Chapter II. Mortification and the Results of Original Sin

Mortification is not, as naturalism would have us believe, the destruction of nature, but the restoration or healing of nature through the destruction of sin and its consequences. It entails surgery, but only to extirpate the seeds of corruption and to restore health. It can be defined as "death to sin," which is, in reality, death to death or increasingly perfect life, holy and pure and unalterably united to God. An integral definition would put it: Mortification is the destruction of sin and its consequences, the renouncement of things licit but not useful for us, so that preoccupation with them may not absorb us to the detriment of divine union. 1 Being ordered to the spiritual edification of Christians, this destruction is necessary for all; for everyone, each according to his condition, ought to tend toward the perfection of charity in virtue of the first commandment: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul and with all thy strength and with all thy mind." 2 And if all cannot actually practice the three counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience, all ought to have the spirit of these counsels, the spirit of detachment, that they may die more and more completely to the diree concupiscences and fulfill more and more perfecdy the one great commandment. 8

Mortification as here defined has nothing in common with the misrepresentation of it given by naturalism, with a view to denying its necessity. It is a far cry, too, from what the Jansenists made of it, for their proud austerity did not enlarge the heart but narrowed it. They forgot the words of the divine Master: "But thou, when diou fastest, anoint thy head and wash diy face, that thou appear not to men to fast, but to the Father who is in secret. And thy Father who seeth in secret will repay thee." 4

Mortification is called active purification, for we impose it upon ourselves in conformity with what Christ "said to all," as St. Luke relates: "If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself." 5 What our Lord immediately adds: "and take up his cross daily and follow Me," refers to whatever passive purifications God imposes on us, as He laid the cross upon our Savior. God Himself comes, in fact, to bring the work of active purification to deep and full completion, if we will but permit Him, so that we may attain to perfect purity and be associated in the great mystery of redemption through suffering. "The Lord killeth and maketh alive; He bringeth down to hell and bringeth back again. . . . He humbleth and He exalteth, . . . lifteth up the poor from the dunghill: that he may sit with princes, and hold the throne of glory." G These words of the Canticle of Anna come back to lasting life in the Magnificat.

Mortification is, then, necessary for the soul to be delivered from sin and its consequences, that it may "die to sin" and cleave more purely and firmly to God by imitating Christ

Jesus. These two big reasons can be expressed more concretely by being divided as follows: Mortification is necessary (1) to destroy the consequences of original sin in us, (2) to do away with the results of our own personal sins, (3) to subordinate our natural activity perfectly to the life of grace, never losing sight of die infinite sublimity of our supernatural end, (4) to imitate Christ crucified and be associated with Him in the work of redemption.

In the following article we shall speak of the first reason. We shall see the consequences, the wounds of original sin that continue to exist in the baptized. We shall examine the nature of these wounds and learn how they are treated and gradually healed.

In this matter we must avoid the pessimism of the Protestants and the Jansenists, who maintain that our will has been destroyed by original sin and unrestored by grace. We must be equally careful not to fall into the unrealistic optimism of those who, partly forgetting about the jomes peccati, seem to believe that the state of fallen man is in no way inferior to a purely natural state and that baptism delivers us from every disorder resulting from original sin.

Baptism certainly produces two inestimable effects: sanctifying grace and the baptismal character ; and the "good of grace in one [little child] is greater than the good of nature in the whole universe." 7 It has more value than all the angelic natures taken together, because it belongs to an infinitely

higher and strictly divine order, and makes us temples of the indwelling Trinity. Baptism incorporates us into Christ, illuminates our intellect by faith, converts our will to God by hope and charity, opens the gates of heaven to us, and remits all the punishment due to our sins.

However, baptism does not take away the penalties of the present life : sorrow, concupiscence and death, the remains of original sin in human nature. St. Thomas says that "this is suitable for our spiritual training; namely, in order that, by fighting against concupiscence and other defects to which he is subject, man may receive the crown of victory." 8 "Concupiscence," he adds, "is diminished by baptism"; 9 it is not destroyed.

