Many years ago, I had to leave a job as someone on the board
of the school where I worked was doing something immoral concerning the school.
I resigned as I could not support evil and I was asked to ignore this evil. Some
people who found out left the school-others lived in denial for years and
years. Too many Catholics tolerate evil in others because they tolerate evil in
themselves.
After resigning, (and during the process), an FSSP priest
was advising me. I shared with him that I was distressed at the fact that a
Catholic, who attended daily Mass, was doing something very wrong. How could a
person attend Mass, be confronted with the truth, and then not change? How
could a prominent board member of a Catholic school continue to receive
Communion and support while in public sin?
The answer and comfort given to me by this good priest
overlaps with something St. John Vianney states in one of his sermons. “Why is it, then, you are going to ask me,
that we assist at so many Masses and yet we are always the same? Alas, my dear
brethren, it is because we are there in body but not in spirit and that rather
our coming there completes our condemnation because of the bad dispositions
with which we assist.”
Father R. told me that the outward show of religion does nothing
for the soul. One must beg God for daily repentance. St. John Vianney states
that going to Mass and not repenting of sin actually hardens the heart.
I cannot explain, except by reflecting on St. Augustine St.
Augustine
What is also my concern is that we teach our children to go
to frequent confession. Once a month is not too much, bi-weekly is great for
adults, and for those who are pursuing perfection, once a week confession is
meritorious. Humility comes with practice, the practice of daily examination of
conscience and repentance. After a while, this can become instant, immediate.
One must allow God to pound the heart in order to make it soft and not hard.
Children can have hard hearts as well. I am meeting more and
more very young people who are trapped in cynicism, a terrible sin.
Here is St. John Vianney again:
“To wish to honor God
by lies—in other words, to want to honor Him by what will outrage Him. Oh,
abomination! To have Jesus Christ on your lips and to have Him crucified in
your heart! To join what is most holy to what is most detestable, which is the
service of the Devil! Oh, what horror! To offer to God a soul which has already
been a thousand times prostituted to the Devil! Oh, my god, how blind the
sinner is, and all the more blind in that he does not know himself nor even
want to know himself!”
“I say without fear of lying that at least half of those who
are listening to me here in this church are in that state. Yet, in fact, is it
not true that that does not touch you, but rather that you are bored and that
time hangs heavily on you?”
Sin blinds the sinner, writes St. John Vianney. Sin creates
prayers which are lies. He gives us all this prayer:
“My God, I feel myself
very much attached to my sins, and it seems to me that I do not want to ever
renounce them; give me that horror which I ought to feel for them, so that I
may abhor them, detest them, and confess them, so that I may never go back to
them.”
The end does not justify the means. All the daily actions of
our lives are the means to an end-either heaven or hell. The Cure of Ars prays
that those in sin will be tormented in order to change and come back to God.
Complacency in sin leads to eternal death.
Let us never be complacent. Never.
May I add one thing from another sermon from the Cure,
before leaving this book? He tells his people that a baby should be baptized
within 24 hours of birth. When I was born, babies were baptized no longer than
at two weeks old.
Now, I see families waiting until the babies are three or
six months before getting them baptized. If a priest is advising you to wait,
he is wrong.
Baptism make us children of God and heirs of heaven. It
breaks the tie to satan, gives sanctifying grace and the virtues of faith,
hope, and charity.
I suggest those who doubt the necessity of early baptism
read the beautiful section in the CCC
on baptism. I think that parents who put off baptizing their child do so
because they no longer believe in Original Sin. They do not believe in grace or
sanctification, or the virtues, or in becoming an heir of heaven and an adopted
child of God.
They think all children are in those states. This is not so.