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PART 2.—THE COMMANDMENTS AND THE
SACRAMENTS
SIN is the one great
evil of life—the sacraments are its divinely instituted remedy. The
better, then, to understand the graces of the sacraments, something should
be known of the nature of the evil sin, and of the laws, the transgression
of which is its essence. God himself gave man the laws by the guidance of
which he was to be enabled to walk in the ways of righteousness. They
were given to Moses on Mount Sinai in fire and smoke, "when all the mount
was terrible, and the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder."
The Commandments of God and of the Church
THE Ten Commandments of
the Christian religion were taken from the Law given to Moses. They
express the will of the Creator, and are imposed by Him on all men
throughout the universe. The commandments of God are called the
"Decalogue," which is a word derived from the Greek, meaning "ten words;"
they are also called the tables of the Law, because God gave them to
Moses, engraved on two tables of stone. The first three concern our
duties toward God, and the seven others our duty toward our neighbor; and
they were ratified by Our Lord when He said, "On these two commandments
dependeth the whole Law and the prophets" (Matt. xxii. 40). All
Christians having reached the age of reason, should know the commandments,
at least as to substance. They are as follows:
The Commandments of God
The First Commandment: "I am the Lord they God. Thou shalt
not have strange gods before Me; thou shalt not make to thyself any graven
thing to adore it." In the first commandment it is laid upon us to
acknowledge God by faith, hope, charity; and religion, rendering to Him
the devotion and worship due to the Creator. Thus faith, hope, and
charity, are the three theological virtues.
The Second Commandment: "Thou shalt not take the name of the
Lord thy God in vain." This commandment forbids blasphemy, regulates the
oath and the vow.
The Third Commandment: "Remember thou keep holy the Sabbath
day." The Church has established the worship and celebration of the
Sabbath on the day of Sunday (day of the Lord), in commemoration of the
Resurrection of our divine Savior Jesus Christ. Strictly speaking, the
one who hears Mass on Sunday and holydays, if otherwise he abstain from
work, satisfies the third commandment, at least in the sense that he does
not commit a mortal sin. The Church, however, urges us to practice other
works of piety on this day, such as assisting at Vespers, spiritual
reading, visiting the sick and poor, and so on.
The fourth Commandment: "Honor thy father and thy mother."
According to the meaning of the sacred language, the "father" comprises
not only the one who, after God, has given us life, but also those who,
according to the order of Divine Providence, are placed over us in both
the spiritual and temporal order. Thus, the fourth precept contains the
duties of children in regard to their parents, and of inferiors in regard
to their superiors; as, in turn, it contains the duties of parents in
regard to their children, and of superiors in regard to their inferiors.
The Fifth Commandment: "Thou shalt not kill." Under this
head come all sins against health and bodily welfare, affecting either
ourselves, or those with whom we come into contact, as well as the crimes
of homicide, suicide, abortion, and unlawful cruelties and violence during
war-times.
The Sixth and Ninth Commandments: "Thou shalt not commit
adultery." "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife." These two
commandments forbid all sins against chastity whether in deed, word, or
look.
The Seventh and Tenth Commandments: "Thou shalt not steal."
"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods." The Seventh Commandment
forbids us to injure our neighbor in his property by robbery or theft, by
cheating usury, or in any other unjust way. The Tenth Commandment forbids
all voluntary desire for our neighbor's goods.
The Commandments of the Church
Among other ecclesiastical laws certain commandments have been
constituted by the legislative power of the Church, through the divine
authority of government and teaching established by Our Lord Jesus Christ,
when He said, "Whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound
also in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be
loosed also in heaven" (Matt. xvi. 19; xviii. 18.) These commandments are
for the direction of all the members of the Church, and to help us in the
better accomplishment of the commandments of God and the maxims of the
Gospel.
The commandments of the Church have always existed in
teaching, in tradition, and in practice. They were not formulated into a
uniform text until the time of the Council of Trent, and this Council
itself never gave to them a precise form. Father Canisius, a Jesuit, was
the first who, in his great Catechism, "Summa Doctrinae Christianae," in
1554, conceived the idea of drawing up an abridgment of the religious
duties imposed by the Church. He reduced them to five. The third Plenary
Council of Baltimore fixed the following six: 1. "To rest from servile
work and to hear Mass on all Sundays and holydays of obligation." 2. "To
fast and to abstain from flesh-meat on the days appointed by the Church."
