​ Thomas Aquinas: Is Sloth a Mortal Sin?
1.
It would seem that sloth is not a mortal sin. For every mortal sin is contrary to a precept of the Divine Law. But sloth seems contrary to no precept, as one may see by going through the precepts of the Decalogue. Therefore sloth is not a mortal sin.
 
Sloth is not listed literally as what violates any of the Ten Commandments. The Commandments make no mention of sloth. So perhaps sloth is not a mortal sin.
 
2.
Further, in the same genus, a sin of deed is no less grievous than a sin of thought. Now it is not a mortal sin to refrain in deed from some spiritual good which leads to God else it would be a mortal sin not to observe the counsels. Therefore it is not a mortal sin to refrain in thought from such like spiritual works. Therefore sloth is not a mortal sin.
 
Sloth does not seem to be a mortal sin in a spiritual sense either. For aversion of the mind from a spiritual good may be merely a consequence of human nature which cannot possibly live up to all the Divine Counsels at all times. Perhaps sloth is merely the intellectual or spiritual inability to will the good at all times.
 
3.
 Further, no mortal sin is to be found in a perfect man. But sloth is to be found in a perfect man: for John Cassian says (De Instit. Caenob. x, l) that sloth is well known to the solitary, and is a most vexatious and persistent foe to the hermit. Therefore sloth is not always a mortal sin.
 
Sloth can be found in the most perfect of the Desert Fathers. No doubt, if sloth is found in the perfect man, then it mustn’t really be a mortal sin. Perhaps it is a vexatious enemy that harasses and threatens a man against his reason and his will.
 
On the Contrary: It is written (2 Cor. vii. 20) The sorrow of the world worketh death. But such is sloth; for it is not sorrow according to God, which is contrasted with sorrow of the world. Therefore it is a mortal sin.
 
Sloth is sorrow that fails to hope in the Divine good. Sloth thus is of the world and consumed with its finite limitations and created imperfections. Sloth avoids the Divine Good because the good of the world has molded and defined the expectations and hopes of the sinner away from any transcendent perfection.
 
I answer that, mortal sin is so called because it destroys the spiritual life which is the effect of charity, whereby God dwells in us. Wherefore any sin which by its very nature is contrary to charity is a mortal sin by reason of its genus. And such is sloth, because the proper effect of charity is joy in God, as stated above while sloth is sorrow about spiritual good in as much as it is a Divine good. Therefore sloth is a mortal sin in respect of its genus.
 
Sloth destroys the spiritual life because it stands opposed to the Divine Virtue of Charity. Through Charity, God dwells in us and we dwell in Him. Charity yields joy in God as the sinner is made into a saint through Divine Grace. The experience of the Charity makes a man joyful and thankful for God’s condescending movement into his soul. Sloth is sorrow and despair over the spiritual good that God longs to bring alive in the human soul. It is a mortal sin because it rejects the life that God brings to the soul through His Charity.
 
But it must be observed with regard to all sins that are mortal in respect of their genus, that they are not mortal, save when they attain to their imperfection. Because the consummation of sin is in the consent of reason: for we are speaking now of human sins consisting in human acts, the principle of which is the reason. Wherefore if the sin be a mere beginning of sin in the sensuality alone, without attaining to the consent of reason, it is a venial sin on account of the imperfection of the act. Thus in the genus of adultery, the concupiscence that goes no further than the sensuality is a venial sin, whereas if it reach to the consent of reason, it is a mortal sin. So too, the movement of sloth is sometimes in the sensuality alone, by reason of the opposition of the flesh to the spirit, and then it is a venial sin; whereas sometimes it reaches to the reason, which reason in the dislike, horror and detestation of the Divine good on account of the flesh utterly prevailing over the spirit. On this case it is evident that sloth is a mortal sin.
 
