Passion Sunday

[Stone]

Passion Sunday: The Obdurate Sinner

by Bishop Ehrler, 1891

God, in creating us to His own image and likeness, has given us an immeasurable, almost infinite, scope for the cultivation and development of our souls. Our will, especially, possesses capabilities that can elevate us to the highest degree of perfection, and debase us into the most profound abyss of vice. By the assistance of God's grace, it is ours to decide so firmly and unalterably on the side of virtue that we rarely falter in its practice; but we may also wander so far away from God, and lose ourselves in sin, that we appear to be irredeemably lost to Him and to His holy kingdom.

Today's Gospel refers to this latter state--obduracy in sin. "Which of you shall convince me of sin?" said our Lord Jesus to the Jews, a short time before His crucifixion: "I seek not my own glory, but, of my Father. It is my Father that glorifieth me, of whom you say that He is your God." They could not answer Him; and again he said to them: "Abraham, your father, rejoiced that he might see my day; He saw it and was glad. Amen, Amen, I say unto you, before Abraham was made, I am." But the unbelieving descendants of Abraham took up stones to cast at Him. And "Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple." The downfall of the Jewish nation was sealed by their hardness of heart.

Of obdurate sinners, the Inspired Writer declares: "They leave the right way, and walk by dark ways: they are glad when they have done evil, and rejoice in most wicked things." (Prov. 2: 13, 14.) In all ages, there have been such men, who never arose after they once fell. All the admonitions and reproaches of their conscience are in vain; all the exhortations of the Church to penance, and amendment of life are fruitless; all God's threats fall ineffectually upon hearts enclosed, as it were, in a coat of mail. The happiness the Lord sends them, in order to touch them by His benefits, makes them frivolous and misfortunes, instead of converting, embitter them. Without prayer, or contrition for their crimes, without the fear of God or the use of the holy Sacraments, they go through life like beasts, given up entirely to the lusts of the flesh.

That you may not be as these abandoned sinners, that you may not imitate the hard-hearted Jews, but listen with fruit to the admonitions of holy Church calling you at this solemn time to fasting and repentance, I will explain to you today,


I. The causes of obduracy in sin

I. To sin is easy. Numberless are the dangers and attractions to evil, which surround us on all sides. We carry the inflammable material of the passions constantly within our bosoms, and it needs, at times, but a tiny spark of temptation, to cause them to blaze up into a raging and destructive fire. At first, however, sin, especially sensual sin, creates a loathing and abhorrence in a hitherto innocent soul. At the opening of a vicious life, there arises in the sinner a longing to be freed from the gross and leprous weight of increasing sin. He is ready to cry out with the royal penitent of old: "My iniquities are gone over my head: and as a heavy burden are become heavy upon me. I am become miserable, and am bowed down even to the end." (Ps. 37 : 4, 6.) But if he goes on groveling in habitual sin, if he continues turning a deaf ear to the holy inspirations of divine grace, he grows accustomed, by degrees, to his terrible state; and, sinking lower and lower in crime, he ends by becoming utterly obdurate and callous in evil; insensible, deaf, and dead to the motions of the better part of his soul. That which one sin is unable to accomplish, is effected by a longer chain of evil, and a continued habit of wrong-doing.

1. Look into your own hearts, my brethren, and realize there the sad truth of my words! When we were little innocent children, how disturbed we were over the most trifling sin! A rash jest, an unbecoming word, the mere sight of evil terrified us then! Would, alas! that our delicacy of conscience, our prudent tenderness and anxiety of soul had increased with our years! Oft repeated sins have made us familiar with evil, and consequently indifferent to it! "The wicked man when he is come into the depths of sin, contemneth; but ignominy and reproach follow him." (Prov. 18 : 3.) "Thy heart shall utter perverse things; and thou shalt be as one sleeping in the midst of the sea, and as a pilot fast asleep when the stern is lost." (Prov. 23: 34.) It is on this account that St. Chrysostom says: "The evil of sin is two-fold:--first, the injury it inflicts on the soul; and secondly, the tendency it engenders to always become worse." Habitual sin, like the octopus, grasps its victim firmly with its myriad arms, and rarely releases him until he has breathed his last.

Understand me, my dear Christians, God is not wanting to the sinner. Divine grace surrounds, and presses even the most hardened to repentance. At one time, it speaks to the unjust man in soft, mild words; again, it warns and threatens him by sufferings and severe afflictions.

