledge which left them without excuse.

All those who possess a clear light to know what is the law, and yet violate that law, are guilty, as Peter was guilty for denying his Master, and as Judas was guilty for selling Him; both were guilty in the proportion of their light.

Those who, knowing the natural law, break that law, are guilty, because the law is written upon their conscience.

Those who break the Christian law, knowing the Christian Faith, in the proportion of their light, are guiltier; and, above all men, those who have the full light of the Catholic Faith, if they break the laws of Jesus Christ, are the guiltiest on the face of the earth.

You are guilty in the measure in which you have greater light; in the measure in which you have a fuller illumination, in that measure your guilt before God is greater. Sins, then, are formal when committed with full light and consent.

2. Material Sins
Now, what are material sins? The same actions done without sufficient knowledge, or without intention. Two men may commit the very same action, and the one be guilty before God, and the other not guilty. If, in the dark, I think that I am felling a tree, and with my axe I cut down a man, I am not a murderer. I have committed manslaughter in the dark, and without intention; and if the man I have slain be my own father, I am not a parricide; yet the act I have committed is materially an act of murder and of parricide. The quality of sinfulness, therefore, is purified, and taken away from the action, if I do not know what I am about, and if I do not intend it.

Our Divine Lord prayed for those who perpetrated the greatest sin that was ever committed on the face of the earth in these words: “Father, forgive them; they know not what they do.” In His Divine compassion He prayed for His crucifiers; and the Apostle, speaking of Him, says: “Whom none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known him they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory.” That is to say, among the multitude, perhaps the greater number did not know what they did, and that Divine prayer of compassion reveals a law of God’s equity and pity upon the ignorant.

Nevertheless, those who know, or have it in their power to know, are guilty; for we are responsible not only for all that we do know, but for all that we could know, and therefore ought to know.

This is what you hear of as vincible or invincible ignorance. Ignorance takes away the guilt of our actions if that ignorance is invincible, for then we cannot overcome it. If we could not know any better, then God in His infinite mercy, though we have committed a material sin, will not take account with us as if it were a formal sin. But there is another kind of ignorance which is called vincible, because it may be overcome if we use the proper diligence to know; and God has put within our reach the means of knowledge sufficient if we will diligently seek it.

Another Distinction of Sin: Original Sin and Actual Sin
This, then, is the first distinction of sin, into formal and material sin; yet I must draw one more, and that is between Original Sin and actual sin.

Original Sin
What is Original Sin? It is the transgression of the law in the head of the human race, whereby all who are born are sinners before God, and born into a state of privation. The transgression of the law in our head is our sin because when God created man, He created mankind. In that man the whole race of mankind was contained. Mankind springs from one head, and that head was the heir to all the benedictions of the kingdom of God in our behalf: our inheritance was contained in him. If he had stood, from him we should have inherited the kingdom of God; he fell, and by his fall disinherited the race of mankind. We hear men of this day say: “What can be more absurd than to believe that the human race fell because Adam ate an apple?” I put the words with all the bald impertinence of the world.

Let us see now whether the ways of God need justification. God created Adam, and placed him in Paradise in the midst of a garden. He gave him a dominion over every tree of that garden, except one only. Such was the generosity of God. He did not say: “Thou mayest eat of the fruit of that one tree, but of ten thousand other fruit-bearing trees of the garden thou shalt not eat; and in whatsoever day thou eatest of them thou shalt die the death.”

God did not, with the parsimony of a human heart, give Adam permission to eat of one tree, and forbid him ten thousand. No. He gave him free permission to eat of ten thousand, and forbade him to eat of one alone. Was there anything unreasonable in this? Was it not what you would do if you had the will to try the obedience of anyone? Was it not what you would do, and what men do at this day, when out of liberality they lease their lands upon what is called a peppercorn rent? When the world speaks impertinently, I may answer the world in its own tongue. The landlord who leases out his estate, taking only a nominal acknowledgment, is commended by all men as generous, large-hearted, noble-minded. He acts as a friend, without self-interest, when he entrusts to another man the enjoyment and enrichment which arise from his estates upon the mere acknowledgment that, after all, they belong to him. He is only reserving his right.

Who's the Boss Around Here?
Now what did Almighty God in that commandment do? He reserved His right as Sovereign — He reserved His right over the obedience of the man whom He had created. He thereby revealed that He had jurisdiction over that garden, and over the man to whom He had permitted its free enjoyment. He put him upon trial — it was the test of his fidelity. More than this: it was a test so slight, that I may say there was no temptation to break the law.

Not Too Hard A Rule!
If he had been forbidden to eat of all the trees of the garden, save one, he would have been tempted at every turn. Every tree he gazed upon would have been a fresh temptation; he would have been followed and haunted by temptation wherever he went. God did not deal so with him — He forbade him one, and one alone; so that he had perfect liberty to go to and fro, gathering from the whole garden except from that one tree. Where, then, was the temptation?

As on God’s part there was Divine generosity, so on man’s part there was the wantonness of transgression. It may, indeed, be my defect, but I can see nothing in this that is not consonant with Divine wisdom, Divine goodness, Divine sovereignty, and Divine mercy. I see nothing to warrant the impertinence of the world. Well, this law was slight, and without any temptation whatsoever Adam transgressed it. He held the enjoyment of his perfection, and of the promise of eternal life, and of the kingdom of God, upon the payment, as I said before, of that quit rent, of that mere acknowledgment of the sovereignty of his Maker, and even to this he would not admit.

Tragic Consequences
What, then, was the consequence? Man, as God made him, had three perfections. First, he was perfect in body and soul. Secondly, he had the higher perfection of the Holy Spirit dwelling in his heart, whereby his soul was ordered and sanctified, and the passions were held in perfect subjection to the reason and the will. Thirdly, he had a perfection arising from that higher perfection, namely, immortality in the body and perfect integrity in the soul. So that he had these three perfections: a natural perfection in body and soul, a supernatural perfection by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, and a preternatural perfection of immortality; and all these by one act of disobedience he lost.

When he sinned, the Spirit of God departed from him, his soul died because it was separated from God, his immortality was forfeited, the integrity or harmony of the soul was lost likewise, the passions rebelled, the will was weakened, the intellect became confused, and the nature of man was deprived of its supernatural perfection and of all that follows from it. This is the meaning of the words, “In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt die the death.” It was spiritual and temporal death, followed, except on repentance, by eternal death hereafter.

Original Sin in Us
We see, then, the meaning of Original Sin in us. It is that we, being born of that forefather, are born disinherited of these three perfections which we lost in him by his disobedience. We are born into this world without the Spirit of God; we receive Him in our Baptism, which is our second birth. By our first birth, “that which is born of the flesh is flesh.” We have the three “wounds,” as they are called, of Adam — ignorance in the intellect, weakness in the will, and turbulence in the passions. This is the state in which we are born into this world, and therefore we are spiritually dead before God. I see in this, as I said before, nothing but Divine wisdom, and wisdom is justified of her children. And here I wish to answer what may perhaps arise in the minds of some of you concerning infants that die before Baptism.

