Chapter II. Charity and Venial Sin
Having discussed why and how charity can increase, having explained that acts of charity, although unable directly to produce an increase of the virtue, do merit it and even physically dispose our will to receive it, we then took up the question of imperfect acts of charity. These, we said, are meritorious, even though they do not immediately obtain the increase of charity they merit.
The next subject to be considered is the effect of venial sin upon charity. The question whether charity is directly and intrinsically impaired by venial sin, just as it is entirely destroyed by mortal sin, concerns habitual charity, the virtue itself, not its acts. These certainly can become less fervent.
St. Thomas1 and other theologians explain that habitual charity is not lessened intrinsically and directly but only indirecdy by venial sin; for, being a spiritual fire, charity by nature mounts upward as long as it keeps burning.
Venial sin cannot directly subtract from charity because venial sin is a disorder relative not to our last end, the object of charity, but only to the means to our end; it causes no direct loss, therefore, to the virtue by which we love God, our ultimate end, above all things. A sick man longs for health no less because he fails to keep faithfully to his diet. A scholar who makes an error in drawing deductions from an evident principle experiences no lessening of certitude in regard to the principle itself.
If God punished venial sin by a decrease of charity, the punishment would in a sense be graver than the offense, since venial sin does not turn us away from our last end, but a decrease of charity would rob us of strength to reach it.
This is a consoling point of doctrine, since it follows that, if anyone has had great charity and then afterward allowed himself to become lukewarm without, however, falling into mortal sin, he does not go back to being a beginner again. He keeps his place as a proficient, even if his growth has stopped, and when he has done penance he should take up his spiritual life where he left off.2
In two ways the virtue of charity is, nevertheless, indirectly injured by venial sin. First, venial sin, at the time when committed, prevents the application of charity, which cannot order to God the matter of inordinate acts of this kind. Moreover, if a just man has a habitual affection for any venial sin, the fervor of his charity becomes habitually weakened; that is, the infused virtue, without suffering any direct loss in itself, loses its radiant liberty of action. Tie up a man's arms for some time, and they will not lose their strength but they will lose their liberty of action. Let the light of a lantern burn as brightly as ever; but if the glass enclosing it gets dirtier and dirtier, the lantern will give less and less light. A spring may give as much water as before, but when it becomes smothered with weeds, its clear jet is dissipated and muddied.
The evil inclinations engendered by repeated venial sins make the exercise of love for God more difficult, merit as
CHARITY AND VENIAL SIN 383 punishment the withholding of certain actual graces, and even serve to dispose a man for mortal sin. Love of pleasure, for example, although at first a venial sin, leads to grave falls.
Repeated sins of vanity, pride, jealousy, and sloth bind, as it were, die infused virtues and gifts of the Holy Ghost. Father Lallemant remarks 3 that it seems astonishing that so many religious who have lived in the state of grace for forty or fifty years, said Mass daily, and followed all the exercises of the religious life, and consequently have the gifts of the Holy Ghost to a physically high degree, should yet make so few acts of the gifts and reach no intimacy with God. We need not be surprised, he adds; venial sins committed in great number, eagerness for recognition and praise and for whatever else flatters self-love, little jealousies and sharp words, and love of ease, have all kept the infused virtues and the gifts in bondage, and barred the actual graces necessary to produce their acts.
The Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena 4 gives us a good account of the way charity cools in many souls:
Some there are who have become faithful servants, serving me with fidelity, without servile fear of punishment, but rather with love. This very love, however, if they serve me with a view to their own profit, or the delight and pleasure which they find in me, is imperfect. Dost thou know what proves the imperfect character of this love? The withdrawal o£ the consolations which they found in me, and the insufficiency and short duration of their love for their neighbour, which grows weak by degrees and oftimes disappears.
Towards me their love grows weak when, on occasion, in order to exercise them in virtue and raise them above their imperfection,
8 Cf. Lallemant, Spiritual Doctrine, ed. McDougall (Westminster, Md.: Newman Book Shop, 1946), IV Principle, chap. 3, art. 3. * Chap. 60.