This doctrine is dius defined by the Council of Trent: "In the one baptized there remains concupiscence or an inclination to sin, which, since it is left for us to wrestle with, cannot injure those who do not acquiesce but resist manfully by the grace of Jesus Christ; indeed, he who shall have striven lawfully shall be crowned. This concupiscence, which the Apostle sometimes calls sin (Rom. 6: 12 ff.), the holy council declares the Catholic Church has never understood to be called sin in the sense that it is truly and properly sin in those born again, but in the sense that it is of sin and inclines to sin." 10

The wound of concupiscence that results from original sin, begins to mend with baptismal grace but is long in healing. It is by no means the only wound. There are three others, as St. Thomas explains. 11

10 Denzingcr, no. 792. (Schrocdcr, Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, p. 23.— Tr.)

As a result of original justice, the reason had perfect hold over the lower parts of the soul, while reason itself was perfected by God and was subject to Him. Now this same original justice was forfeited through the sin of our first parents, as already stated; so that all the powers of the soul are left, as it were, destitute of their proper order, whereby they are naturally directed to virtue; which destitution is called a wounding of nature. 12

Again, there are four of the soul's powers that can be the subject of virtue, namely, the reason, where prudence resides, the will where justice is, the irascible, the subject of fortitude, and the concupiscible, the subject of temperance. 13 Hence so far as the reason is deprived of its order to the true, there is the wound of ignorance; so far as the will is deprived of its order to the good, there is the wound of malice; so far as the irascible is deprived of its order to the delectable, moderated by reason, there is the wound of concupiscence.

Accordingly these are the four wounds inflicted on the whole of human nature as a result of our first parents' sin. But since the inclination to the good virtue is diminished in each individual on account of actual sin, . . . these four wounds are also the result of other sins, so far as through sin the reason is obscured, especially in practical matters, the will hardened to evil, good actions become more difficult, and concupiscence more impetuous.

The four wounds caused by original sin and aggravated by our personal sins may be listed as follows:

12 The words of the text are as follows: "Et idco omnes vires animae remanent quodammodo destitutae proprio ordine, quo naturaliter ordinantur ad virtutem; et ipsa destitutio vulneralio naturae dicitur." St. Thomas does not say "quo naturaliter ordinabantur ," as if this order or inclination to virtue were only the effect of a gratuitous gift of original justice and so lost by original sin; he says "naturaliter ordinantur," giving us to understand that the natural inclination of these powers for virtue is itself weakened.

13 The irascible and the concupiscible are the two forms of sensuous appetency or sensibility; the irascible appetite tends to difficult sensible goods, the concupiscible to delectable sensible goods.

Wounds of the soul the higher faculties in the will : the wound of malice or the inclination to evil, egoism in the intellect:

the lower faculties in the irascible appetite:

in the concupiscible appetite:

the wound of ignorance, whence come imprudence, blindness the wound of weakness, whence come pusillanimity, sloth the wound of concupiscence, whence come lust, gluttony

According to St. Thomas, 14 original sin, initially in the essence of the soul as a privation of the grace of original justice, first infects the will, which should be subject to God, and then the other powers that should be subject to right reason. Sin, found first in the rebel will, afterwards extends its ravages to the other faculties.

St. Thomas examines the question whether the three wounds of malice, ignorance, and weakness, like concupiscence, remain in the baptized, or whether they are immediately healed by baptismal grace. When considering grace and the infused virtues that are the effects of baptism, he says: "Difficulty in doing good and proncness to evil are in the baptized, not dirough their lacking the habits of the virtues, but through concupiscence, which is not taken away in bap-

tism. But just as concupiscence is diminished, that it may not enslave us, so are difficulty in doing good and proneness to evil, that man may not be overcome by them." 15 Evidently as much must be admitted in regard to our ignorance about the moral direction of our lives. The four wounds are in process of healing in the baptized, but they are not cured by baptism.

We sum up. The wound in the will, an inclination to evil, is the source of self-love, often of gross unconscious egoism, pride, envy, and avarice; the wound in the intellect, ignorance, is the principle of imprudence in all its forms — thoughtlessness, foolhardiness, and blindness of mind in regard to higher things; the wound in the irascible appetite, weakness, is the principle of faintheartedness, cowardice, sloth, human respect or worldly fear, and discouragement; and concupiscence, the wound of die concupiscible appetite, is the principle of lust and the different forms of intemperance.

All theologians admit that repeated personal sins gradually weaken our natural inclination to virtue, for an inclination to evil weakens an inclination to good. 16 The question naturally arises whether the wounds resulting from original sin also weaken man's natural inclination to virtue.

Many theologians have thought that the wounds of original sin do not weaken our natural inclination to virtue, that they are only a privation of the gratuitous gift of original jus-

2 68 THE LOVE OF GOD tice, which, by elevating man to supernatural life, raised his nature to a state of integrity or of perfection. It would follow that man in his fallen state is no less able to do good than he would have been in a merely natural state, called a state of pure nature, in which God could have created him, without giving him sanctifying grace, or integrity, or natural perfection. 17

Most Thomists disagree with this opinion, believing that man in the state of fallen and unrestored nature, has less strength to do natural moral good than he would have had in a purely natural state. Almost all the great commentators on St. Thomas hold this view. 18