2. But the struggle against evil demands labor and energy. Even the most faithful servants of God need to combat continually the insidious and powerful enemy of their souls. For the habitual sinner, therefore, the warfare is doubly desperate. Darling inclinations must be renounced; evil habits stripped off, which cling as close as the fabled shirt of fire. That which has been passionately loved and desired, must be thoroughly detested and abandoned; sinful companions must be given up, after the intimate intercourse of many years; restitution must be made of ill-gotten goods; lies and calumnies against one's neighbor must be contradicted; and long-standing feuds and enmities brought to a happy end. All this involves self-sacrifice, self-denial, humiliation, and a thousand bitter battles with proud, corrupt nature. One's whole way of life must be completely changed. And this is why our Lord tells us that the Angels of heaven rejoice more over the conversion of one sinner than of ninety-nine just who need not penance.

The struggle for conversion is such a long and tremendous one. The pleasures of sin are ever ready to allure the man whom divine grace moves to escape the toils. Satan whispers with pleading tenderness in his ear: "How can you ever renounce that charming companion? How can you restore that money, those precious goods, that valuable property, to their rightful owner? You will leave yourself and your family poor and dishonored. And as to reconciling yourself to that hateful enemy, or taking back the lies you have uttered against so-and-so,--such humiliations are not to be thought of!" If the sinner consent to these suggestions of the evil one, all hope of a change for the better usually dies out. He goes on heaping sin upon sin, scoffing at every admonition of God and of His grace. He sinks rapidly from one abyss of vice into another, until he falls at last into the bottomless pit of obduracy, impenitence, and eternal perdition. In vain, at the hour of death, the priest has been summoned--in vain, the consolations of our holy religion have been offered to the dying sinner. By stratagem or gentle force, the good friends and relatives have sought to secure the holy Sacraments for the departing soul--but, to the bitter end, the obdurate man rejects the grace of God. As Holy Writ declares: "The sinner hath been caught in the works of his own hands; the wicked shall be turned into hell, all the nations that forget God." (Ps. 9: 18.) "The pride of them that hate thee ascends continually." (Ps. 73: 23.) "Thou hast bruised them, and they have refused to receive correction; they have made their faces harder than a rock, and they have refused to return." (Jer. 5: 3.)

3. It is the doctrine of our holy Church that, without the grace of God, we can do nothing good. "Not that we are sufficient to think anything of ourselves, as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God." (2 Cor. 3:5.) "God worketh in you both to will and to accomplish according to His good-will." (Phil. 2 : 13.) You know also that the ordinary grace of God, humanly speaking, does not suffice for the overcoming of very great temptations or powerful obstacles. At such moments, we need a stronger and more efficacious grace. What the sun is to the life of the earth, that the grace of God is to the soul. The blessed beams of heaven are the strength of our lives; penetrating our hearts; they rouse therein every good impulse, and nourish and ripen them to maturity. Grace is a free gift of God. It is given according to His good pleasure, as St. Paul says; and that stronger and more powerful grace which God owes in no way to man, is simply the effect of his pre-eminent love and special predilection.

4. But will Almighty God continue to offer this extraordinary grace to the man who despises even ordinary inspirations? No: He will either, as a punishment, withdraw His grace completely from him; or give him merely that insufficient grace by which he can not overcome greater temptations and dangers. Finally, that condition of soul will set in, of which the holy Scripture says: "God Himself will harden the heart of a man." He takes from his reason the light of knowledge, so that he can no longer see nor understand anything conducive to salvation, and He deprives his will of the power of discerning correctly the good, and striving to do it. In His wrath, he tears asunder the bonds which unite Him to that man, and lets him live on undisturbed in the depths of his sins. "They have mouths and speak not; they have eyes and see not; they have ears and hear not." (Ps. 113: 5, 6.) "God," says St. Augustine, " does not harden the sinner as to malice, but He justly refuses to grant him mercy."