Sloth is a venial sin if it does not reach the level of the consent of reason. If it remains in the body or the sensuality or the appetite it might be better called laziness or lethargy. The body often resists the soul’s pursuit of the spiritual good. But if sloth is consented to in the soul by reason because a man despairs of the spiritual good, then sloth is a mortal sin. A man might grow to hate and despise the possibility of the efficacious nature of Divine Grace. He might think God too perfect to desire any involvement in human life. Or he might grow impatient at the pace in which Grace operates on his life. He might give up on Grace because he cannot perceive or see its effects in himself or others. He might decide that his sin is too great for God to overcome and conquer. Or perhaps the power of the flesh is so strong that it overcomes the spirit in a man, and for that reason a man succumbs to despairing over the spiritual good. So a man might reject the spiritual good of God’s Grace because of his body or because of his soul, because the flesh possesses him or because his soul refuses to hope. Whatever the reason, sloth is a mortal sin if a man uses his mind to reject the power of God’s Grace in human life and thus fails to pursue it.
 
Reply to Objection 1.
Sloth is opposed to the precept about hallowing the Sabbath Day. For this precept, in so far as it is a moral precept, implicitly commands the mind to rest in God: and sorrow of the mind about the Divine good is contrary thereto.
 
Sloth is directly set against keeping the Sabbath Day holy and refuses to rest in God. It is thus implicitly present in the Fourth Commandment. Sloth is thus the willful refusal to keep God’s Day holy and to rest in it because the slothful man does not see or perceive that any good can come out of it.
 
Reply to Objection 2.
Sloth is not an aversion of the mind from any spiritual good, but from the Divine good, to which the mind is obliged to adhere. Wherefore if a man is sorry because someone forces him to do acts of virtue that he is not bound to do, this is not a sin of sloth; but when he is sorry to have to do something for God’s sake.
 
Sloth is a turning of the mind away from the Divine Good. We are made to adhere and cleave to the spiritual good of God’s Grace in order that our natures might be perfected. If a man is sorry about having to do something for God’s sake or because God wills it, this is mortal sin of sloth. A slothful man may either flee the spiritual good by entering into a state of physical or spiritual torpor or through a busy-ness that is equally fatal. In both cases either the increase or decrease of activity is slothful unto death because the sinner is fleeing the spiritual good.
 
However, sloth induces us to avoid not only pure goodness. It induces us to avoid all pain, sorrow, or threats to a limited good. Sloth moves us to avoid the spiritual good out of fear for spiritual pain and suffering. So sloth can be motivated by the fear for what the spiritual good might demand of us in the process of its purification of our souls. The slothful man is more often than not immersed in earthly pleasures. So the virtue that opposes and overcomes sloth is zeal. But to cultivate zeal we must come to know God’s Charity, His goodness, and His desire to fill our hearts with the effects of His Grace.
 
Reply to Objection 3. Imperfect movements of sloth are to be found in holy men, but they do not reach to the consent of reason.
 
Holy men like the Desert Fathers are tempted and tried by sloth. It does not, however, reach the consent of reason in them. They resist it and they flee from it by pursuing with much zeal the Charity of God’s Grace. Dearest brethren, let us do the same. Amen.
 