Sometimes people say, “How can I believe that those infants who die before Baptism, through no fault of their own, should go to eternal torment?” God forbid. Infants that die with Original Sin only, never having committed an actual sin — who believes that they descend into a place of torment? Their eternal state is a state of happiness, though it be not in the vision of God: for we know of no way in which any human soul can see the vision of God except by regeneration of the Holy Ghost.

Without receiving the grace of Holy Baptism, the soul is not in the supernatural order; and of those who die in the natural order we are unable to affirm that the grace which belongs to the supernatural order is extended, and that, because for this we have no revelation. It is, however, certain that the privation attached to Original Sin carries with it nothing which the world, sometimes contradicting the Christian Faith for the purpose of maligning it, most unreasonably says against it. But though Original Sin is only punished by privation, every actual sin will be punished by actual pain. There is pain of sense which follows actual sin; every actual sin that men commit will be punished by pain, either temporal or eternal, for pain follows sin as the shadow follows the substance.

Actual Sin
Lastly, we come to actual sin. What is it? Actual sin is the conscious variance of a creature to the known will of its Creator; and that conscious variance includes the light of the intellect, and the consent of the will, and the knowledge and intention of what we are doing. The essential malice of sin is in the will: and there is a threefold malice in every actual sin committed by a Christian.

(a) Firstly, there is a malice against God the Father, who made man to His image and likeness, that He might be the object of his love; that he might love Him, know Him, serve Him, worship Him, be conformed to Him, and dwell with Him in eternity. The Christian who sins against God sins against his Creator, and worships the creature more than the Creator; that is to say, worships the world, his pleasures, himself. Self-worship he puts in the place of the worship of God, and in that he does an infinite offense — infinite, though he be finite — because the Person against whom that offense is committed is an infinite God.

(b) Secondly, there is a malice against our Lord Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of the world. The Apostle says every sinner is “an enemy of the Cross of Christ.” He says, “They that do such things, I have told you often, and now again tell you weeping, that they are enemies of the Cross of Christ” (Philippians 3:18). And why? Because Jesus Christ suffered on the Cross for those very sins which such men commit. The sinner nails Him on the Cross once more. The nails and the hammer were but the material instruments of crucifixion; the moral cause of the Crucifixion of the Son of God was the sin which you and I have committed; and if we commit such sins again, we deliberately renew the causes which nailed Him on the Cross.

Again, the Apostle says, if those who despised the law of Moses were condemned, of how much severer punishment shall he be thought worthy who hath trodden underfoot the Son of God, and put Him to open shame, and counted the Blood of the Testament, whereby he was sanctified, unclean; and hath done this in despite to the Spirit of Grace! (cf. Heb. 10:28-29).

The Christian who deliberately commits sin wounds our Divine Savior. He opens those Five Sacred Wounds, making them bleed afresh. With a cold and ungrateful heart he renews the sorrows which caused the agony of Gethsemane, and made Our Lord sweat His Sweat of Blood.

(c) Not only this; but thirdly, there is a malice against the Holy Ghost. Every sin that is committed, is committed against the light and grace of the Holy Spirit in the conscience; and in this there are three degrees. We may grieve the Holy Ghost, we may resist the Holy Ghost, and we may quench the Holy Ghost. Our Divine Lord has said, “Every sin and every blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men, except the blasphemy of the Holy Ghost; and if any man shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall never be forgiven him in this world, nor in the world to come” (Matt. 12:31-32).

Now what is the meaning of this? A man may speak against Jesus Christ, ay, blaspheme his Lord; and the Holy Spirit, convincing him of sin, may bring him to repentance, may convert him to God, and his soul may be saved; but any man who commits mortal sin and refuses repentance, thereby blasphemes the Holy Ghost, who is the Spirit of Penance, the Spirit of Absolution, the Absolver of the penitent. Such a sinner rejects the whole dispensation of grace; and, therefore, the sin that shall never be forgiven is the sin of impenitence. Every sin that men repent of shall be forgiven; but the sin that is not repented of shall never be forgiven, neither in this world, nor in the world to come.

Applying This to Real Life
In giving these definitions, I am afraid that what I have said is somewhat abstract, perhaps somewhat tedious; but it is impossible for me to make clear what I have to say hereafter, without laying down first principles. I will now, therefore, only make application of what I have said. We have here two practical principles.

The first is this: no one is so blind to his own sins as the man who has the most sin upon him.

If a man is plague-stricken, he can see it by the discoloration of the skin. If the scales of leprosy are coming up upon his arm, he can tell that he is a leper. If a cloud is growing over the pupil of the eyes, he can tell that he is losing the light of heaven. All the diseases of the body make themselves known emphatically; but it is the subtlety and danger and deadliness of sin that it conceals itself. No men know the light of God’s presence so little as those who are covered with sin; and the more sin they have upon them the less they can see it. Though all the perfections of God, like the rays of the sun which encircle the head of the blind man, are round about them all the day long, they are unconscious of His presence.

The Blindness of Men
They are like Elymas, the magician, who, for his impiety, had scales upon his eyes; and because they do not see the light of God, therefore they do not see His perfections, and therefore they do not see themselves; for the light of the knowledge of self comes from the light of the knowledge of God. How shall a man know what unholiness is, if he does not know what holiness is? How shall he know what falsehood is, if he does not know what truth is; or impurity, if he does not know purity; or impiety, if he does not know the duty we owe to God, and the majesty of God, to whom worship is due?

Seeing Sin in Others, But Not in Self
Just in the proportion in which the light of the perfections of God is clouded, we lose the light of the knowledge of ourselves; and the end of it is that when men hear such words as I am speaking now, they say, “That is just the character of my neighbor — that is the very picture of my brother”; they do not see themselves in the glass. You may describe their character, and they will not recognize it; you may tell them, “This is yourself,” and they will not believe it. There is something within them which darkens the conscience; and why is it?

Deadly Deadening Anesthetic of Sin
Because sin stupefies the intellect and the heart: it draws a veil and a mist over the brightness of the intelligence, and it darkens the light of the conscience. Sin is like hemlock: it deadens the sense, so that the spiritual eye begins to close, and the spiritual ear becomes heavy, and the heart grows drowsy. And when men have brought themselves to that state by their own free will, then comes the just judgment of God: “I will give them eyes that they may not see, ears that they may not hear, hearts that they may not understand, lest they should be converted, and I should heal them. These things said Isaias, when he saw his glory and spoke of him” (John 12:40-41).

There is one other truth — that no men see the nature of sin so clearly as those who are freest from sin; just as no intelligence knows sin with such an intensity of knowledge as God Himself.

Our Divine Lord Jesus Christ, the sinless Son of God, knew sin in all its hatefulness so as no other human heart has ever known it. His Immaculate Mother — because sinless — knew the sinfulness of sin by the light of her intelligence, and by a pure horror of her whole spiritual nature. So in like manner the saints of God, each one of them in the proportion of his sanctity; and so you likewise, in the measure in which you are free from sin, in that measure will you hate it, in that measure you understand and estimate its sinfulness.

And if at any time in your life you have committed sin, in the measure in which you are separated from your past life — in the measure in which that old character of yours has been taken off and you can see “the old man” which you have sloughed off, that old being and nature of yours which cleaves to you no longer, which you look on as a thing hideous and horrible, belonging to you no more, belonging to your childhood, boyhood, or youth, but yours no longer now — in that measure you understand the sinfulness of sin.

