Thought for the Day – 22 March – Meditations with Antonio Cardinal Bacci (1881-1971)
Sin
“In that we prefer our own wayward whims to the law of God, sin is an abuse of liberty.
It is a revolt against right reason, the dictates of which, we refuse to obey.
It is an offence against our Creator and Redeemer, whose commandments we despise and whose redeeming grace, we reject by our actions.
It is moreover, an act of supreme folly, for it extinguishes, not only the supernatural splendour of grace but, also, the natural light of reason.
Through sin, man is brutalised and experiences in himself, as his first punishment, the confusion of his whole being.
In practice, the sinner denies God, Who has created and redeemed him.
He upsets the natural order of things and is violently separated from the source of all truth, beauty and goodness. As a result, he experiences, in himself, the hell which he has constructed with his own hands – a hell of emptiness, disgust and remorse.
Unless the helping hand of God reaches out to rescue him from the abyss, all this is simply a bitter foretaste of eternal despair.
God, as St Augustine has written, has ordained from all eternity, that every dissolute soul will be it’s own punishment.
For the sinner, hell begins on this earth! There can be no peace for the wicked.
When we realise, the gravity, stupidity and dire consequences of sin, it seems impossible, that a rational being, enlightened and enriched by divine grace, should continue to sin.
Nevertheless, sad experience teaches us that the lives of individuals, families and human society in general, are often distorted by this evil, which is the root of all other evils.”
AnaStpaul 