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​Saint John Chrysostom (c. 349–407)
For let not the mouth only fast, but also the eye, and ear, and the feet, and the hands, and all the members of our bodies. Let the hands fast, by being pure from rapine and avarice. Let the feet fast, but ceasing from running to the unlawful spectacles. Let the eyes fast, being taught never to fix themselves rudely upon handsome countenances, or to busy themselves with strange beauties. For looking is the food of the eyes, but if this be such as is unlawful or forbidden, it mars the fast; and upsets the whole safety of the soul; but if it be lawful and safe, it adorns fasting. For it would be among things the most absurd to abstain from lawful food because of the fast, but with the eyes to touch even what is forbidden. Dost thou not eat flesh? Feed not upon lasciviousness by means of the eyes. Let the ear fast also. The fasting of the ear consists in refusing to receive evil speakings and calumnies. “Thou shalt not receive a false report,” it says. (St. Chrysostom: On the Priesthood; Ascetic Treatises; Select Homilies and Letters; Homilies on the Statutes: Hom. III)
I have said these things, not that we may disparage fasting, but that we may honour fasting; for the honour of fasting consists not in abstinence from food, but in withdrawing from sinful practices; since he who limits his fasting only to an abstinence from meats, is one who especially disparages it. Dost thou fast? Give me proof of it by thy works! 
Sharpen thy sickle, which thou hast blunted through gluttony—sharpen it by fasting. Lay hold of the pathway which leads towards heaven; rugged and narrow as it is, lay hold of it, and journey on. And how mayest thou be able to do these things? By subduing thy body, and bringing it into subjection. For when the way grows narrow, the corpulence that comes of gluttony is a great hindrance. Keep down the waves of inordinate desires. Repel the tempest of evil thoughts. Preserve the bark; display much skill, and thou hast become a pilot. But we shall have the fast for a groundwork and instructor in all these things. (On the Priesthood)
Do you fast? Prove it by doing good works. If you see someone in need, take pity on them. If you see a friend being honored, don’t get jealous of him. For a true fast, you cannot fast only with your mouth. You must fast with your eye, your ear, your feet, your hands, and all parts of your body. (On Fasting)
As bodily food fattens the body, so fasting strengthens the soul. Imparting it an easy flight, it makes it able to ascend on high, to contemplate lofty things, and to put the heavenly higher than the pleasant and pleasurable things of life.

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​Death trampled our Lord underfoot, but He in His turn treated death as a highroad for His own feet. He submitted to it, enduring it willingly, because by this means He would be able to destroy death in spite of itself. Death had its own way when our Lord went out from Jerusalem carrying His cross; but when by a loud cry from that cross He summoned the dead from the underworld, death was powerless to prevent it.
Death slew Him by means of the body which He had assumed, but that same body proved to be the weapon with which He conquered death. Concealed beneath the cloak of His manhood, His godhead engaged death in combat; but in slaying our Lord, death itself was slain. It was able to kill natural human life, but was itself killed by the life that is above the nature of man.
Death could not devour our Lord unless He possessed a body, neither could hell swallow Him up unless He bore our flesh; and so He came in search of a chariot in which to ride to the underworld. This chariot was the body which He received from the Virgin; in it He invaded death’s fortress, broke open its strong-room and scattered all its treasure.
At length He came upon Eve, the mother of all the living. She was that vineyard whose enclosure her own hands had enabled death to violate, so that she could taste its fruit; thus the mother of all the living became the source of death for every living creature. But in her stead Mary grew up, a new vine in place of the old. Christ, the new life, dwelt within her. When death, with its customary impudence, came foraging for her mortal fruit, it encountered its own destruction in the hidden life that fruit contained. All unsuspecting, it swallowed Him up, and in so doing released life itself and set free a multitude of men.
He who was also the carpenter’s glorious son set up His cross above death’s all-consuming jaws, and led the human race into the dwelling place of life. Since a tree had brought about the downfall of mankind, it was upon a tree that mankind crossed over to the realm of life. Bitter was the branch that had once been grafted upon that ancient tree, but sweet the young shoot that has now been grafted in, the shoot in which we are meant to recognise the Lord whom no creature can resist.
We give glory to You, Lord, who raised up Your cross to span the jaws of death like a bridge by which souls might pass from the region of the dead to the land of the living. We give glory to You who put on the body of a single mortal man and made it the source of life for every other mortal man. You are incontestably alive. Your murderers sowed Your living body in the earth as farmers sow grain, but it sprang up and yielded an abundant harvest of men raised from the dead.
Come then, my brothers and sisters, let us offer our Lord the great and all-embracing sacrifice of our love, pouring out our treasury of hymns and prayers before Him who offered His cross in sacrifice to God for the enrichment of us all.
St Ephrem of Edessa

St. Paul tells us, Be ye angry and sin not. Anger is a venial sin if it does not proceed to action.
 