They base their opinion principally on the fact that in the state of fallen nature man is born with a will turned away from God by original sin, aversa a Deo; whereas, in a merely natural state or the state of pure nature, he would have been born with a will that could either be directed toward God or could prefer a created good to Him, but which would not be turned away from Him. 19 Original sin certainly turns the

17 Such is the opinion of the following: Suarez, De gratia, Proleg., IV, eg; Bellarmine, De gratia primi hominis, c.5; Mazella, De gratia, no. 1069; Palmieri, th. 78; Pesch, no. 282. According to them the state of fallen man is certainly lower than the state of natural integrity, but not than the state of pure nature. In their view fallen man and man in the state of pure nature differ only sicul nudatus a nudo, not any more than a man deprived of his clothing and disturbed at no longer having them differs from a naked man who never had any clothes and who docs not experience any disturbance thereby. Cf. Hugon, De gratia (1927), p. 79.

18 See Billuart, De gratia, diss. II, a.3; Salmanticenses, De peccatis in lam Ilae, q.85, a.3, and De gratia, disp. II, dub. iii, nos. 102, 116, 135, dub. viii, no. 287. Cited in these passages are many who hold this position: Caprcolus, Fcrrariensis, Conrad Kollin, Alvarez, John of St. Thomas; to this list can be added Lcmos, Contenson, Goudin, and many others, including Hugon. In his Clypeus, Gonet departs from this common Thomistic path, but returns to it in his later Manualc (Lyons, 1681), I, 218. Surprisingly, it has been abandoned more recently by the Dominican Father Kors.

19 Cf. St. Thomas, De veritate, q. 24, a. 12, ad 2um; De malo, q. 4, a. 2 et q. 4, a.2.

will away from God as our ultimate supernatural end, and jndirecdy also from God as our ultimate natural end, for every sin against our final supernatural end is, indirectly, a sin against the natural law, which ordains that we obey God in whatever He commands. Since the will sets all the other faculties in action, if it turns from God toward evil, all the other faculties will suffer too, for they will not possess fully the inclination to virtue that would be theirs in a purely natural state.

That this doctrine is undoubtedly St. Thomas' very own we can conclude from what he teaches on the necessity of grace both to love God, the author of our nature, above all things and to keep the natural law. The holy doctor first says that "man, by his natural powers alone, can love God more than himself and above all things." 20 Then, after recalling the principle that every creature is naturally inclined to love God, as the author of its nature, more than itself, he adds that in the state of corrupt nature man cannot do so. As a result of the corruption of his nature, his will, unless healed by the grace of God, will tend toward its own private good. 21 Against this egoism we must be ever at war.

For die same reason man in the state of fallen nature cannot keep the whole natural law. 2 - Fallen nature gets back to

20 la Ilae, q. 109, a.3: "On the contrary, as some maintain, man was first made with only natural endowments; and in this state it is manifest that he loved God to some extent. But he did not love God equally with himself, or less than himself, otherwise he would have sinned. Therefore he loved God above himself. Therefore man, by his natural powers alone, can love God more than himself and above all things." In this text, it is true, St. Thomas seems to have intended the expression "ex solis naluralibus" to mean what it meant to earlier theologians, that is, that Adam was created in the state of integrity before receiving sanctifying grace.

27 o THE LOVE OF GOD its normal state only by habitual grace which has the function of healing {gratia sanans), as well as of restoring it to supernatural life {gratia elevans).

In many other places St. Thomas speaks in the same way, notably when he describes the wounds resulting from original sin. They are not merely the privation of a gratuitous gift: "Malice is not to be taken here as a sin, but as a certain proneness to evil, according to the words of Gen. 8:21: 'Man's senses are prone to evil from his youth.' " 23 The wound that Venerable Bede calls "weakness" is opposed to the virtue of fortitude. 24 Likewise the one called "concupiscence" is not concupiscence in so far as it is natural to man "but in so far as it goes beyond the bounds of reason." 25

This is plainly a question not only of the wounds caused by our personal sins, but also of those that come from original sin 26 and continue to exist even after baptism, although they are then in process of healing. 27 St. Thomas speaks in the same way in other places in his works. 28 He even sees in the disorder of concupiscence and the weakness for good which we find in humanity a rather probable sign of original sin.

This doctrine seems to echo both the Gospels and the Epistles of St. Paul, where the Apostle treats the question of the "old man" and the necessity of "putting on the new man." 29

28 la Ilae, q.91, a. 6; q.82, a.i, ad ium; q.83, a. 1-3; q.i09, a. 2, ad 311m. II Sent., d.30, q.i, a.i, ad 311m; De malo, q.2, a. 11; q.4, a.i, ad 1411m; q.4, a. 2, c; q.5, a.i, ad 4um, ad ioum, ad 1311m; q.5, a.2, ad ium; De peritale, q.24, a.12, ad 2um; in Ep. ad Rom., vi, 6; vii, 23; ad Ephes., iv, 22; ad Col., iii, 9. Cf. also the Tabula aurea under the words fomes, infectio, peccatum, 107, 283, 319, 329, 333. 342- Gratia, 2, 120, til, 127, 177.