Look at King Pharaoh, in whom this unhappy condition was realized. In his pride, he opposed God's will and would not allow the people of Israel to go forth. Desiring to soften his hard heart, God permitted wonderful and hitherto unheard-of miracles to happen in his presence. But Pharaoh would not yield to grace. "Who is the Lord," he asked of Moses, "that I should hear his voice and let Israel go? I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go." Thereupon, the Lord said to Moses, "I have hardened his heart and the heart of his servant." (10 : 1.) Pharaoh remained deaf to all the divine admonitions, and sank with his hosts into the Red sea. The magician Elymas withstood the grace of God which was offered him in the sermons and discourses of St. Paul, and he endeavored to hinder the governor of Paphos from believing. Then St. Paul said to him, "O, thou, full of all guile and of all deceit, son of the devil, enemy of all justice, thou dost not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord. And now, behold the hand of the Lord upon thee, and thou shalt be blind, not seeing the sun for a time. And immediately there fell on him a mist and a darkness, and going about, he sought some one to lead him by the hand." (Acts 13 : 10, 11.) Corporeal blindness was the visible sign of that wretched man's interior or spiritual darkness. "He hath blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts: that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted and I should heal them." (John 12 : 40.)


II. The lessons we should draw from it for our own instruction.

II. What lessons should we draw from these considerations upon the obdurate sinner? We shall find them fraught with certain holy admonitions for our own personal instruction.

1. The first is, to fly from the first approach of sin; and if you have already sinned, to hasten with all possible speed to reconcile yourself with the Lord your God, so that no sinful habit may take root within you!

Never dally with evil; it is dangerous sport to play with fire or with deadly weapons. You may be maimed or disfigured for life, even if you are not instantly killed. Would you make a pet of a rattlesnake, or carry a tarantula around in your bosom? Act toward the soul as you do toward the body. Do not wait until the fire has scorched you or the revolver has been discharged. Do not suffer the snake to crawl around your feet. "Flee from sin as from the face of a serpent." (Ecclus. 21 : 2.) Remedies taken in the beginning are always the best and most salutary. One sin begets another. The brood of Satan is a prolific one. As in a chain, link is joined to link, so the fetters of hell, sin by sin, bind the unhappy sinner a captive for all eternity! St. Augustine says: "As, when a stone is thrown upon the mirror-like surface of the sea, at first only one circle appears, then two; the second forms a third and so on, up to the very brim of the water, in like manner, will each sin become the occasion of a greater one to the hardened sinner; he falls from one sin into another, until, at length, it is almost impossible for him to cease sinning."

2. He who does not tremble at the first step on the road to vice, and does not at once make efforts to return to his outraged Lord and God, by means of the Sacrament of Penance, will soon sink more and more hopelessly into the abyss of vice and crime. Behold the avalanche of the Alps rolling menacingly and destructively down into the smiling valleys! The most trifling movement, the dropping of a little stone, yes, often merely the gentle flight of a bird are sufficient to cause the downfall of that massive weight of ice. In the beginning, it was only a handful of snow; but little by little, the ice and snow began to accumulate and grow in volume, until at last, the avalanche, rushing from its dizzy height, breaks down trees like straws, and sweeping along, like a torrent, overturns into the abyss houses and entire villages. A single flake of snow is the cause of all this ruin and widespread destruction! In like manner a single wrong step often suffices to ruin the soul of a man eternally. The theft of a few pennies has aroused the cupidity of the highway robber. A thought of revenge not subdued and overcome in the outset, has produced murder. An impure desire not promptly banished has plunged its victim into the slough of licentiousness. Is not Judas, the traitor, a sorrowful example of this terrible truth ?" He loved money," says the Evangelist. From the love of money originated avarice and covetousness; from these, robbery, then betrayal of his Lord and Master, which ended in suicide and his eternal reprobation!

Do we imagine it impossible for us to fall so low? Do we think that we never could sink as others have done, into such an abyss of ruin? Alas! like our neighbors, whose fall we lament or censure, perhaps--we bear within us, weak, unsteady, and naturally corrupt hearts. The same dreadful abyss is at our feet, its gloomy depths only veiled from us by the screen of the divine permission. The same spiritual dangers beset us that have ship-wrecked others. The same fire of lust rages within our veins. We are not holier than King David, wiser than Solomon, nor stronger than St. Peter. We are not as fervent as thousands of uncanonized saints and servants of God who have fallen into sin and vice through their imprudence and self-confidence. Nothing but vigilance and flight, prompt conversion and amendment of life after the first fall, will save us and keep us from the abyss of ruin, as St. Paul says:--" Let him that thinketh himself to stand, take heed lest he fall." (1 Cor. 10: 12.) "Watch ye and pray that ye enter not into temptation. The spirit, indeed, is willing, but the flesh is weak." (Matt. 26: 41.)