Certainly there is a place for righteous anger. Righteous anger hates the sin but not the sinner. Righteous anger is the justifiable detestation and opposition to sin that a man must have in his heart if he is to be saved. This kind of anger is best turned back upon the self. First, a man prays for the man whose sin has made him angry. Second, he looks into his own heart and finds examples of this sin in his own life. Men are best able to judge others' particular sins because they are fitted to locate the sin by its near perfect presence in their own hearts. Righteous indignation and anger should proceed only into action as prayer on the part of the one who has detected it.
 
I answer that, The movement of anger may be inordinate and sinful in two ways, as stated above (Article 2). First, on the part of the appetible object, as when one desires unjust revenge; and thus anger is a mortal sin in the point of its genus, because it is contrary to charity and justice.
 
Anger is a mortal sin when the subject is moved to seek retribution and retaliation against an object who has wronged him. ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.” (Deut. xxxii. 35) “Unjust” revenge is an exaggerated claim whereby the subject’s sense of hurt moves him to destroy the man who has become his enemy. Anger or Wrath here is contrary to both charity and justice. It is contrary to charity since it supersedes and extinguishes any sense of love towards a man. The object may indeed have made himself the subject's enemy. But this is no reason not to love his enemy in Christ and Christ in him. Anger or wrath is thus the vice that destroys its opposite virtue of charity. In another way wrath or anger destroys justice. Justice is giving to every man his due. Anger or Wrath is also contrary to justice. It is an expression of injustice. Rather than seeking a just solution to a disagreement, it resorts to violence of mind and body in order to punish an offender. Strictly speaking it is an exaggerated sensitive or appetitive response to an injury that ought to be resolved rationally. And even it the matter cannot be resolved rationally, the injured party is to endure the wrong with a justice that is merciful and kind, since this is the way of God towards man. God’s justice is merciful, and so too must the Christian’s be.  
 
Nevertheless such like anger may happen to be a venial sin by reason of the imperfection of the act. This imperfection is considered either in relation to the subject desirous of vengeance, as when the movement of angerr forestalls the judgment of his reason; or in relation to the desired object, as when one desires to be avenged in a trifling matter, which should be deemed of no account, so that even if one proceeded to action, it would not be a mortal sin, for instance by pulling a child slightly by the hair, or by some other like action.

Sometimes anger is a venial sin because the subject acts impulsively, compulsively, and irrationally in the heat of the moment. In such a situation the subject is moved by bodily and appetitive irritability and discomfort. In another way the object may elicit from the subject a response of unpremeditated vengeance. The subject may wish to forestall any further offense from the object, and thus, for example, he might proceed to hit or pull the hair of an offending object. In neither case is the anger or wrath a mortal sin since it is not rationally contrived to injure the offending party excessively beyond the demands of justice.
 
Secondly, the movement of anger may be inordinate in the mode of being angry, for instance, if one be too fiercely angry inwardly, or if one exceed in the outward signs of anger. On this way anger is not a mortal sin in the point of its genus; yet it may happen to be a mortal sin, for instance if through the fierceness of his anger a man falls away from the love of God and his neighbor.
 
Anger is mortal if it becomes an inward habit of the mind and heart. It becomes mortal also if it becomes an external activity that is excessive establishes a sinful habit. So the sin becomes mortal because of its effect, as when anger moves a man to fall away from love of God and neighbor. Thus the effect or the activity draws a man by reason of repeated habits into the nature of the sin. Anger here is made a mortal sin by the activity that then draws the mind away from the rational good. So the habit overtakes the man and the man’s reason is then held captive to a habit that began through venial sin but has become mortal. So anger may become a mortal sin or habitual sin unto death if it is practiced and then formative of the sinner. Or it may become mortal if a man through reason desires vengeance against another excessively or inappropriately.
 
Reply to Objection 1. It does not follow from the passage quoted that all anger is a mortal sin, but that the foolish are killed spiritually by anger, because, through not checking the movement of anger by their reason, they fall into mortal sins, for instance by blaspheming God or by doing injury to their neighbor.
 