You can look back on your past life, and understand your sins as you did not understand them then; and when you come to die, your present character and your present life will be seen by you in a light, brighter and more intense than that under which you see them now. Look up, therefore, into the light of God’s presence, and pray God to make you to know yourselves as He knows you, and to see yourselves as He sees you now; for when you have seen the worst of your sins, what are they, compared with those which God sees in you? Therefore, do not let us ever think that we know all our sins; do not let us imagine that we fully know our own sinfulness. We are only beginning to learn it, and we shall have to learn it all our life.

The Three Depths
There are three great depths which no human line can sound — the depth of our sinfulness, the depth of our unworthiness, and the depth of our nothingness. If you are beginning to learn those three things, happy are you. Be not afraid, the more you see your own sinfulness; and for this reason.

Who is showing it to you? It is the light of the Spirit of God. It is He who alone searches the heart, who alone makes us know ourselves; and the more you see of your own sinfulness, the truer pledge you have of His presence; that He is with you, that He is within you, that He is busied about your salvation. He is giving you a pledge and a promise that every sin you see He will help you to repent of, and every sin you repent of shall be washed away in the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ.

Know Yourself Honestly and Profoundly
Therefore, one last word. My first counsel to you in this Lent is this: Try to know yourselves, try to learn during these days such knowledge of yourselves as you have never had before. Begin as if it were for the first time. Take the Ten Commandments: read them in the letter; understand them in the spirit; and try your life from your childhood, from your earliest memory, by that Divine rule.

Meditate on the Seven Deadly Sins
Take the Seven Deadly Sins, try yourselves by them, in deed, in word, and in thought. The Seven Deadly Sins, or Seven Cardinal Sins, are the hinges on which all other sins hang. They are the deadly chemicals which, when mixed with each other, give birth to so many other sins who are their offspring.

(1) Pride and self-seeking,
(2) Covetousness (Avarice),
(3) Gluttony (food and drink and drugs),
(4) Anger and what leads to it (impatience, irritability, dissatisfaction, etc).
(5) Lust in thoughts, words, looks, desires, or actions
(6) Envy (spiritual and material)
(7) Sloth or Laziness (spiritual, intellectual and physical).

Pray for Light to Dispel Darkness and Blindness
Pray to the Spirit of God, whose work and office it is to convince the world of sin. Pray every day in this Lent, morning and night, that the Spirit of God may illuminate your reason to understand the nature of sin, and convince your conscience, that you may know what sins are upon you. Pray to Him that the light of the presence of God may come down upon you like the light of the noonday, that you may see not only the broad outlines of your sins, but your finer and more delicate and more subtle offenses against God, even as we see the motes which float in the sunbeam at noonday.

The more you have the presence of God with you, the more the light of His perfections is upon you, the more you will see yourselves. The Patriarch Job, who, though he had long lived in prayer, in converse and in communion with God, and had been grievously afflicted (which more than any other discipline brings men to know themselves) — nevertheless, at the end of all his trials, when God spoke to him out of the light of His presence, said: “With the hearing of the ear I have heard thee, but now mine eye seeth thee; wherefore I condemn myself, and do penance in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:5-6).

Article 4
The Pains of Hell Show How Expensive Sin Really Is!

The following is taken from the Catholic Encyclopedia article on Hell

Poena Damni
The poena damni, or pain of loss, consists in the loss of the beatific vision and in so complete a separation of all the powers of the soul from God that it cannot find in Him even the least peace and rest. It is accompanied by the loss of all supernatural gifts, e.g. the loss of Faith. The characters impressed by the sacraments alone remain to the greater confusion of the bearer.

The pain of loss is not the mere absence of superior bliss, but it is also a most intense positive pain. The utter void of the soul made for the enjoyment of infinite truth and infinite goodness causes the reprobate immeasurable anguish. Their consciousness that God, on Whom they entirely depend, is their enemy forever is overwhelming. Their consciousness of having by their own deliberate folly forfeited the highest blessings for transitory and delusive pleasures humiliates and depresses them beyond measure. The desire for happiness inherent in their very nature, wholly unsatisfied and no longer able to find any compensation for the loss of God in delusive pleasure, renders them utterly miserable.

Moreover, they are well aware that God is infinitely happy, and hence their hatred and their impotent desire to injure Him fills them with extreme bitterness. And the same is true with regard to their hatred of all the friends of God who enjoy the bliss of Heaven. The pain of loss is the very core of eternal punishment. If the damned beheld God face to face, Hell itself, notwithstanding its fire, would be a kind of Heaven. Had they but some union with God even if not precisely the union of the beatific vision, Hell would no longer be Hell, but a kind of Purgatory. And yet the pain of loss is but the natural consequence of that aversion from God which lies in the nature of every mortal sin.

Poena Sensus
The poena sensus, or pain of sense, consists in the torment of fire so frequently mentioned in the Holy Bible. According to the greater number of theologians the term fire denotes a material fire, and so a real fire. We hold to this teaching as absolutely true and correct. However, we must not forget two things: from Catharinus (d. 1553) to our times there have never been wanting theologians who interpret the Scriptural term fire metaphorically, as denoting an incorporeal fire; and secondly, thus far the Church has not censured their opinion. Some few of the Fathers also thought of a metaphorical explanation.

Nevertheless, Scripture and tradition speak again and again of the fire of Hell, and there is no sufficient reason for taking the term as a mere metaphor. It is urged: How can a material fire torment demons, or human souls before the resurrection of the body? But, if our soul is so joined to the body as to be keenly sensitive to the pain of fire, why should the omnipotent God be unable to bind even pure spirits to some material substance in such a manner that they suffer a torment more or less similar to the pain of fire which the soul can feel on Earth? The reply indicates, as far as possible, how we may form an idea of the pain of fire which the demons suffer. Theologians have elaborated various theories on this subject, which, however, we do not wish to detail here (cf. the very minute study by Franz Schmid, “Quaestiones selectae ex theol. dogm.”, Paderborn, 1891, q. iii; also Guthberlet, “Die poena sensus” in “Katholik”, II, 1901, 305 sqq., 385 sqq.).

It is quite superfluous to add that the nature of Hell-fire is different from that of our ordinary fire; for instance, it continues to burn without the need of a continually renewed supply of fuel. How are we to form a conception of that fire in detail remains quite undetermined; we merely know that it is corporeal. The demons suffer the torment of fire, even when, by Divine permission, they leave the confines of Hell and roam about on Earth. In what manner this happens is uncertain. We may assume that they remain fettered inseparably to a portion of that fire.

The pain of sense is the natural consequence of that inordinate turning to creatures which is involved in every mortal sin. It is meet that whoever seeks forbidden pleasure should find pain in return. (Cf. Heuse, “Das Feuer der Hölle” in “Katholik”, II, 1878, 225 sqq., 337 sqq., 486 sqq., 581 sqq.; “Etudes religieuses”, L, 1890, II, 309, report of an answer of the Poenitentiaria, 30 April, 1890; Knabenbauer, “In Matth., xxv, 41”.)

Accidental Pains of the Damned
According to theologians the pain of loss and the pain of sense constitute the very essence of Hell, the former being by far the most dreadful part of eternal punishment. But the damned also suffer various “accidental” punishments.