We meet it again in the well known pages of The Imitation of Christ 30 where the author treats "Of the Different Motions of Nature and Grace" and "Of the Corruption of Nature and of the Efficacy of Grace."

The saints, enlightened by the gift of knowledge in regard to human misery, generally speak thus. And the same is true not only of those who, like St. Augustine, have written against the Pelagians and other deniers of original sin, but even of those who, like St. Alphonsus Liguori, have combated seventeenth-century Jansenism. St. Alphonsus expressly says: "In man's present state, concupiscence impels more strongly to sin than it would have done in the state of perfect nature." — "In the state of fallen nature the miseries of man are much graver than diey would have been in the state of perfect nature." 31

The natural sense of certain passages of the Church's official teaching seems to come to the same thing. To verify this we have only to examine what is said about the wounds of our fallen nature. The enfeeblement and attenuation, though not the ruin, of the will, the fomes peccati, and finally the condemnations of naturalism and its different forms, nationalism and liberalism. 32

Naturalism itself gives confirmation to this view by feeling impelled to deny the existence of the wounds of original sin, as well as the reason for mortification and the spirit of sacrifice.

81 Sl Alphonsus Liguori, Historia hacrcsum, Confutatio XII (ed. Walter, 1903), p. 4584, nos. 5, 14, 16.

82 Cf. Denzinger, 10th ed., nos. 174, 181, 198, 788, 793, 1275, 1616, 1627, J634 ff, 1643.

Our healing begins with baptism, which lessens our concupiscence, proneness to evil, and weakness for good. 33 But this healing is never quite complete in this world. As the Council of Trent 34 says, in quoting St. Paul: " 'Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall' (ICor. 10: 12). You must 'work out your salvation with fear and trembling' (Phil. 2: 12), in labor, in watching, in almsgiving, in prayer and oblations, in fasting and in chastity. You must have a holy fear, knowing well that, regenerated in the hope but not in the possession of glory, the battle is against the world, the flesh, and the devil; and victory is possible only by conforming to the grace of God, according to the words of St. Paul: 'If you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the flesh, you will live.' " (Rom. 8: 13.) Our healing will near its completion in this life only after earnest mortification, accompanied by the passive purifications of the senses and the spirit. In other words, as the lives of the saints show, it will come about only in the unitive way.

To reach that, we must put into practice what St. Paul says: "Therefore, if you be risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God. Mind the things that are above, not the things that are upon the earth. For you are dead; and your life is hid with

Christ in God. When Christ shall appear, who is your life, then you also shall appear with Him in glory. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth: fornication, uncleanness . . . anger, indignation. . . . Lie not one to another; stripping yourselves of the old man with his deeds, and putting on the new, him who is being renewed unto knowledge according to the image of Him that created him. . . . Put ye on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, the bowels of mercy, benignity, humility, modesty, patience: bearing with one another and forgiving one another. . . . But above all these things have charity, which is the bond of perfection." 35 In the same spirit, the great Apostle invites the Ephesians to "put on the new man, who according to God is created in justice and holiness of truth." 36

Now we can see how the infused moral virtues are of an infinitely higher order than the acquired moral virtues as described by the great pagan moralists. 37 We can conceive, too, what they must become in a purified soul, virtutes purgati animi. ss And we have an explanation why the threefold concupiscence of the eyes, of the flesh, and of pride finds a perfect remedy only in the diree evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience; 39 and why every Christian ought to have the spirit of the counsels, even though the circumstances of his life do not allow him to practice them effectively. Lastly, we understand the true greatness of the great commandment: "Thou shalt love die Lord thy God with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul and with all thy strength and with all thy mind." And we are no longer

astonished at the words of St. Augustine: "Two loves have built two cities: the love of self unto contempt of God, has built an earthly city; the love of God unto contempt of self, the City of God." 40 Contempt of self is contempt for the seeds of death existing in us, contempt for all that can separate us from God and our neighbor; it is love of self as we ought to love ourselves in order to glorify God. To destroy our egoism and all its mean little ways, we ought to love ourselves in an incomparably higher and deeper fashion, we ought to love ourselves for God, desiring to see Him as He sees Himself that we may give Him eternal glory. Then the perfect victory of Christ over sin and death will be realized in us. Our wounds will really heal. And supernatural life will so penetrate, elevate, and fortify our whole being as to fix the kingdom of God in us firmly, fully, and forever.