3. "To confess our sins at least once a year." 4. "To receive worthily
the Blessed Eucharist at Easter or within the time appointed." 5. "To
contribute to the support of our pastors." 6. "Not to marry persons
within the forbidden degrees of kindred or otherwise prohibited by the
Church, nor to solemnize marriage at the forbidden times."
We Christians are bound to observe the Ten Commandments of
God, both because God has imprinted them upon the human heart, and because
Christ laid them upon us anew in a more full and perfect form. Temporal
and eternal chastisements await the man who grievously violates a single
one of these commandments. We are under an equally rigorous obligation to
keep the commandments of the Church, for disobedience to the Church is
disobedience to Christ.
And now let us consider the transgression of the Commandments
of God, which is Sin. It is of two kinds, Original, and Actual.
Original sin is that which we contract in our origin or
conception, and which we inherit from our first parents, Adam and Eve.
Actual or Personal sin is every sin which we ourselves commit.
Original Sin
ORIGINAL sin is
distinguished from actual, or personal, sin in this—that actual or
personal sin is the sin which we personally with our own free will commit,
while original sin is that which our human nature committed with the will
of Adam, in whom all our human nature was included, and with whom our
human nature is united as a branch to a root, as a child to a parent, as
men who partake with Adam the same nature which we have derived from him,
and as members of the same human family of which Adam was the head. The
difference between original and personal sin is that the latter is
committed with our own personal will, while original sin was committed
with the will of another, and only morally our own, because it forms with
that other (Adam, who is our head) one moral body—humanity.
Of original sin, in which we are born, we are not personally
guilty with our own personal will, but our nature is guilty by the will of
Adam our head, with whom we form one moral body through the human nature
which we derive from him.
It is a point of Catholic faith that original sin does not
consist in what is called concupiscence, which is a propensity to evil of
the inferior part of the human soul.
Sin, to be a sin in the strict sense of the word, must be
within the sphere of morality, that is, it must depend upon free will; and
hence the noted principle in moral philosophy and theology, that there is
no sin where there is no will.
Concupiscence, therefore, which is not will, but a blind,
involuntary inclination of our lower nature and therefore an irresponsible
tendency to evil, is not of itself sinsul unless it be consented to by the
will, or rendered strong by bad and unrestricted habit.
Concupiscence is indeed sometimes called in Holy Scripture
(Rom. vii. 7, Gal. v. 24.), but it is called so, as the holy Council of
Trent explains, not in a strict, but in a wide sense, that is, inasmuch as
it is a consequence of original sin, and an incentive to actual sin.
This concupiscence, or inclination to evil, still remains in
those form whom the guilt and stain of original sin has been entirely
washed away by the Sacrament of Baptism. Moreover, strictly speaking, no
one is regarded as a sinner merely because he feels tempted to sin. This
miserable propensity to evil excites the compassion rather than the anger
of God; who said to Noe: "I will no more curse the earth for the sake of
man; for the imagination and thought of man's heart are prone to evil from
his youth." (Gen. viii. 21.)
The Catholic Church teaches that Adam by his sin not only
caused harm to himself, but to the whole human race; that by it he lost
the supernatural justice and holiness which he received gratuitously from
God, and lost it, not only for himself, but also for all of us; and that
he, having stained himself with the sin of disobedience, has transmitted
not only death and other bodily pains and infirmities to the whole human
race, but also sin, which is the death of the soul.
The teaching of the Council of Trent (Session V.) is confirmed
by these words of St. Paul: "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." (Rom. v. 12.)
That the early Christians believed in original sin, can be
gathered from what St. Augustine said to Pelagius: "I did not invent
original sin, which Catholic faith holds from ancient time; but thou, who
deniest it, thou, without doubt, art a new heretic" ("De Nuptiis," lib.
xi. C. 12.)