Just as the blessed in Heaven are free from all pain, so, on the other hand, the damned never experience even the least real pleasure. In Hell separation from the blissful influence of Divine love has reached its consummation.

The reprobate must live in the midst of the damned; and their outbursts of hatred or of reproach as they gloat over his sufferings, and their hideous presence, are an ever fresh source of torment.

The reunion of soul and body after the Resurrection will be a special punishment for the reprobate, although there will be no essential change in the pain of sense which they are already suffering.

As to the punishments visited upon the damned for their venial sins, cf. Francisco Suárez, “De peccatis”, disp. vii, s. 4.

Characteristics of the pains of Hell
(1) The pains of Hell differ in degree according to demerit. This holds true not only of the pain of sense, but also of the pain of loss. A more intense hatred of God, a more vivid consciousness of utter abandonment by Divine goodness, a more restless craving to satisfy the natural desire for beatitude with things external to God, a more acute sense of shame and confusion at the folly of having sought happiness in earthly enjoyment — all this implies as its correlation a more complete and more painful separation from God.

(2) The pains of Hell are essentially immutable; there are no temporary intermissions or passing alleviations. A few Fathers and theologians, in particular the poet Prudentius, expressed the opinion that on stated days God grants the damned a certain respite, and that besides this the prayers of the faithful obtain for them other occasional intervals of rest. The Church has never condemned this opinion in express terms. But now theologians are justly unanimous in rejecting it. St. Thomas condemns it severely (In IV Sent., dist. xlv, Q. xxix, cl. 1). [Cf. Merkle, “Die Sabbatruhe in der Hölle” in “Romische Quartalschrift” (1895), 489 sqq.; see also Prudentius.]

However, accidental changes in the pains of Hell are not excluded. Thus it may be that the reprobate is sometimes more and sometimes less tormented by his surroundings. Especially after the last judgment there will be an accidental increase in punishment; for then the demons will never again be permitted to leave the confines of Hell, but will be finally imprisoned for all eternity; and the reprobate souls of men will be tormented by union with their hideous bodies.

(3) Hell is a state of the greatest and most complete misfortune, as is evident from all that has been said. The damned have no joy whatever, and it were better for them if they had not been born (Matthew 26:24). Not long ago Mivart (The Nineteenth Century, Dec., 1892, Febr. and Apr., 1893) advocated the opinion that the pains of the damned would decrease with time and that in the end their lot would not be so extremely sad; that they would finally reach a certain kind of happiness and would prefer existence to annihilation; and although they would still continue to suffer a punishment symbolically described as a fire by the Bible, yet they would hate God no longer, and the most unfortunate among them be happier than many a pauper in this life. It is quite obvious that all this is opposed to Scripture and the teaching of the Church. The articles cited were condemned by the Congregation of the Index and the Holy Office on 14th and 19th July, 1893 (cf. “Civiltà Cattolica”, I, 1893, 672).

Article 5
Our Sins Cost Jesus His Life

Holy Scripture speaks in abundance of the extreme cost of sin―in that it cost Jesus Christ His life. By sin we deserve death and Hell. Christ, in His great charity, chose to come and pay for our sins―because no man was capable of paying for sin: “According to the law, almost all things are cleansed with blood―and without shedding of blood there is no remission” (Hebrews 9:22). “No brother can redeem, nor shall man redeem. He cannot give to God his ransom, nor the price of the redemption of his soul” (Psalm 49:8-9). “God showed His charity towards us―because, when we were sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8-19). “He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8). Our Lord Himself said: “My Blood shall be shed for many unto the remission of sins” (Matthew 26:28).

“The wages of sin is death!” (Romans 6:23). “The Son of man is come to give His life a redemption for many” (Mark 10:45). “You are bought with a price!” (1 Corinthians 6:20). “You were not redeemed with corruptible things as gold or silver―but with the Precious Blood of Christ” (1 Peter 1:18-19). “We have redemption and the remission of sins through His Blood” (Ephesians 1:7) ... “purchased with His own Blood” (Acts 20:28).

“Christ―neither by the blood of goats, or of calves―but by His own Blood, obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and of oxen, and the ashes of an heifer being sprinkled, sanctify defiled persons, then how much more shall the Blood of Christ cleanse our conscience from dead works, to serve the living God? Therefore, by means of His death, He is the mediator for the redemption of those transgressions” (Hebrews 9:11-15). “Who gave Himself as a ransom for all” (1 Timothy 2:6).

“He was wounded for our iniquities, He was bruised for our sins. The chastisement of sins was upon Him, and by His bruises we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray―everyone has turned aside into his own way―and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He shall be led as a sheep to the slaughter, and shall be dumb as a lamb before His shearer, and He shall not open His mouth. He is cut off out of the land of the living. For the wickedness of the people have I struck Him. He has done no iniquity, neither was there deceit in His mouth. And the Lord was pleased to bruise Him in infirmity. He shall lay down His life for sin” (Isaias 53:5-10).

“Thou wast slain and hast redeemed us in Thy Blood” (Apocalypse 5:9). “He is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world!” (1 John 2:2). “He bore our sins in His Body upon the tree and by Whose stripes you were healed, so that we, being dead to sins, should live to justice” (1 Peter 2:24).

Our Lady, in speaking to the Venerable Mary of Agreda, said: “I understood, by divine light, that the incarnate Lord was to suffer a most cruel death and was to be bound most shamefully … In order merely to save them, it was not necessary to suffer so much … My Son and Lord could have redeemed the human race without suffering so much and that He wished to increase His sufferings only on account of the immensity of His love for souls … He began to suffer, and as soon as He was born into the world He and I were banished by Herod into a desert, and His sufferings continued until He died on the Cross … He it was who gave His own life and subjected Himself to sufferings for the good of His creatures without waiting for any merits on their part … for whom, as man, He had suffered and died …

“But the worldlings, in their torpidity, are moved neither by the duty of conforming to their Father and Lord, nor by His declaration that all their salvation consists in following Christ in His sufferings and that His sinful children must reap the fruit of the Redemption by imitation of their sinless Chief … How persistently they forget, that their Teacher and Master has first accepted sufferings, and has honored and sanctified them in His own Person! It is a great shame―nay, a great boldness―on the part of the faithful, that they should abhor suffering, even after my most holy Son did suffer for them … Ponder and meditate without intermission upon that, which my most holy Son suffered, so that thy soul be a participant in His sorrows. Let the pious memory of His sufferings engender in you such a disgust and abhorrence of all earthly pleasures, that you despise and forget all that is visible, and instead, follow the Author of eternal life.