3. It certainly requires a hard struggle for one who has been a slave to sin for a long time to free himself from the wicked bondage of bad habits, and become reconciled with his Lord and God. Great labor and much moral courage are demanded, after a long period of impenitence, to descend into the depths of one's conscience, and scrutinize and unravel the sins of years or of a life-time. It is a great tax on a proud man not only to confess his hidden secret sins and vices in the holy tribunal, but, furthermore, to extinguish by years of penance and satisfaction the evil consequences of those sins. It is a battle so difficult and fierce that none but an heroic soul, a heart filled with the love of God and supported by His grace, can come forth victorious from the struggle. But the combat is necessary, nay, most indispensable. Does not everything that is good in this life cost us labor and pain? Has not our Lord said: "The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away?" (Matt. 11: 12.) And if the battle is fierce and long-continued, we have no one to blame for it but ourselves. Whoever has feasted upon the pleasures of sin, who has drunk in iniquity like water, must do penance for it, by the pains of the conflict, and he who has committed an injustice during his life must make good his error, with all his might; or he will never obtain pardon here, or eternal bliss hereafter. Even if the sinner continue in his evil courses, his sins will cause him woe and suffering to which the warfare in the cause of virtue can not be compared. The latter is child's play contrasted with that which vice necessarily begets in man's heart. Outwardly, the sinner may appear prosperous, happy, and peaceful; but if you could penetrate to the interior of that guilty soul, and there behold the stings of conscience which scourge it like cruel lashes;--if you could hear the interior groans of despair which issue therefrom in moments of peril or suffering, or in the quiet watches of a sleepless night, you could cheerfully embrace all the pains and labors of the penitential warfare, sooner than live in sin and endure the agonizing torments of Satan's bondage. Penance has its sweetness and its consolation, no matter how bitter the work of self-denial may appear at first to the newly-converted soul. The grace of God softens all austerities, and graciously conducts us to the grandest and most glorious victory. But the struggles of the vicious man will become hourly more horrible and will be but the commencement of eternal misery.

4. To these admonitions, I will add another; do not oppose a single inspiration of grace, for thereby you withstand your Lord and God, and incite him to pour forth upon you the vials of his wrath. Dallying with sin and evil is dangerous sport; but to trifle with God and His grace, His love, and His justice, would be a sacrilege, that must invariably end in ruin. Grace is offered to us according to a certain measure, and that measure none save our Lord Himself can determine. "Lo! I stand at the door and knock," He says of Himself; repulsed and despised, He repeats again and again His calls to salvation. He goes out like the householder of the Gospel, up to the eleventh hour, inviting laborers into His vineyard. But a day will come when he will cease to call, cease to knock at the door of our hearts. These words of mine, to-day, dear brethren, may be your last chance of grace. Will you thrust from you this golden opportunity of salvation? Shall we reply to him who calls us, perhaps, for the last time: "Come again, and then, possibly, I may listen to you?" God's love to us is great, infinitely great, but His wrath is infinite as well, and He who despises and contemns His love, will certainly feel His anger!

Free-will may be to man either a wonderful blessing or a terrible curse. Bound by the fetters of an unchangeable and urgent necessity all lesser creatures obey the will of God; man alone can say to this all-powerful Sovereign of heaven and earth: "Non serviam--I will not serve Thee!" He alone can oppose His commands. To him, it is given of his own free choice either, like a brilliant heavenly star to revolve forever around its true center, the eternal Sun of Justice, or to leave the appointed orbit, and like a fiery comet rush afar off from its Creator into eternal destruction. God has given us this capability of exercising free-will for His greater glory and our own great reward, making us thereby as kings resembling Himself. And do we dare as His chosen children, as the sons of a heavenly Lord and Master, to do what the meanest slave in our household would not undertake to do? The love of God, His gratuitous, undeserved love, would be, in that case, our utter reprobation and ruin, inevitably precipitating us a thousand fathoms deep into the abyss of hell! But if we follow joyfully the calls of grace with our free-will, then we shall mount the celestial ladder to the infinite heights of eternal glory.

In these holy days, when in the world of nature, Spring struggles with winter; and, in the world of grace, thousands of the faithful battle with the powers of sin and evil in their own hearts, let us, if we have hitherto been insensible and dead to God and His kingdom, begin this warfare for the salvation of our souls. Let us drive out all sin from our hearts by a worthy reception of the Sacrament of Penance, that Jesus may not hide Himself or flee away from us. May the sunlight of His mercy shine forth warmly and benignly in the depths of our souls, and there awaken by true penance and amendment of life, the germs, blossoms, and fruits of all the Christian virtues! Amen.