It may be said that this belief is as old as the human race,
for traces of this ancient tradition are spread among all nations,
insomuch that Voltaire had to confess that "The fall of man is the base of
the theology of nearly all ancient people" ("Philosophie de l'Histoire,"
chaptire xvii.)
Besides the guilt of original sin, which is that habitual
state of sinfulness in which we are born (because our human nature is
justly considered to have consented in Adam to the rejection of original
justice), there is also in man the stain of original sin, entailing in the
human soul the privation of that supernatural luster which, had we been
born in the state of original justice, we all should have had.
As neither Adam nor any of his offspring could repair the evil
done by his sin, we should have always remained in the state of original
sin and degradation in which we were born, and have been forever shut out
from the beatific vision of God in heaven, had not God, in His infinite
mercy, provided for us a Redeemer.
Actual Sin
HE who knowingly and
willingly transgresses one of God's commandments is guilty of sin. It is
not counted as a sin if we commit an evil action, of the sinfulness of
which we are ignorant, through no fault of our own, nor if our will does
not consent to the evil deed. Sin is in its essence an unlawful turning
toward the creature and turning away from God.
In the development of sin, an evil thought first comes into
the mind, which in itself is not sinful. This is only temptation. If,
however, evil thoughts are not instantly repelled, or only partly opposed,
they awaken in the mind complacently in what is evil, and that is already
a venial sin. The evil desire next arises. This has a degree of
sinfulness corresponding to that of the sinful action toward which it is
directed. Finally comes the resolution to commit the sin. If occasion
then presents itself for the sin, the exterior act is committed. By the
repetition of exterior sins the habit of sin, or vice, is contracted.
Every outward sin and every vice brings, as its own punishment, other sins
and vices of a different nature in its train. If any vice is firmly
rooted in the soul it oftentimes brings after it sins of the worst type,
and those that are said to cry to heaven for vengeance. Finally it
produces complete obduracy in the sinner.
There are different kinds of sin. All those sins which
violate different commandments, or which are opposed to different virtues,
are distinct in their nature one from the other; as also are those sins by
which one and the same commandment is transgressed, or which are opposed
to one and the same virtue in different ways.
Sins are generally divided into sins of word, of thought, and
of deed.
A distinction also exists between our own sins and the sins in
which we cooperate. Our own sins are those which we ourselves commit.
The sins in which we cooperate are those which we do not actually commit
ourselves, but for which we are to blame. We may be accessory to
another's sin by command, counsel, consent, praise, assistance, defense;
by provocation, or by silence, or by abstaining from punishing the ill
done, although we might and ought to have prevented it.
Earthly potentates, legislative bodies, parents and superiors,
teacher, employers of labor, editors of periodicals and publishers, may
easily render themselves guilty of the sin of others. He who is to blame
for another man's sin deserves punishment quite as much as if he had
committed the sin himself.
A sin is all the greater the more important is the object it
injures, the clearer the knowledge of the sinfulness of the deed, and the
greater the liberty of action enjoyed by the doer. Circumstances of
person, cause, time, place, means, object, or the evil consequences of a
sin, may enhance, or lessen its guilt. Many sins are so great that they
separate us entirely from God, and deprive us of His friendship. They are
called mortal or deadly sins. Sins of lesser moment are called venial
sins.
Mortal and venial sin differ essentially from each other. It
is an exceedingly difficult and dangerous matter to decide whether a sin
is mortal or venial. Only one thing is certain: Mortal sin is not
possible unless God is no longer the final end toward which our intention
is directed.
He commits a moral sin who consciously and of his own free
will does grievous dishonor to God or wrong to his neighbor in a weighty
matter; who does injury to his own life, or to the life, the property, or
the reputation of his neighbor.
He commits a venial sin who only injures something of trifling
consequences; or who, though he injures something of great importance,
injures it very slightly, or does so almost unconsciously and to some
extent unwittingly.
Yet that which is ordinarily only a venial sin may become a
mortal sin, if great scandal is given thereby, or great harm done, or if
the venial sin is committed out of contempt for the law. Venial sins if
repeated may become mortal if they are the means of doing great harm.