“Many there are who wish to follow Christ and very few who truly dispose themselves to imitate Him―for as soon as they feel the sufferings of the Cross, they cast it aside. Laborious exertions are very painful and averse to human nature according to the flesh; and the fruits of the spirit are more hidden and few guide themselves by the light … If passing labors and sufferings are accepted with joy and with serenity of heart, then they spiritualize the creature, they elevate it and furnish it with a divine insight―by which the soul begins to appreciate and esteem affliction at its proper value, and soon finds consolation in the blessings of mortification and finds freedom from disorderly passions…

“When the occasion of tasting the Chalice and the Cross of suffering is at hand, you must not turn away in sorrow and affliction from the sufferings, by which the sincerity of a loving and affectionate heart is to be tried ... The divine influence will urge and draw you on to desire of being despised by creatures, to joyful suffering, to a love of the Cross and an earnest and generous acceptation of it; it will move you to seek the last place, to love those that persecute you, to fear and abhor sin, even the slightest sin … seeking only to love and to suffer! … Be willing to bear and suffer, forgive and love all who offend you … When gold is untouched by the furnace-heat, the iron by the file, the grain by the grinding stone or flail, the grapes by the winepress, they are all useless and will not attain the end for which they are created … You cannot follow Christ, if you refuse to embrace the Cross and rejoice in it!”

Article 6
One Mortal Sin Costs Years of Penance!

MORTAL SINS
Many Christians unfortunately commit mortal sins during their lives, but though they confess them, they make no due satisfaction for them, as we have already said.

► The Venerable St. Bede appears to be of the opinion that those who pass a great part of their lives in the commission of grave sins and confess them on their deathbed may be detained in Purgatory even until the Last Day. St. Bede lived in the 600 and 700’s and the last was a long way away!

► St. Gertrude, in her revelations, states that those who have committed many grave sins and have not done due penance for them. may not benefit from and share in the ordinary suffrages of the Church for a very considerable time!

► St. Frances of Rome, foundress of the Oblates, who died in Rome in 1440, was favored by God with great lights concerning the state of souls in the other life. It was revealed to St. Frances of Rome that, on average, seven years for the expiation of one mortal sin―the length of time can be longer or shorter, depending upon the differing degrees of mortal sins.

All those sins, mortal and venial, are accumulating for the 20, 30, 40, 60 years of our lives. Each and every one has to be atoned for after death.

PURGATORIAL MATH
We again take the extract from Fr. Schouppe’s book, Purgatory Explained, which shows a hypothetical sin-calculator that goes towards showing how and why such long times are spent in Purgatory.

“Father Mumford, of the Company of Jesus, in his Treatise on Charity towards the Departed, bases the long duration of Purgatory on a calculation of probability, which we shall give in substance. He goes out on the principle that, according to the words of the Holy Ghost, The just man falls seven times a day (Proverbs 24:16), that is to say, that even those who apply themselves most perfectly to the service of God, notwithstanding their good-will, commit a great number of faults in the infinitely pure eyes of God. We have but to enter into our own conscience, and there analyze before God our thoughts, our words, and works, to be convinced of this sad effect of human misery. Oh, how easy it is to lack respect in prayer, to prefer our ease to the accomplishment of duty, to sin by vanity, by impatience, by sensuality, by uncharitable thoughts and words, by want of conformity to the will of God! The day is long; is it very difficult for even a virtuous person to commit, I do not say seven, but twenty or thirty of this kind of faults and imperfections?

“Let us take a moderate estimate, and suppose that you commit about ten [venial] faults a day; at the end of 365 days you will have a sum of 3,650 faults. Let us diminish, and, to facilitate the calculation, place it at 3,000 per year. At the end of ten years this will amount to 30,000, and at the end of twenty years to 60,000. Suppose that of these 60,000 faults you have expiated one half by penance and good works, there will still remain 30,000 to be atoned for.

“Let us continue our hypothesis: You die after these twenty years of virtuous life, and appear before God with a debt of 30,000 faults, which you must discharge in Purgatory. How much time will you need to accomplish this expiation? Suppose, on an average, each fault requires one hour of Purgatory. This measure is very moderate, if we judge by the revelations of the saints; but at any rate this will give you a Purgatory of 30,000 hours. Now, do you know how many years these 30,000 hours represent? Three years, three months, and fifteen days. Thus a good Christian who watches over himself, who applies himself to penance and good works, finds himself liable to three years, three months, and fifteen days of Purgatory.

“The preceding calculation is based on an estimate which is lenient in the extreme. Now, if you extend the duration of the pain, and, instead of an hour, you take a day for the expiation of a fault, if, instead of having nothing but venial sins, you bring before God a debt resulting from mortal sins, more or less numerous, which you formerly committed, if you assign, on the average, as St. Frances of Rome says, seven years for the expiation of one mortal sin, remitted as to the guilt, who does not see that we arrive at an appalling duration, and that the expiation may easily be prolonged for many years, and even for centuries?” (Fr. Schouppe, Purgatory Explained, chapter 22, “The Duration of Purgatory”).

Purgatorial Calculator
Without trying to be silly, or artificial, we have decided to put Fr. Mumford’s statements into table form, so that we can more easily see and understand his message. We have gone with 7 venial sins a day (instead of his 10) based on Scripture: “For a just man shall fall seven times” (Proverbs 24:16). However, experience shows that on some days it is possible to commit seven venial sins, or even more, in an hour—a grumpy start to the day: we mutter when the alarm goes off; we utter a bad word when we stub our toe against something on the way to the bathroom, or when the shower water is too hot or too cold; we complain about the murky weather outside; we put-off our morning prayers or say them in haste or distractedly; we show irritability to the rest of the family at breakfast; we tell a “white lie” or two; we eat too much; we speed on the way to work; we complain about the traffic delays, the red lights, the other drivers, etc.

The tables below show at a glance the cost of such accumulated sin. Of course it is all hypothetical and all this varies with the differing gravity of each venial sin and upon the knowledge and state of the soul, e.g. priest or layman, adult or child, etc. For to whom more is given, more is expected.

Do Not Undervalue the Gravity of Sin
“Be not without fear about sin forgiven” (Ecclesiasticus 5:5). “Bring forth therefore fruit worthy of penance” (Matthew 3:8). “Thou shalt not go out thence, until thou pay the very last mite” (Luke 12:59). Sin is expensive, very expensive—it is the most expensive thing in the world because “Mortal Sin is a great evil, the greatest evil in the world, and a greater evil than disease, or war ... Mortal Sin must be a most terrible thing indeed, to make a just and merciful God create Hell for the eternal punishment of sinners who die with even only one Mortal Sin” (The Catechism, My Catholic Faith, chapter 22, “Mortal Sin”). If an eternal Hell is created to punish just one single Mortal Sin, how on earth can war, flooding, earthquakes, pestilence, disease, death or fire from Heaven be thought to be worse than Hell? No matter what punishment Heaven sends us, it will still be like being tickled in comparison to the punishment of Hell.

As for Venial Sin, the same catechism says: “Although Venial Sin is not a grievous offense against God, it is, nevertheless, a great moral evil, next alone to Mortal Sin. We are prone to look upon Venial Sin as of no consequence, and to be careless about guarding against it, forgetting that IT IS SECOND ONLY IN EVIL CONSEQUENCE TO MORTAL SIN. In Holy Scripture we see, from many examples, how God regards Venial Sin. Even in this life He has punished it most severely. For only a slight doubt about God’s mercy, because of the wickedness of his people, Moses was punished. He was not permitted to lead the Israelites into the Promised Land [and died at its borders]” (The Catechism, My Catholic Faith, chapter 23, “Venial Sin”).

Article 7
There is No Greater Evil Than Sin! How Costly Should Sin Be?