So the effect can lead to the development of the mortal sin. What begins in the appetitive and sensitive soul can overtake and overrule the rational soul. What begins in the body moves into the will. Once the habit is established in the heart or the will, it is then difficult for reason to overcome it. In this case a man acquires the sin that becomes worse the more it rules and governs his behavior towards God and neighbor.
 
Reply to Objection 2. Our Lord said this of anger, by way of addition to the words of the Law: Whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment. (Matthew v. 21). Consequently our Lord is speaking here of the movement of anger wherein a man desires the killing or any grave injury of his neighbor: and should the consent of reason be given to this desire, without doubt it will be a mortal sin.
 
A man may kill another man literally, spiritually, or both. The point is that reason is used to contrive or assent to the murder of another. That reason assents to it is evidence that the subject is perfecting mortal sin since he does not love his neighbor.
 
Reply to Objection 3. In the case where anger is contrary to charity, it is a mortal sin, but it is not always so, as appears from what we have said.
 
To be a mortal sin anger or wrath must work clean contrary to charity and justice as mercy. The mortal nature of the sin is evidenced in a real destruction of the mind’s ability to love and hope for the transformation of another. So the mortal sin or anger or wrath cuts a man off from God and his neighbor. It can be overcome only by a deep sense of God's merciful charity and His long-suffering and lenient justice. Let us embrace both as we seek to overcome all anger and wrath. 
 
©wjsmartin

​For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities;
but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.
(Hebrews iv. 15)
 