All mortal sins are not of equal magnitude, nor are all venial
sins of the same importance. The most heinous sins are the sins against
the Holy Ghost, and those that cry to heaven for vengeance.
He commits a sin against the Holy Ghost who persistently and
willfully resists the action of the Holy Ghost. The sin against the Holy
Ghost is for the most part the result of a wicked course of life.
Whosoever sins against the Holy Ghost thrusts from him the grace of
conversion. Those who sin against the Holy Ghost often come to a
miserable end here and are consigned to eternal damnation hereafter.
Sins that cry to heaven for vengeance are sins of great
malice. They are: willful murder, oppression of the poor, defrauding
laborers of their wages, and thee sin of Sodom. In the present day sins
that cry to heaven are often committed by employers, in their conduct
toward their defenseless working-people.
A distinction must be made between venial sins and
imperfections. Imperfections are faults which are due, not to bad will,
but to human frailty.
Mortal sin deprives a man of sanctifying grace and delivers
him into the power of the devil. Through mortal sin we lose the
supernatural beauty of the soul, and become unclean before God. Mortal
sin brings down upon the sinner both eternal damnation and temporal
chastisement.
Venial sin gradually leads to mortal sin, and thus results in
the loss of sanctifying grace. There are temporal penalties due to venial
sin, and these will come upon us either on earth, or, after death, in
purgatory.
Vice is a confirmed tendency of the will toward evil which is
acquired by habitual sin. Habits of vice are easily formed, but it
requires a great struggle to give them up, and the longer a man has
indulged in vice the more difficult that struggle becomes. A man who is
addicted to vice cannot amend of his own power; he needs the mighty
assistance of divine grace. Nor can he amend all at once. A long and
strenuous exertion of the will is required to achieve his conversion.
Furthermore he must commence by combating one fault only, that very one to
which he is most prone.
Habitual sin makes a man supremely unhappy, because it
deprives him completely of sanctifying grace, subjects him entirely to the
dominion of the devil, and brings down on him many temporal judgments, as
well as eternal damnation. The wicked do not possess sanctifying grace,
consequently their understanding is greatly obscured and their will
greatly weakened.
The most ordinary sins are the seven capital sins: Pride,
disobedience, anger, avarice, intemperance in eating and drinking,
unchastity, sloth.
There is no man upon earth without sin, consequently there is
none who does not need the forgiveness of sin. We can obtain forgiveness
of sin, because Christ merited it for us by His death upon the cross, and
because He gave power to forgive sins to His apostles and their
successors.
Mortal sin is remitted by Baptism and Penance, venial sin, and
the temporal penalties due to it by good works done in a state of grace.
These good works are: Prayer, fasting, almsgiving, hearing holy Mass,
receiving holy communion, use of the sacraments, gaining indulgences,
forgiving offences.
The Merits of the Redeemer Applied to Man
THE Holy Trinity, out
of infinite mercy, decreed to provide for us a Redeemer who could suffer
as an individual of the human race, and yet be in Himself, at the same
time, so exalted as to be able to give infinite value to His sufferings;
because sin, being an offence against the infinite majesty of God, could
only be atoned for by an expiation of infinite value.
To accomplish this, God the Son, the second Person of the Holy
Trinity, the eternal Word, chose the Blessed Virgin Mary of Nazareth to
become His Mother, and on receiving her consent, He, by the supernatural
agency of the Holy Spirit, took human flesh from her, and thus became man,
and His holy name is Jesus Christ.
In becoming man the eternal Word did not lay aside His divine
nature, but, remaining what He was from all eternity, took upon Himself
human nature without a human personality, so that, from the first moment
of His Incarnation there was in Him, and there ever will be, not one only,
but two natures, the divine and the human, united in His divine
personality, the person of God the Son.
The divine nature of Jesus is one and the same as that of the
eternal Father and of the Holy Spirit, and His human nature is in all
things like ours, sin and tendency to sin excepted. He is equal to the
Father as to His Godhead, and less than the Father as to His manhood.
Our Lord Jesus Christ suffered and died in His human nature on
Mount Calvary, and thereby effectually interposed His atonement between
His eternal Father and man, and thus made a complete expiation and paid a
full ransom to the eternal Justice for the sins of the whole world.