As the saying goes: “Crime doesn’t pay!” ― especially “capital crime”! Crimes that are punishable by death are known as capital crimes, capital offences, or capital felonies, and vary depending on the jurisdiction, but commonly include serious crimes against the person, such as murder, mass murder, aggravated cases of rape (often including child sexual abuse), terrorism, aircraft hijacking, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, along with crimes against the state such as attempting to overthrow government, treason, espionage, sedition, and piracy. Also―in some cases―acts of recidivism, aggravated robbery, and kidnapping, in addition to drug trafficking, drug dealing, and drug possession, are capital crimes or enhancements.

However, some countries have also imposed punitive executions, for an expansive range of conduct, for political or religious beliefs and practices, for a status beyond one's control, or without employing any significant due process procedures. “Judicial murder” is the intentional and premeditated killing of an innocent person by means of capital punishment. For example, the executions following the show trials in Russia, during the Great Purge of 1937–1938, were an instrument of political repression and were “judicial murders”.

Etymologically, the term capital (literally meaning “of the head”, derived from the Latin “capitalis” from “caput”, meaning “head”) refers to execution by beheading―but today executions are carried out by many methods, including hanging, shooting, lethal injection, stoning, electrocution, and gassing.

As of 2022, a total of 55 countries still retain capital punishment; 109 countries have completely abolished it for all crimes; seven countries have abolished it for ordinary crimes (while maintaining it for special circumstances such as war crimes); and 24 countries are abolitionist in practice even though the law of the country allows it. Even though the majority of nations have abolished capital punishment, nevertheless over 60% of the world's population live in countries where the death penalty is retained, such as China, India, the United States, Singapore, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Japan, and Taiwan.

If “crime doesn’t pay”―then it is all the more true of sin in the eyes of God. “Sin is the only evil upon Earth … Mortal sin is a great evil, the greatest evil in the world, a greater evil than disease, poverty, or war, because it separates us from God … Mortal sin must be a most terrible thing indeed to make a just and merciful God create Hell for the everlasting punishment of the rebellious angels and of sinners who die with even only one mortal sin … Venial sin is a less serious offense against the law of God … We are prone to look upon venial sin as of no consequence, and to be careless about guarding against it, forgetting that it is second only in evil consequences to mortal sin. In Holy Scripture we see from many examples how God regards venial sin; even in this life He has punished it most severely. For only a slight doubt about God's mercy, because of the wickedness of his people, Moses was punished [by death on the borders of the Promised Land and] ― he was not permitted to lead the Israelites into the Promised Land” (The Catechism Explained, by Spirago-Clarke; also the Catechism, My Catholic Faith, by Bishop Morrow, STD).

That is why God has issued a death sentence to anyone and everyone who sins. This has been the case since Adam and Eve―to whom God said: “Of every tree of paradise thou shalt eat! But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat! For in what day soever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death!” (Genesis 2:16-17). In other words―obey Me and you will live; disobey Me and you will die!

During the Lenten liturgy, Holy Mother Church places before us the words of God whereby he sentences all sinners to death: “All lives are Mine! … The one who sins shall die! … If the virtuous man turns from the path of virtue to do evil, the same kind of abominable things that the wicked man does―can he do this and still live? None of his virtuous deeds shall be remembered, because he has broken faith and committed sin―because of this, he shall die. You say: ‘The Lord’s way is not fair!’ Hear now, house of Israel: Is it my way that is unfair, or rather, are not your ways unfair? When a virtuous man turns away from virtue to commit iniquity, and dies, it is because of the iniquity he committed that he must die. But if a wicked man, turning from the wickedness he has committed, does what is right and just, he shall preserve his life; since he has turned away from all the sins which he committed, he shall surely live, he shall not die, says the Lord almighty.” (Epistle for Ember Friday in Lent; taken from Ezechiel 18:20-28).

Hence the Holy Ghost―the inspirer of Scripture―elsewhere says: “The wages of sin is death!” (Romans 6:23). “The sting of death is sin” (1 Corinthians 15:56). “Sin hath reigned to death!” (Romans 5:21). “Sin, when it is completed, begetteth death!” (James 1:15). “Wherefore as by one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death; and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned … Death reigned from Adam!” (Romans 5:12-14). “From the woman came the beginning of sin, and by her we all die!” (Ecclesiasticus 25:33). “Everyone shall die for his own sin!” (Deuteronomy 24:16). “Every man shall die for his own sin!” (2 Paralipomenon 25:4).

Article 8
Our Lord and Our Lady on the Price of Sin

The words spoken by Our Lord to Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres (to whom Our Lady of Good Success appeared), perfectly sum up the cost of our sins: “Alas! If men would only realize how greatly I am wounded and displeased with the coldness, indifference, lack of confidence and small spineless imperfections on the part of those who so closely belong to Me ... But I will not tolerate this! Halfway measures are not pleasing to Me! I desire all or nothing! — according to My example, for I gave of Myself to the last drop of Blood and Water from My shattered Body on the Cross. Moreover, I have continued to live in the Tabernacle under the same roof with these hidden souls, exposing Myself to so many hateful profanations and sacrileges! For I know well all that takes place in My sacramental life! ... Woe to souls like this! Woe!” (Our Lord to Mother Mariana, Quito Ecuador).

In the following words addressed to the Venerable Mary of Agreda, Our Lady similarly lamented our attitudes in relation to the price paid by her Son for sin: “I esteemed all the children of the heavenly Father and looked upon them as redeemed and bought for a great price … They cost my divine Son the shedding of His Blood and the loss of His life!” ... “They are bought at the inestimable price of the Blood of the Lamb” … “The Blood of Christ is trodden underfoot, the fruits of the Redemption, what has cost the Savior His Blood and life, are held in contempt!” … “Weigh in thy heart, how much it cost my Lord to reconcile mankind to the eternal Father and regain for them His friendship! Weep and afflict thyself that so many should live in such forgetfulness and losing what was bought by the Blood of God Himself for their salvation!” … “Consider what thou must do to save thyself, and in what estimation thou must hold thy own soul, for which an infinite price was offered ... which He acquired as a rich prize at the cost of His life and of his Blood!”

“Weep with bitterest sorrow over the stubbornness and blindness of mortals in not understanding and acknowledging the loving protection, which they have in my divine Son and in me. My Lord spared Himself no exertion and left no means unemployed in order to gain for them inestimable treasures of Heaven. He stored up His infinite merits in His Holy Church, the most important fruit of his Passion and Death! He left the secure pledges of his glorious love; and procured for them most easy and efficacious means in order that all of them might enjoy and apply them for their use and for their eternal salvation! He offers them His protection and mine! He loves them as children; He cherishes them as his chosen friends; He calls them by his inspirations; He invites them by his blessings and graces; He awaits them as a most kind Father; He seeks them as their Pastor; He helps them as the most Powerful; He rewards them as One possessing infinite riches, and governs them as a mighty King.

“All these and innumerable other favors, which are pointed out by Faith, offered by the Church and presented before their very eyes, men forget and despise; as if blind, they love the darkness and deliver themselves up to the fury and rage of those cruel enemies. They listen to his lies, obey his wicked suggestions and confide in his snares; they trust and give themselves up to the unquenchable fire of his wrath. He seeks to destroy them and consign them to eternal death, only because they are creatures of the Most High, who vanquished and crushed this most cruel foe.