I withdraw from their minds my consolation and allow them to fall into battles and perplexities. 5 This I do so that, coming to perfect self-knowledge, they may know that of themselves they are nothing and have no grace, and, accordingly in time of battle fly to me as their benefactor, seeking me alone, with true humility, for which purpose I treat them thus, withdrawing from them consolation indeed, but not grace. At such a time these weak ones . . . sometimes abandon, under colour of virtue, many of their exercises, saying to themselves, This labour does not profit me. . . . This happens because their love was originally impure, for they gave to their neighbour the same imperfect love which they gave to me, that is to say, a love based only on desire for their own advantage.
For those who desire eternal life, a pure love, prescinding from themselves, is necessary, for it is not enough for eternal life to fly sin from fear of punishment, or to embrace virtue from the motive of one's own advantage. Sin should be abandoned because it is displeasing to me, and virtue should be loved for my sake.
The bonds which the soul has made for itself must be cut away, for a single thread, as long as it remains unbroken, is enough to keep it from taking wing. Many such bonds hold us back without our clearly realizing it. To break them we must generously practice both exterior and interior mortification. We need, too, passive purification of the senses and the spirit so that, in the light of the gifts of understanding and knowledge, we may become conscious of the depth of our misery and the infinite greatness of God that we may be delivered from all our flaws and those defects in the inmost core of our faculties which hold back our upreaching faith, hope, and love.
6 Here we have an excellent explanation of the passive purifications, to be dUcussed later at greater length under the guidance of St. John of the Cross.
CHARITY AND VENIAL SIN 385 If the soul allows itself to be purified, the Holy Ghost will not fail to enlighten it more and more according to the degree of its habitual docility, by leading it on to a greater and greater generosity. St. John of the Cross tells us: "Hence the more the soul dispossesses the memory of forms and things which may be recalled by it, which are not God, the more will it set its memory upon God, and the emptier will its memory become, so diat it may hope for Him who shall fill it." 6 St. Catherine of Siena 7 and all the great spiritual writers speak in the same way.
In heaven, faith gives way to vision, and hope to possession ; but charity remains for all eternity. The blessed can never lose it, because the immediate vision of infinite Goodness will make mortal and venial sin absolutely impossible; nothing can anymore destroy charity, or lessen it in any way.
It is impossible for anyone seeing the divine essence, to wish not to see it. . . . The vision of the divine essence fills the soul with all good things, since it unites it to the source of all goodness; hence it is written (Ps. 16: 15) : "I shall be satisfied when Thy glory shall appear"; and (Wisd. 7:11) : "All good things came to me together with her," i.e., with the contemplation of wisdom. In like manner neither has it any inconvenience attached to it: because it is written of the contemplation of wisdom (Wisd. 8: 16) : "Her conversation hath no bitterness, nor her company any tediousness." It is thus evident that the happy man cannot forsake happiness of his own accord [i.e., he cannot turn from God seen face to face, or ever love Him less]. Moreover, neither can he lose happiness, through God taking it away from him. Because, since the withdrawal of happiness is a punishment, it cannot be inflicted by God, the just Judge, except for some fault; and he that sees God cannot fall into a fault,
since the rectitude of the will, of necessity, results from that vision. 8
The summit of the life of charity is a love of divine friendship without end. To give us an idea of its duration, it is not enough to say that it will last for always, or to multiply millions of years by millions more; its span lies far beyond every multiplication of hours, or years, or centuries, beyond all time, however long we may imagine it, even above angelic time, measured by the succession of angelic thought. Charity, like die beatific vision, must be measured by eternity itself, the measure of the being of God, of His ever immutable thought and uncreated love. Even if time had no beginning and no end, it would not be at all like eternity, for time is always flying, and past, present, and future follow one after the other. Eternity is absolutely immutable, without any succession; it is a nunc stans, a changeless now and not a nunc fluens, a changing now, a present following on no past, preceding no future, an unmoving not a fugitive moment, an endless dawn encompassing perfectly and all at once the interminable life of God, without beginning or end. We are told that musical geniuses hear the melodies they compose all at once, just as great philosophers have a synthesis of their subject that is like a single glance. These serve as dim analogies of the immediate vision of God and the love flowing from it; both will be in the most exact sense of the term life eternal, measured as God's own. 9 So great a goal is worth much suffering, demands deep purification, and has as its normal prelude in this world charity and contemplation.
Footnotes
Chapter 15 of 37