Jesus Christ died for all mankind; He truly died that "He
might taste death for all." (Heb. ii. 9.) Yet we know that all men will
not be saved, but only those who do His will; for we read: "And being
consummated, He became to all that obey Him the cause of eternal
salvation." (Heb. v.) And so, notwithstanding Christ's Redemption, it is
stated in the Gospel that some "shall go into everlasting punishment."
(Matt. xxv. 46.) St. Paul did not say that God will save all men, but,
"who will have all men to be saved" (1 Tim. ii. 4), implying thereby that,
for salvation, man's will and cooperation are required to fulfill the
conditions, and use the means appointed by God Himself for the purpose.
Only those who "have washed their robes and have made them
white in the blood of the lame" (Apoc. vii. 14), that is, who have the
merits of Christ applied to them, and who persevere to the end in doing
what is commanded, will be saved.
The direct means instituted by Christ Himself for applying His
infinite merits to the souls of men, are the holy sacraments, which are so
many channels instituted by Jesus Christ to convey to men His grace,
purchased for us at the price of His most precious blood: "You shall draw
waters with joy out of the Savior's fountains." (Is. xii. 3.)
It is through the sacraments that we are justified, and
sanctifying grace is conferred upon us, so that the life of the soul may
be restored; through them graces applying to all conditions of life are
increased in us, and we are enabled to persevere in righteousness until
death releases us from earth and its temptations and sufferings.
Justification and Sanctifying Grace
JUSTIFICATION is a
divine act which conveys sanctifying grace, and by that grace communicates
a supernatural life to the soul, which by sin, whether original or actual,
had incurred spiritual death; that is to say, justification is a change in
the human soul or translation from the state of sin to the state of grace.
It is a gift of almighty God, a ray, as it were, coming direct
from the divine goodness and filling the soul, which makes those who
receive it pleasing to God and justified in His sight.
The grace of justification produces a change affecting the
soul of the regenerate by its presence, elevating and perfecting it. By
this grace the likeness to God is brought out in them, and they are raised
to a state of friendship with Him, and of divine sonship.
The Catholic Church teaches that the grace of justification
does not merely cover sin, but blots it out, that is, blots out the guilt
and stain arising from sin, and remits the everlasting punishments due to
it.
Merely covering sin is a human way of forgiving, which
consists in passing over the crime of a sinner, and in treating him
outwardly as if he had not committed it, and as if no stain were on the
soul in consequence of it, though the guilt and the stain are still there.
God's way of pardoning is to cleanse away entirely the guilt
and stain of sin, so that, instead of it, God sees in the pardoned sinner
the "charity of God poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Ghost" (Rom. v.
5), which, like a fire, has destroyed all the dross of sin, and rendered
man pure, upright, and holy.
Hence the justification of a sinner is represented in
Scripture as the putting on of the new man, who is "created in justice,
and holiness of truth (Eph. iv. 24): the "renovation of the Holy Ghost"
(Tit. iii. 5)—a renovation which renders a renewed soul pure, bright,
amiable, and endeared to God.
In the case of grown-up persons, some dispositions are
required on the part of the sinner in order to be fit to obtain this
habitual and abiding grace of justification. A man can dispose himself
only by the help of divine grace, and the dispositions which he shows do
not by any means effect or merit justification: they only serve to prepare
him for it; and for that reason they are called simply dispositions or
preparations. This is the teaching of the Council of Trent, which
declares: "We are said to be justified gratuitously, because none of the
things which precede justification, whether they be faith or good works,
can merit this blessing for us. (Sess. VI. chap. viii.) The same holy
Council declares that sins are remitted gratuitously by the mercy of God
through the merits of Jesus Christ. (Sess. VI. chapt. Vii.)
The principal dispositions required for justification are the
following acts, which can only be made by the assistance of God's actual
grace, namely, an act of faith, or belief in revealed truths, an act of
fear of God, an act of hope, and an act of charity; an act of repentance
for past sins, with a purpose to avoid sin in the future, and to keep the
commandments: a desire of receiving Baptism for those who have not yet
been baptized, and for those who have fallen into sin after Baptism, a
resolution to approach the Sacrament of Penance. (Council of Trent, Sess.