“Guard thyself against this deplorable error of the children of men and disengage thy faculties―in order that thou mayest clearly see the difference between the service of Christ and that of Belial. Greater is that difference than the distance between Heaven and Earth. Christ is eternal life, the true light and the pathway to eternal life; those who follow Him He loves with imperishable love, and He offers them his life and his company; with it, an eternal happiness, such as neither eyes have seen, nor ears have heard, nor ever can enter into the mind of man (John 14:6). Lucifer is darkness itself, error, deceit, unhappiness and death; he hates his followers and forces them into evil as far as possible, and at the end inflicts upon them eternal fire and horrid torments. Let mortals give testimony, whether they are ignorant of these truths, since the holy Church propounds them and calls them to their minds every day.

“If men believe these truths, where is their good sense? Who has made them insane? Who drives from their remembrance the love, which they ought to have for themselves? Who makes them so cruel to themselves? O insanity never sufficiently to be bewailed and so little considered by the children of Adam! All their life they labor and exert themselves to become more and more entangled in the snares of their passions, to be consumed in deceitful vanities and to deliver themselves over to an inextinguishable fire, death and everlasting perdition, as if all were a mere joke and as if Christ had not come down from Heaven to die on a Cross for their rescue! Let them but look upon the price, and consider how much God himself paid for this happiness, who knew the full value of it.

“The idolaters and heathens are much less to blame for falling into this error; nor does the wrath of the Most High enkindle so much against them as against the faithful of his Church, who have such a clear knowledge of this truth. If the minds of men, in our present age, have grown forgetful of it, let them understand that this happened by their own fault, because they have given a free hand to their enemy Lucifer. He with tireless malice labors to overthrow the barriers of restraint, so that, forgetful of the last things and of eternal torment, men may give themselves over, like brute beasts, to sensual pleasures, and unmindful of themselves consume their lives in the pursuit of apparent good, until, as Job says (Job 21:13), they suddenly fall a prey to eternal perdition.

“Such is in reality the fate of innumerable foolish men, who abhor the restraint imposed upon them by this truth. Do thou allow me to instruct thee, and keep thyself free from such harmful deceit and from this forgetfulness of the worldly people. Let the despairing groans of the damned, which begin at the end of their lives and at the beginning of their eternal damnation, ever resound in thy ears:

“‘O we fools, who esteemed the life of the just as madness! O how are they counted among the sons of God, and their lot is among the saints! We have erred then from the path of truth and of justice. The sun has not arisen for us. We have wearied ourselves in the ways of iniquity and destruction, we have sought difficult paths and erred by our own fault from the way of the Lord. What has pride profited us? What advantage has the boasting of riches brought us? All has passed away from us like a shadow. O had we but never been born!’

“This thou must fear and ponder in thy heart, so that, before thou goest to that land of darkness and of eternal dungeons from whence there is no return, thou mayest provide against evil and avoid it by doing the good. During thy mortal life and out of love do thou now perform that of which the damned in their despair are forced to warn thee by the excess of their punishment.”

Article 9
The Terrible Sufferings Sin Brings

As they say: “Crime doesn’t pay!” Some may argue: “Crime DOES pay!” ― in one sense they are right: “Commit crime NOW and pay for it LATER!” Holy Scripture tells us: “The wages of sin is death!” (Romans 6:23) … “The sting of death is sin” (1 Corinthians 15:56) … “Sin hath reigned to death!” (Romans 5:21) … “Sin, when it is completed, begetteth death!” (James 1:15).

Some people “get-away” with crime―they are not seen, nor caught, nor brought to justice. With God, however, there can be no escape! One of the greatest truths in life which we all know in theory, but which we all must come to accept and live in practice, is that there is no escape from God. Like fugitives, we may run, but we cannot ultimately hide from the God who penetrates even the darkness with the gaze of His light. If we manage to dodge Him in this life, we must still stand exposed before Him on that fearful day of judgment. There is no place to hide from God.

“Lord, Thou hast proved me, and known me! Thou hast known my sitting down, and my rising up! Thou hast understood my thoughts afar off! My path and my direction Thou hast searched out! And Thou hast foreseen all my ways―for there is no speech in my tongue! Behold, O Lord, Thou hast known all things, the last [latest] and those of old! Thy knowledge is become wonderful to me―it is high, and I cannot reach to it. Where shall I go from Thy spirit? Or where shall I flee from Thy face? If I ascend into Heaven, thou art there! If I descend into Hell, Thou art present! If I take my wings early in the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea―even there also shall Thy hand lead me and Thy right hand shall hold me! And I said: ‘Perhaps darkness shall cover me and night shall be my light in my pleasures!’ But darkness shall not be dark to thee, and night shall be light as day―for the darkness thereof and the light thereof are the same to Thee!” (Psalm 138:1-12).

God knows absolutely everything about us! Like a caged bird, He has me surrounded! There is no escape from His thorough, all-encompassing, penetrating knowledge. He knows our most secret thoughts! He sees and knows all our actions―past, present and potential in the future. He is intimately acquainted with all my ways! He knows what we will do even before we do it, or think about doing it! He knows all our words―past, present and potential in the future. In fact, He even knows what we are going to say before we say it! Our Lord says: “I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall render an account for it in the day of judgment!” (Matthew 12:36).

This brings us to the justice of God. Just as nothing escapes God’s eye and God’s knowledge―so, too, nothing will escape His justice: “O Lord, Thou will render to every man according to his works!” (Psalms 61:13) … “Nothing deceives the Keeper of thy soul, and He shall render to each man according to his works!” (Proverbs 24:12) … “For the Son of man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then will He render to every man according to his works!” (Matthew 16:27) … “Behold, I come quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man according to his works!” (Apocalypse 22:12).

Article 10
Sin Is One Hell of a Price!

Sin can cost each of us eternity in Hell! Today’s universal problem is that most people have lost the sense of what Hell is all about and they have also lost the sense of what sin really is! In doing this, they have left both the front door and the back door unlocked and open in their battle with Satan, Sin and Hell. We would do well to remember that sin will take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay!

In his book entitles Hell, Fr. Xavier Schouppe writes:
“The Dogma of Hell is the most terrible truth of our Faith! There is a Hell. We are sure of it as of the existence of God, the existence of the sun. Nothing, in fact, is more clearly revealed than the dogma of Hell, and Jesus Christ proclaims it as many as fifteen times in the Gospel. Hell never has been denied by heretics, Jews or Mohammedan. The pagans themselves have retained their belief in it. There are, in our day, men who laugh at, question, or openly deny the reality of Hell. They laugh at Hell―but the universal belief of nations should not be laughed at; a matter affecting the everlasting destiny of man is not laughable; there is no fun when the question is of enduring for eternity the punishment of fire! You do not believe in Hell? And there is no Hell, because you do not believe in it? Will Hell exist any the less, because you do not please to believe in it?”

