Q: In an earlier column you mentioned that mortal sin brings great harm to the soul. My husband has not been to confession or Communion for many years because of something in his past life that he finds hard to confess. How can I help him?
First of all, we should always remember that the most powerful way of helping someone to return to the sacraments is by praying for them, preferably accompanying this prayer by penance.
If need be, we should be prepared to keep this up for many years. St Monica gives us a great example of persevering in prayer for her son Augustine.
But it is good too to be able to explain to others why mortal sin is indeed harmful and why staying in that state is even more harmful. That is, if they are willing to listen!
What can we tell someone in this situation?
Firstly, we should remind them that there are some more serious sins that the tradition of the Church has called “mortal” or “grave”, and which have as their first effect the loss of the state of grace, or divine life in the soul.
When we are baptised, we receive this divine life for the first time.
The soul is lit up with the indwelling of the three divine Persons, sharing in the very life and nature of God and becoming truly pleasing to God and capable of acquiring supernatural merit.
When we reject God’s love by a serious sin, we lose this divine life and the soul is plunged as it were into spiritual darkness or death. It is no longer spiritually alive, whence the name “mortal” sin, from the Latin word for death.
St John refers to mortal sins in his first letter: “There is sin which is deadly; I do not say that one is to pray for that. All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin which is not deadly” (1 Jn 5:16-17).
Moreover, having offended God by a grievous act, the person has separated himself or herself from the love of God and, unless they repent, they will go to Hell.
This is a frightening thought. The Catechism of the Catholic Church is very clear on it: “To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God’s merciful love means remaining separated from Him forever by our own free choice” (CCC 1033).
Naturally the person could always repent just before dying, but it would be foolish to live estranged from God and hope to be in a different frame of mind at the end.
What is more, mortal sin cuts the sinner off from communion with the Church, with the mystical body of Christ, and so the person cannot receive Communion or any other sacrament.
Even the Anointing of the Sick should ordinarily be given only to those in the state of grace, provided they are conscious and able to confess their sins beforehand if they are in mortal sin.
Mortal sin, like venial sin, has as another consequence temporal punishment. That is, even though we have repented of the sin we must do something either here on earth or in Purgatory to make up for the harm we have caused to the majesty of God and the mystical body of the Church.
And very importantly, with mortal sin we lose all the merit we have acquired throughout our life through our good deeds, prayers, penances, etc.
This is obvious from the fact that no matter how much good someone has done, if they commit a mortal sin and do not repent they will go to Hell.
But fortunately, when we repent of our sin, all this previously acquired merit is restored.
It is as if our spiritual bank account balance returns to where it was before.
One of the worst effects of living in the state of mortal sin is that we cannot acquire any new merit for our good deeds while in that state.
Only when we are spiritually alive, living in the love of God, can we merit anything (cf CCC 2011). In this sense, many people waste years of their life living in mortal sin.
The good deeds they do, nonetheless, are not all lost. They will help the person acquire the disposition to repent and return to the love of God, with the help of God’s actual graces.
Lent, as a season of grace and pardon, is a good time to pray for all those who are in the state of mortal sin so that they return to the love of God through the sacrament of Reconciliation.
Then, like the Prodigal Son they will rejoice with the embrace of the Father (cf Lk 15:20).
- email director@caec.com.au