Sin

When we abandon ourselves to our passions, we twine a network of thorns around our heart.

He who lives in sin adopts the habits and ways of the beast, which, being without reason, is governed by its appetites ; so man, rendering himself like the beast, loses the use of reason and yields to the movements of his carcass.

A Christian, created to the image of God, redeemed by the blood of a God ! A Christian, the child of a God, the brother of a God, the heir of a God! A Christian, the object of the complacency of the Three Divine Persons ! A Christian, whose body is the temple of the Holy Spirit . . . behold what sin dishonors ! . . .

Sin is the executioner of the good God, and the soul’s assassin. It is sin that snatches us from heaven to cast us into hell. And yet we love it ! ...

To offend the good God who has always covered us with benefits, and to please the demon who can never do us aught but harm — oh ! what folly !

The good God desires to render us happy, and we refuse to be so. We turn away from Him and give ourselves to the demon ! We fly from our friend and give ourselves to our executioner ! We waste and abuse the time which He has given us in order that we may work out our salvation ! We make war against Him with the very weapons that He gave us to battle for Him !

To understand that we are the work of a God is easy, but that the crucifixion of a God should be our work ! ! ! oh, this issomething incomprehensible !

Our Lord is like a good mother holding a naughty child in her arms. It struggles to get away, it kicks her, it bites, it scratches her, but to all this she pays no attention, knowing that if she lets go of it, the child will fall ; it cannot walk alone. . . .

Such is our Lord’s conduct towards us. . . . He endures all our bad treatment of Him ; He bears patiently with our arrogance ; He pardons all our follies and abuse of Him ; He has pity on us in spite of ourselves.

The good God is more eager to pardon a repentant sinner than a mother to snatch her child from the fire.

Picture to yourself a poor mother obliged to make the knife of the guillotine descend upon her own child’s head ; this is but a faint picture of the good God when He condemns a sinner to Hell !

Our faults are as a grain of sand beside the great mountain of the mercies of God.

The mercy of God is like an irresistible torrent sweeping away hearts in its course.

Is it not folly indeed for us to prefer Hell, when we can taste, even in this life, the joys of Heaven, by uniting ourselves to God by love ? Oh ! folly incomprehensible folly, that we can never sufficiently bewail !

I know of nothing more pitiable than these poor worldlings. They wear a mantle lined with thorns, and they cannot move without its pricking them ; while good Christians are wrapped in a mantle lined with rabbit skin.

The good Christian travels over life’s road in a beautiful triumphal chariot, drawn by angels and guided by our Lord Himself, while the poor sinner is harnessed to life’s chariot, and the demon seated therein urges him on with continued lashes.