_edited.png){kind=logo}
Fifteenth Thursday after Pentecost
- caelidomum
- Sep 24, 2025
- 4 min read
Fifteenth Thursday after Pentecost. Hatred of Sin.
Summary of the Morrow’s Meditation.
We will meditate to-morrow upon the hatred of sin which is the first effect of penitence, and we shall see: 1st, what are the motives for hating sin in general; 2d, the motives for hating even venial sin. We will then make the resolution: 1st, never to allow ourselves deliberately to commit any venial sin; 2d, to watch specially over certain sins into which we fall the oftenest, such as sins of the tongue or of the temper. Our spiritual nosegay shall be the words of the patriarch Joseph: “How can I sin against my God ?” (Gen. xxxix. 9)
Meditation for the Morning.
Let us adore the God of infinite wisdom in His immense hatred of sin; let us love His holiness, which cannot bear even the shadow of sin; let us adore His justice, which everywhere pursues it; let us fear His chastisement, which He does not spare at any time or in any place.
On Hatred of Sin in General.
The true penitent hates all sin as being the inveterate enemy of God. He holds it in horror and detests it as the most execrable thing in the world, as the source of the deluge of miseries with which the whole earth has been inundated since the disobedience of Adam; as the greatest of all evils, since it can be the means of making us lose a blessed eternity; lastly, as an evil which we ought to fear more than the most acute maladies, than tortures and the gibbet, than the most cruel of deaths. It is our duty to be ready to lose and to suffer everything rather than to commit it, to fly it as we would from the pestilence, from all occasions of it; to wage against it at all times and in all circumstances mortal war; to persecute it as men who are full of hatred persecute their enemies wherever they may meet with them; to attack it at its very fountainhead by crucifying the flesh and all its concupiscences (James i. 15); lastly, to efface the least idea and recollection of it. This is what hatred of sin prescribes; let us beg of God to penetrate our hearts so entirely with these sentiments that we may be able to say with the prophet: “I have hated and abhorred iniquity” (Ps. cxviii. 163).
On the Hatred of Sin even when it is only Venial.
We ought to fear venial sin even more than death: 1st, because it displeases God, insults Him, does Him an injury, and grieves the Holy Ghost. Now, is not an evil which involves such consequences more serious than all imaginable evils ? 2d. Because God punishes it in the next life by more terrible chastisements than any sufferings which can be inflicted upon us here below, and that more than once He has punished it with death even in the present life. Because of thoughtless curiosity the wife of Lot was suddenly struck down with death (Gen. xix. 26); for hewing gathered a little wood on the Sabbath-day, let the guilty man be stoned and let him die, said the Lord (Num. xv. 32-36); a prophet remains a little longer than he ought to have done in the place whither he had been sent, a lion comes out of the forest and devours him (III. Kings xiii. 24); David, through secret vanity, numbers his people, and seventy thousand of his subjects fall a prey to pestilence (II. Kings xxiv. 19-25). We ought to fear venial sin, 3d, because it stops the course of graces and leads to mortal sin, according to the oracle of the Holy Ghost that “he who contemneth small things shall fall by little and little” (Ecclus. xix. 1), and thus a venial sin is often the beginning of reprobation; 4th, because we often look upon as a venial sin what is a mortal sin in the eyes of God; whence we may conclude how we ought to avoid falsehood, calumnies, even such as we term slight ones the ridiculing this person or that, hasty or ill-tempered speeches, and all the other venial sins we so often allow ourselves to commit in conversation; voluntary distractions in prayer, loss of time, negligence in our employments, sensualities in regard to our meals, vanity with respect to our external appearance, human respect about our religious duties. Are these the sentiments we entertain in regard to venial sin ? Do we not every day, through love for ourselves or complaisance towards others, often even without scruple, deliberately and wantonly allow ourselves to commit them, under the pretext that we shall not be punished eternally ? Lastly, do we hate it to the extent of hindering it, so far as we can, in others, never applauding their defects, and persuading them to avoid the least laxity and the least license in their actions and language?
Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.
Comments