VI., chap. vi.)
Justification may be lost by willfully violating a commandment
of God, either by doing what is forbidden, or by not doing what is
commanded. Justification is a talent or gift which should be made to bear
fruit, or we shall be punished for neglect.
By justification we are raised to the dignity of sons of God,
heirs of His kingdom: and this entails upon us the duty of acting in a way
becoming to so high a dignity. "If thou wilt enter into life, keep the
commandments," said Our Lord. (Matt. xix. 17.) By justification we are
incorporated with Christ, like a branch growing on a vine; but if the
branch produces no fruit it will be cut off and cast into the fire. (John
xv. 6.) Hence, the grace of justification is compared by Our Savior, not
to a pond, but to a fountain, whose waters reach unto heaven: "But the
water that I will give him shall become in him a fountain of water
springing up into life everlasting" (John iv. 14).
When a man is in a state of sanctifying grace, fruits are not
wanting. These fruits are good works—namely, such good acts as we perform
in and because of the love of God, and in reference to Him, and therefore
in accordance with His divine commandments. Hence St. Isidore says: "The
pious and just are fruit-bearing trees, and the fruit they produce are
good works." Our divine Savior said the same thing: "Every tree bringeth
forth good fruit" (Matt. vii. 17). "Faith without works is dead," says St.
James (ii. 2).
Actual Grace
AFTER we are justified
we still stand in need, in order to perform any meritorious good work, of
another grace called actual. Justifying grace, of which we spoke in the
preceding chapter, called also habitual grace is something in itself
lasting; actual grace is something that passes, and extends only to
individual acts for the time it is needed. Actual grace is a passing,
supernatural, divine help, enlightening our understanding, and moving our
will, and enabling us to perform any single good action; for instance, to
accept any supernatural revealed truth, or to perform any good work,
considered good in the supernatural order.
Grace does not force man's free will, but respects it, and
leaves man free to act with it or not. Grace, therefore, does not destroy
our free will, but only helps it, and our own working with grace is
required. "God, who has created thee without thee, will not save thee
without thee," says St. Augustine; and in Holy Scripture it is repeatedly
stated that God will render to every one according to his works.
We stand in continued need of actual graces to perform good
acts, both before and after being justified. "Without Me you can do
nothing," says Our Savior, and St. Paul declares that without God's grace
we are incapable of even a good thought. The good acts, however, done by
the help of grace before justification are not, strictly speaking,
meritorious, but serve to smooth the way to justification, to move God,
though merely through His mercy and condescension, to help us and render
us better disposed for the same. But if, with the assistance of actual
grace, good works are done by a person who is in a state of justifying
grace, then they are acceptable to God, and merit an increase of grace on
earth and an increase of glory in heaven.
Hence St. Paul says: "God is not unjust, that He should
forget your work, and the love which you have shown in His name" (Heb. vi.
10). And writing to St. Timothy, he declares that "a crown of justice"
was laid up for him, "but to them also that love His [Christ's] coming" (2
Tim. iv. 8). And in his second epistle to the Corinthians, he says, "For
that which is at present momentary and light of our tribulations, worketh
for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory." (iv. 17.)
All our merits, however, without any exception, are grounded
on the merits of Jesus Christ, and on His grace, without which no one can
move a step toward heaven.
The merit of a good action performed in a state of grace, as
being in consequence of justification, and in union with Our Lord, is
truly our own merit, because that good action is really performed by us,
by our cooperation with God's grace. Our merit, however, does not take
away from Christ's merits, for without Him we can do nothing. We merit
through Christ, Christ makes us merit; or, still more properly, Christ
merits in us, and therefore all the glory is His. "God forbid," says the
Council of Trent, "that a Christian should confide or glory in himself and
not in the Lord, whose goodness toward men is so great that He regards as
their merits the very gifts which He Himself bestows upon them." (Sess.
VI. chap. xviii.) And St. Augustine had said long before, "God crowns His
own grace when He crowns our merits."
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