Monsignor Knox reminds us that the whole story of the Temptation is misconceived if we do not recognize that it was an attempt made by Satan to find out whether our Lord was the Son of God or not. (The Epistles and Gospels, p. 89) And perhaps this is our question too. To be sure Satan tempts Jesus, but so do we from the inmost regions of our being. We want to know if He is the Son of God. We want proofs that provide certain knowledge; we want evidence. And today on the First Sunday of Lent we are given good evidence that He is, at least, moving towards revealing this truth to us. After all, proofs aren’t bad things; and in this case we can thank Satan for making explicit what we might always have wondered or even doubted in our own hearts.
         So we begin with our Gospel lesson for today, remembering that we have accepted Jesus’ invitation to go up to Jerusalem. Presumably, then, we are going up up not merely to be recognized and registered as pious pilgrims, but to find out for ourselves just who this Jesus of Nazareth really is. So we read that Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred. (St. Matthew iv. 1,2) From the historical record of Saints Matthew and Luke we learn that Jesus was alone. Having fasted for forty days, being truly and fully human, He was hungry. So the Devil starts in on him where He is weakest as a human being. Jesus is famished, and the nearest things in appearance to bread in the desert are stones. And so Satan says to Him, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. (St. Matthew iv. 3) Jesus knows that God sent Him not to destroy nature but to redeem it. So why not ensure that the natural man is well fed before He moves on? Jesus the Man needs to eat. But natural men need also to be redeemed. Stones are stones, and bread is bread. He can feed the multitudes by multiplying the loaves and the fishes after they, with Him, have made a spiritual journey. And besides, the poor ye have with you always, but the Son of God ye have…always. (St. Matthew xxvi. 11) The Son of Man is the Son of God that through Him men might hunger and thirst for [God’s] righteousness. (St. Matthew v. 6)  Things Divine must take precedence over things mundane and natural. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, that….all [other]….things may be added unto you. (St. Matthew vi. 33) Jesus remembers who He is truly, and that He has meat to eat that Satan does not know of and that His meat is to do the will of Him that sent…. Him.(St. John iv. 32,34) Jesus is tempted here to sacrifice the Son of Man prematurely to the needs of His body. But He knows that, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. (St. Matthew iv. 4) Man is made to eat spiritual food, God’s Truth, here embodied in the Son of Man’s hunger to be the Son of God by feeding first on His Word.
         So Jesus’ physical hunger is overcome by His spiritual longing to eat and digest the bread of God’s will. The devil sees before him a spiritual man. So in His physical weakness and exhaustion, Satan thinks, let Him be wholly spiritual. Perhaps this Jesus is called to be a supernaturally inspired ascetic, perhaps some kind of mystical Desert Father, who in denying the body completely can become a kind of incarnated angel! He has denied the good of the body, Satan thinks, so let this man dispense with his body entirely, cleaving as he does to this ‘Word’ of God. He trusts in God, then let Him deliver Him now, if he will have Him: for he said, I am the Son of God. (St. Matthew xxvii. 43) Then the devil taketh Him up into the holy city, and setteth Him on a pinnacle of the temple, And saith unto Him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou thy foot against a stone. (St. Matthew iv. 5,6) Satan tempts Jesus to provoke God to reveal His anointing by sending angels, pure spirits, to rescue His soul and body. The soul is the seat of unity with God; from the ground of the soul man chooses freely to worship and obey his Maker. If you cannot perform a miracle with regard to the body’s hunger, prove your unbreakable unity with God through the mind or the soul, Satan suggests. Cast yourself down; surely God will not let one perish who places the good of his soul above that of his body. Jesus, however, knows that this is no way for the Son of Man to reveal that He is the Son of God. Man’s soul is in a body. God doesn’t intend for us to prove the good of one by destroying the other. The Son of Man must reveal that He is the Son of God by taking on the whole of human nature. That He is the Son of God will require much much more than sparkling and dazzling supernatural Divine interruptions designed to startle men out of their dull spiritual stupor. Men must follow the Son the Man along the hard path of suffering that alone can bring belief. Their minds were made to be redeemed and reconciled to God not through supernatural magic, but through the common and familiar mode of pondering, wondering, studying, exploring, investigating, questioning, and finally assenting to what lies hidden in the heart of the Son of Man! Christ has come to redeem souls through faith, and not to compel conversion by force. To compel and force God to prove Himself can never perfect creaturely man’s faith. Belief can never be forced. It must be elicited and carried forward as it discovers God in the heart of the Son of Man, the Father in the life of the Son, and the Spirit at the root of both. Satan and his minions demand signs and wonders. Men of faith will see a sign and wonder in the Love of the Son of Man, who rather than throwing down His life will allow it to be hoisted up by others. Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. (St. Matthew iv. 7)
         We come to the final temptation. Satan guesses that if the Son the Man will not prove that He is the Son of God by worshiping the needs of His body or exaggerating the excellence of His soul, there is but one option left. Surely if He is the Son of God as flesh, He can still be tempted by the will to power. Jesus has come to save all men, to be sure, but only in so far as the Son of Man is held captive to His Father’s will as the Son of God. His last temptation is to despair of His reconciliation with God through obedience. Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. (St. Matthew iv. 8,9) Satan is perfect desperation, and is thus the prince of despair. The temptation here is for Jesus to sever himself from his Father’s will precisely because He can resist all temptation. That it should be a temptation to Jesus at all surprises us. How does it make sense? Well, here we find that Jesus has forsaken all for God and His kingdom. He has rejected both bodily and spiritual threats to the free operation of His will. His act of will in submitting to the Father seems to have rendered Him utterly powerless. His sense of impending impotence is weighing so heavily upon Him in the face of long, hard road lying ahead that He is tempted to give it all up –to do evil that good may come of it. (Idem, Knox, p. 65) Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. (St. Matthew iv. 10) The Son of God is God’s only perfect child. As God the Father rules the whole of creation, so He speaks through His invisible Word into the flesh of His Son. That Word has neither meaning nor significance apart from the Father who speaks it. His speech is obeyed as a command, willingly, in the humanity of the Son. Then the devil leaveth Him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto Him.(St. Matthew iv. 11)
         That Jesus is the Son of Man has never been doubted. Sane men know too that God alone should be worshiped and served. The Sons of Man are born to become the Sons of God. What the Son of God reveals to us is that the one must be sacrificed to the other because Man must die for God to be made alive. The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. (St. Matthew xx. 28) In the end of our Gospel lesson for today we read that, Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him. (St. Matthew iv. 11) Luther tells us that the angels came down from Heaven to feed Him. This is the proper order and nature of God’s provision. The Son of Man is hungering and thirsting for the righteousness as the Son of God. God the Father feeds His Spirit, nourishes His soul, and now cares for His body. He has become an inferior being as the Son of Man in order that all men might partake of His superior nature as the Son of God. The superior creatures now honor and worship the inferior Son of Man, feed Him and equip His Sacred Humanity for more of the same devilish assaults that will contrive to construct a Cross for His Love. For out of that Cross the Son of Man will reveal to men of faith what the Son of God will do to win back the love of His people. Amen.
©wjsmartin 

