Not in the passion of lust like the gentiles who know not God

(Epistle of Sunday. 1 Thess. iv. 1, 7)

They are deluded who say that sins of impurity are not a great evil. Immersed in their filth, like the sow wallowing in the mire. (2 Pet. ii. 22), they do not see the malice of their actions and, therefore, neither feel nor abhor the stench of their impurities, which excite disgust and horror in all others. Can you, who say that the vice of impurity is but a small evil—can you, I ask, deny that it is a mortal sin? If you deny it, you are a heretic; for as St. Paul says: Do not err. Neither fornicators, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, etc., shall possess the kingdom of God. (1 Cor. vi. 9). It is a mortal sin; it cannot, then, be a small evil. It is more sinful than theft, or detraction, or the violation of the fast. How then can you say that it is not a great evil? Perhaps mortal sin appears to you to be a small evil? Is it a small evil to despise the grace of God, to turn your back upon Him, and to lose His friendship for a transitory, beastly pleasure?

St. Thomas teaches that mortal sin, because it is an insult offered to an Infinite God, contains a certain infinitude of malice. "A sin committed against God has a certain infinitude, on account of the infinitude of the Divine Majesty." Is mortal sin a small evil? It is so great an evil that if all the Angels and all the Saints, the Apostles, Martyrs, and even the Mother of God, offered all their merits to atone for a single mortal sin, the oblation would not be sufficient. No; for that atonement or satisfaction would be finite; but the debt contracted by mortal sin is infinite, on account of the infinite majesty of God which has been offended. The hatred which God bears to sins against purity is great beyond measure. If a lady find her plate soiled she is disgusted, and cannot eat. Now, with what disgust and indignation must God, Who is purity itself, behold the filthy impurities by which His law is violated? He loves purity with an infinite love; and consequently He has an infinite hatred for the sensuality which the lewd, voluptuous man calls a small evil. Even the devils who held a high rank in Heaven before their fall, disdain to tempt men to sins of the flesh.

St. Thomas says that Lucifer, who is supposed to have been the devil that tempted Jesus Christ in the desert, tempted Him to commit other sins, but scorned to tempt Him to offend against chastity. Is this sin a small evil? Is it, then, a small evil to see a man endowed with a rational soul, and enriched with so many Divine graces, bring himself by the sin of impurity to the level of a brute? "Fornication and sensuality," says St. Jerome, "pervert the understanding, and change men into brute beasts." In the voluptuous and unchaste are literally verified the words of David: And man, when he was in honour, did not understand: he is compared to senseless beasts, and is become like to them. (Ps. xlviii. 13). St. Jerome says that there is nothing more vile or degrading than to allow oneself to be conquered by the flesh. Is it a small evil to forget God, and to banish Him from the soul, for the sake of giving the body a vile satisfaction, of which, when it is ended, you feel ashamed? Of this the Lord complains by the Prophet Ezechiel: Then saith the Lord God: Because Thou hast forgotten me, and hast cast me off behind thy back. (Ezech. xxiii. 35). St. Thomas says, that by every vice, but particularly by the vice of impurity, men are removed far from God.

Moreover, sins of impurity, on account of their great number, are an immense evil. A blasphemer does not always blaspheme, but only when he is drunk or provoked to anger. The assassin, whose very trade is to murder, does not commit more than eight or ten homicides. But the unchaste are guilty of an unceasing torrent of sins, by thoughts, by words, by looks, by complacencies, and by touches; so that when they go to Confession, they find it impossible to tell the number of sins they have committed against purity. Even in their sleep the devil represents to them obscene objects, that, on awakening, they may take delight in them; and because they are made the slaves of the enemy, they obey and consent to his suggestions; for it is easy to contract a habit of this sin. To other sins, such as blasphemy, detraction, and murder, men are not prone; but to this vice nature itself inclines them. Hence St. Thomas says that there is no sinner so ready to offend God as is the votary of lust, on every occasion that occurs to him. The sin of impurity brings in its train the sins of defamation, of theft, hatred, and of boasting of its own filthy abominations. Besides, it ordinarily involves the malice of scandal. Other sins, such as blasphemy, perjury, and murder, excite horror in those who witness them; but this sin excites and draws others, who are flesh, to commit it, or, at least, to commit it with less horror.

St. Cyprian says that the devil through impurity triumphs over the whole of man. By lust the devil triumphs over the entire man, over his body and over his soul; over his memory, filling it with the remembrance of unchaste delights, in order to make him take complacency in them; over his intellect, to make him desire occasions of committing sin; over the will, by making it love its impurities as his last end, and as if there were no God. I made, said Job, a covenant with my eyes, that I would not so much as think upon a virgin. For what part should God from above have in me? (Job xxxi. 1). Job was afraid to look at a virgin, because he knew that if he consented to a bad thought, God should have no part in him. According to St. Gregory, from impurity arises blindness of understanding, destruction, hatred of God, and despair of eternal life. St. Augustine says though the unchaste may grow old, the vice of impurity does not grow old in them. Hence St. Thomas says that there is no sin in which the devil delights so much as in this sin; because there is no other sin to which nature clings with so much tenacity. To the vice of impurity it adheres so firmly, that the appetite for carnal pleasures becomes insatiable. Will you now say that the sin of impurity is but a small evil? At the hour of death you shall not say so; every sin of that kind will then appear to you a monster of hell. Much less shall you say so before the Judgment seat of Christ Who will tell you what the Apostle has already told you: No fornicator, or unclean, hath inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. (Ephes. v. 5). The man who has lived like a brute, does not deserve to sit with the Angels.

Let us continue to pray to God to save us from this vice; if we do not, we shall lose our souls.