It was because of modern-day attitudes such as these that Our Lady chose to show the three young children at Fatima―aged 10, 9 and 7―a vision of Hell, which they relayed to us. In her Memoirs, Sister Lucia describes the vision of Hell that Our Lady showed the children at Fatima:

“She opened her hands once more, as she had done the two previous months. The rays [of light] appeared to penetrate the Earth, and we saw, as it were, a vast sea of fire. Plunged in this fire, we saw the demons and the souls [of the damned]. The latter were like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, having human forms. They were floating about in that conflagration, now raised into the air by the flames which issued from within themselves, together with great clouds of smoke. Now they fell back on every side like sparks in huge fires, without weight or equilibrium, amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fright — it must have been this sight which caused me to cry out, as people say they heard me. The demons were distinguished [from the souls of the damned] by their terrifying and repellent likeness to frightful and unknown animals, black and transparent like burning coals. That vision only lasted for a moment, thanks to our good Heavenly Mother, who at the first apparition had promised to take us to Heaven. Without that, I think that we would have died of terror and fear.”

Our Lord and Holy Scripture often speak of Hell

Our Lord said: “If thy eye scandalize thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee; it is better for thee, having one eye, to enter into life, than, having two eyes, to be cast into Hell fire” (Matthew 5:29) … “If, then, thy hand or thy foot scandalize thee, cut it off and cast it from thee; it is better for thee to go into life maimed or lame, than, having two hands or two feet, be cast into everlasting fire” ( Matthew 18:8).

Our Lord: “If thy hand scandalize thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life, maimed, than having two hands to go into Hell, into unquenchable fire―where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not extinguished! And if thy foot scandalize thee, cut it off. It is better for thee to enter lame into life everlasting, than having two feet, to be cast into the Hell of unquenchable fire―where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not extinguished! And if thy eye scandalize thee, pluck it out. It is better for thee with one eye to enter into the Kingdom of God, than having two eyes to be cast into the Hell of fire―where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not extinguished!” (Mark 9:42-47).

Our Lord: “And fear ye not them that kill the body, and are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear Him that can destroy both soul and body into Hell” (Matthew 10:28).

Our Lord: “The rich man also died, and he was buried in Hell … And he said: ‘Have mercy on me! ... I am tormented in this flame!’” (Luke 16:22-24).

Our Lord: “Then the Judge will say to them that shall be on his left hand: ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels!’” (Matthew 25:41).

Our Lord: “But I say to you: Whosoever is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgment, and whosoever shall say to his brother: ‘Thou fool!’ shall be in danger of Hell fire.” (Matthew 5:22).

Our Lord: “The Son of Man shall send His angels, and they shall gather out of His Kingdom all scandals and them that work iniquity; and shall cast them into the furnace of fire; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth!” (Matthew 13:41).

Our Lord: “Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit, shall be cut down and shall be cast into the fire!” (Matthew 3:10; 12:19; Luke 3:9).

Our Lord: “If any one abide not in Me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him up, and cast him into the fire, and he burneth!” (John 15:5).

“He that shall come after Me is mightier than I, and he shall baptize you in the Holy Ghost and fire. Whose fan is in his hand and he will thoroughly cleanse his floor; and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire!” Words of St. John the Baptist. (Matthew 3:11-12).

“The wicked and all the nations that forget God shall be turned into Hell!” (Psalm 9:18).

“God will give vengeance in a flame of fire to them who know not God and who obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. They shall suffer eternal punishment!” (2 Thessalonians 1:8-9).

“The beast and the false prophet who had seduced them who had received the character of the beast, and who had admired his image, were cast alive into the pool of fire burning with brimstone!” (Apocalypse 19:20).

“And whosoever was not found written in the Book of Life, was cast into the pool of fire! … Where they were tormented day and night, for ever and ever! … They shall have their portion in the pool burning with fire and brimstone!” (Apocalypse 20:15; 20:10; 21:8).

“The children of the kingdom shall be cast out into the exterior darkness: where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth!” (Matthew 8:12) ... “And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth!” (Matthew 13:42) ... “And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth!” (Matthew 13:50) ... “Then the king said to the waiters: ‘Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the exterior darkness: where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth!’” (Matthew 22:13) ... “And shall separate him, and appoint his portion with the hypocrites. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth!” (Matthew 24:51) ... “And the unprofitable servant cast ye out into the exterior darkness! There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth!” (Matthew 25:30) ... “There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you shall see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out” (Luke 13:28).

Article 11
Sin Forfeits Heaven!

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There is another way to look at the price of sin, and that is by looking at what you lose through mortal sin. There is nothing more expensive and precious than Heaven. You cannot put a price on Heaven. Heaven is not only UNIMAGINABLE JOY, but it is also ETERNITY. What would you have to pay for a room in the most expensive hotel in the most lush part of the world? An incredible amount of money! Well multiply that by eternity! You can't, because you cannot measure eternity! Well then, multiply by one hundred thousand billion years―which is an extremely long time, but it is only a tiny fraction of eternity. Do you get the picture? Heaven is an incalculably expensive.

In addition to that―consider the incredible perks of Heaven that you lose by one single unconfessed and unrepented mortal sin. God has promised a happiness so unspeakably great, that the Apostle St. Paul, who “was caught up into Paradise” (2 Corinthians 12:4) and was favored with a glimpse of Heaven, tells us that mortal “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love Him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). This happiness—which is now so incomprehensible to us—is none other than the possession and enjoyment of God Himself in the Beatific Vision, as well as the perfect satisfaction of every rational craving of our nature in the glorious resurrection of the body.

We recall the incident where St. Dominic Savio, the pupil of St. John Bosco, died at a very young age. Shortly afterwards he appeared to St. John Bosco and spoke with him. Dominic said to Don Bosco: “Tell the boys how wonderful it is here in Heaven! Tell them how wonderful it is!” St. John Bosco asked him: “What do you enjoy in Paradise?” Dominic replied: “There is no mortal man who can know what one enjoys in Paradise, because he has not yet left this life!”

Perfect happiness cannot be found in this world. It certainly cannot be found in creatures—persons, places or things—for they were not clothed with the power to give it. Whatever joy we may find on Earth, it is always fleeting, passing, temporary and ultimately unfulfilling. There is only one single place in the afterlife that can give a totally fulfilling joy―and that place is Heaven. We speak of “eternal joy”, “eternal rest”, “eternal peace”, “eternal happiness”, etc. If you want eternal joy―you will not find it in Hell. For all of us, our final eternal mailing address will be either Heaven or Hell. There is no other eternal abode―Purgatory is temporary, and even though there is joy in Purgatory, there is also unimaginable and unspeakable suffering alongside that joy.

Which is why Our Lord tries to encourage to focus more on Heaven than Earth: “Lay not up to yourselves treasures on Earth―where the rust, and moth consume, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up to yourselves treasures in Heaven―where neither the rust nor moth doth consume, and where thieves do not break through, nor steal. For where thy treasure is, there is thy heart also” (Matthew 6:19-21) ― and where your heart is, then there too your are likely to end up! The world belongs to the devil―Our Lord calls him “the prince of this world” (John 12:31).

Our Lord further adds: “I am not of this world! … My kingdom is not of this world! … The world hates Me because I give testimony of it, that the works of the world are evil!” (John 8:23; 18:36; 7:7). Holy Scripture also says: “Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world. If any man loves the world, the charity of the Father is not in him!” (1 John 2:15). “Know you not that the friendship of this world is the enemy of God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of this world, becomes an enemy of God!” (James 4:4).

Article 12
Losing Your Friends!

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