 
"Behold we go up to Jerusalem." (Luke 18.31) 
In today’s Gospel lesson Jesus invites us to accompany Him up to Jerusalem: Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, he says, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man shall be accomplished. Today we go up. We have changed our direction. For we have just completed the seasons of Christmas and Epiphany. In those liturgical seasons we meditate upon a certain coming down -God’s coming down in His Son, the Word’s coming down from the Father to be made flesh, Jesus’ coming down to purify and cleanse our consciences of the unclean, the unholy, and the unrighteous. But today we begin to go up, to travel up with Jesus to Jerusalem.  He must go up to die for us. Behold, we go up to Jerusalem and we go up with Him to contemplate dying Love, that into its embrace we might long to be held.  Behold we go up to Jerusalem in order to see and experience the love of God, and how the love of God while enduring all manner of malevolent rejection, will keep on loving. In faith we go up to Jerusalem, in hope we reach forward towards greater wisdom, and in love we desire to find a passion that can be made our own –that principle of Primal Motion that alone can heal, that alone can save.
        But we all might be a little bit confused about this coming down and going up. We faithfully follow Jesus, we hope for the best, but we do not understand what it means to go up to His death. Death seems to be a kind of going down, like going down into the pit or going down into the grave. What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to the pit? Shall the dust praise thee? Shall it declare thy truth? (Psalm xxx. 9) Perhaps we are like the Apostles who went up with Jesus to Jerusalem. They were confused and blinded to the truth. For the more they went up, the less they understood or saw in the right light. Jesus said that the Son of Man…shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on: And they shall scourge him, and put him to death: and the third day he shall rise again. (St. Luke xviii. 32,33) But we read that the disciples understood none of these things, and this saying was hid from them, neither knew they the things which were spoken. (St. Luke xviii. 34) It all seems as foreign to us as it was to the Apostles. After all, going up usually means ascending or rising out of darkness and into light, out of confusion and into clarity, and out of ignorance and into knowledge,
        But as they will soon learn, travelling up to Jerusalem with Jesus will involve illumination or enlightenment of a most unusual kind –the illumination that Jesus is God and that God is Love. The eyes of the Apostles, our eyes, will be opened; there is no doubt about it. But not before, against the protestations of all others, we persistently cry out with the blind man in this morning’s Gospel, Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy upon me. (St. Luke xviii. 38) We cannot go up to Jerusalem with Jesus until we beg for the mercy of God in Jesus Christ to come down to us to open our eyes. Jesus asks the blind man what he desires of Him. The blind man responds, Lord, that I may receive my sight. (St. Luke xviii. 41) The blind man receives his sight and so too can we if Jesus comes down to us.  And immediately he received his sight, and followed him….(St. Luke xviii. 43) Vision is the door that opens the heart to follow Jesus and to go up with Him to Jerusalem.  
        Vision is the reward bestowed upon the man whose faith persistently seeks out the source of true healing. What he thought would be the gateway to the world alone, became the door to a spiritual vision that can go up to the Cross of Christ’s Love. Christ says in this morning’s Gospel that His impending suffering and death will be necessary that all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man shall be accomplished. (St. Luke xviii.31) What the blind man will see and the Apostles will behold is a vision of a healing Love that is always moved and defined by an upward ascent into heart of our Heavenly Father. St. Paul speaks of this Love in this morning’s Epistle. King James’ able translators penned it as Charity.
        Charity is the Queen of the Theological virtues. It outruns faith and fulfills all hope, since its passion is God’s, which finds no end. St. John tells us that, God is love; and he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God in him.(1 St. John iv. 16) Love is Charity, and Charity is the everlasting expression of God’s nature. Charity is that one essential virtue that must command all others. St. Paul suggests this morning that Charity is preeminent because it alone binds God to Man and Man to God. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. (1 Cor. xiii. 1-3) Speech, knowledge, and kindness alone can never save a man, says St. Paul. All sorts of people can speak like eloquent earthly men or celestial angels. This virtue does not save a man. Countless others can have right belief, near-perfect knowledge of theological truth, and spiritual understanding. This virtue does not save a man. Generous and liberal people may spend their lives feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and sheltering the homeless. This virtue does not save a man. What they are missing is Charity. Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.(1 Cor. xiii. 4-7) Charity is the pure, eternal activity of God. It sums up in one word God’s inestimable mercy, pity, compassion, and forgiveness that comes down in order that we may go up and back into Heaven. It fulfills all hope in His desire for every man’s redemption. It sees in all men the possibility of salvation, though their ways be wicked, their hearts hardened, and their motives murderous. Charity comes down to conquer all vice. Why? Because God is love, and thus God is Charity. And Charity will never cease to do all that He can to enable men to ascend or to go up and into the new life of everlasting virtue.
        Charity is the passion that moves and defines the nature of Jesus Christ. Jesus is both God loving Man and Man loving God. In this one person then, what men have tried to divide since the dawn of time, is found in inseverable harmonious unity. And make no mistake about it; the devil will do all he can to divide these two loves, these two expressions of Charity in the heart of Jesus. As we go up to the Cross of Christ’s Charity, we shall see that Jesus will be tempted in His unjust suffering and execution to divide God from Man and Man from God. He will be tempted to call down legions of angels to destroy the human enemies of the Charity that moves Him. He will be tempted to forsake God in His human suffering and to forsake Man in His Divine perfection. Rather than going up and into the embrace of His heavenly Father’s Charity, He will be tempted to come down from the Cross and abandon God’s way of working out our salvation. But as we go up, we shall find that He will not come down into these temptations. He is God’s Charity made flesh for Man; He is Man’s Charity and Love for God made divine. He goes up in order to die for us. He will come down in order to rise in us. What we think of as two distinct kinds of Love will persist as one in the heart of Jesus. Sin divides; Love unites. This is the vision and expression of Love.
        This morning a blind man became conscious that Jesus Christ was passing by. His cry goes up and Jesus comes down. Augustine exhorts us to imitate him.

