TRANSCRIPT:
Something I’ve been thinking about is the need for us to develop a real horror for venial sin. Most of us have probably spent, at some point in our life, some time trying to fight a mortal sin. And then we get to the point where maybe that mortal sin is no longer a part of our lives, but these habitual venial sins that kind of eat away at us like termites might in your home. And so we really need to make sure that we’re waging a war against that habitual venial sin, the things that we’re just accustomed to confessing all the time. And maybe we don’t respond to them with the violence that we would a mortal sin, and we might even fall into a habit of just confessing them all the time. It’s like, “Oh I always do this,” right? Maybe it’s sins against charity or maybe it’s sins against temperance with food or drink or sloth or whatever the case might be.
And if we really love Our Lord and we want to imitate Him and be like Him, it’s not enough for us just to be on defense against these sins, right? Just trying to avoid sin. That’s a starting point, but it’s not really what we’re called to. After all, the greatest threat to our salvation is ourselves; it’s not the world, it’s not other people, it’s not Satan, it’s ourselves.
So we have to be on offense against ourselves. We have to recognize that that’s the greatest obstacle to our salvation. How do we do that? How do we go from being on defense against venial sins to being on offense against our self and our will and our pride? And the answer- the saints and the Church have given us the answer- is that we need to fast, we need to engage in acts of mortification, and we need to abstain from things. This is why traditionally the Church has taught abstinence on Wednesdays and Fridays, just to reinforce that war against our will and our desires. And of course, we need to do corporal and spiritual works of mercy because by serving others, by doing things for others, putting them first in our mind and in our hearts and in our practices, we are, of course, fighting that temptation in all of us to put ourselves at the center of everything. I hope that this has been helpful to you and will encourage you along the way.