Fourth Wednesday in Lent.
ACTUAL SIN.
1. Having seen what Original Sin is, we come now to Actual Sin. Original Sin, we have seen, was a partial paralysis of man’s better nature, a confusion of his faculties, and a rendering him incapable of, by himself, attaining a recovery. It is a passive state of inability towards good, and of subjection to evil. Actual Sin is quite other—it consists in sinning voluntarily.
Original Sin is a hereditary condition; Actual Sin is personal. Original Sin is involuntary; Actual Sin is voluntary. Original Sin is a state; Actual Sin is an act which throws us into a state of sin.
A guilty act carries with it guilt to the soul of him who commits the act, but it may also entail a consequent state on others. For instance, a father by his vices may so corrupt his blood that his children have sickly constitutions. They inherit theconsequences, but not theguilt. This is analogous to Original Sin, the state we are in through the fault of Adam. Or, again, a father may squander an ancestral estate. His children are born in penury, and are incapable of ever recovering what their father has lost. His is the guilt, theirs the condition into which his act has thrown them.
2. Actual Sin is of various degrees of guilt; according to the state of knowledge of him who commits it, or according to the heinousness of the sin committed, or according to the amount of deliberation and wilfulness with which it is committed. Where there is complete ignorance of the nature of the act, so long as that ignorance is not voluntary, there the guilt of the act is not mortal, though the act itself may be a grave offence. So also the manner in which the will gives its consent materially aggravates or lessens the guilt of a sin. If the act be known beforehand to be forbidden, and yet the will consents to it, it violates Conscience, and the guilt is grave; but when a transgression is the result of unpremeditation, a surprise, and the will has not had time given it to act, there the guilt is slight.
And once more, there is a difference in heinousness in sins. It is wrong to strike another violently; it is worse to strike with purpose so as to permanently injure.
3. Sin is a violation of the Commandments of God, and as such is incited to either by the Devil, who is the enemy of God, or by the carnal nature which desires its own ends regardless of what conduces to the exaltation of the superior nature, or by the world, which desires to lower the general moral tone of men to a vulgar and easy level. It is therefore a dereliction from God’s Law, a turning away from God’s Order, a choosing of what is either against His Will, or not wholly in accordance with His Will. It is therefore always evil, and always deserves punishment, and always leads to suffering.
God has set before man, as the end of his existence, the attainment of perfect happiness, by complete though gradualrecovery from the effects of the Fall. Every sin is a slipping back into the condition from which we ought to strive ever to escape, if it be not, what it is in some cases, a going down into an even worse condition, by making our original sinful condition an excuse for becoming actually sinful.
4. For the avoidance of sin we need supernatural aid, and this is Divine Grace. By Baptism we are placed in the Spiritual Realm, in which we are furnished with sufficient help to enable us to resist all temptations, overcome all bad habits, discipline all inclinations till they take the direction of good in place of evil, and obtain a clear illumination of our intellect, so that we can see, and see distinctly, what is God’s Will for us. Moreover, we obtain the faculty of judging proportions, and of estimating what is near and transitory at its proper value, as also what is far off and enduring. Naturally we over-estimate what is close before us and is temporal, and hardly see at all and value what is far off and eternal, but by the gift of Divine Grace our spiritual vision is enabled to judge distances and judge values correctly.
Simple Maltese Cross