​Let Christ’s passing by make us prepared to cry out.  What is Christ’s passing by?  Whatsoever He has endured for us here is His passing by.  He was born, He passed by: for is He yet being born? He grew up, He passed by; is He yet growing up?  He was suckled: is He yet suckled?  When weary He slept: does He yet sleep?  He ate and He drank: does He yet do this?  At the last He was seized, He was bound with ropes, He was beaten, He was crowned with thorns, He was struck by blows, He was defiled with spittle, He was hung on a Cross, He was put to death, He was pierced by a lance, He was buried, He rose again.  Till then He passes by. 
 
Christ is God’s Charity that has come down from Heaven in order to pass us by. True Charity comes down in order that through Him we all may go up and back to God. Christ is always passing by. The vision of Charity in the flesh will come down to us this Lent so that we may go up to the Cross to die. Christ is always passing by. Let us pray that this coming Lent we shall play the man, seeing and desiring the Charity that Christ is, cherishing and treasuring not only the vision, but enduring His call and claim of our hearts, as old loves fade and come down into death and true Love stirs and goes up into Life. Christ is always passing by. Our hearts will be broken if we go up to gaze upon this Charity; but in their breaking comes an opening, into which Christ will flow, grow, expand and triumph. Christ is always passing by. He intends to brings us into unbreakable loving union with our Heavenly Father. Christ is always passing by. Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, to die, to rise, and impart the Divine Charity…that is always passing by…to others. Amen.
©wjsmartin