A Consideration of Our Sins

For if You Weep Not Here, When Will You?

You have cast away good, and merited evil; nay, made shipwreck of good, and freely chosen evil; and, the grace of your Creator being thus lost, or rather thrown away, you have miserably incurred His wrath. You have no resource for proving yourself innocent when a crowd of evils done by you surrounds you like a countless army, here confronting you with your unholy deeds, there marshalling an innumerable host of useless, and what is more to be condemned, of harmful words; and there yet again parading an infinite array of wicked thoughts. These, then, are the price for which you have foregone inestimable blessings; for these have you forfeited the grace of your Creator.

Conjure them up in your mind, and grieve over them; grieve over them, and renounce them; renounce them, and condemn them; condemn them, and change your life to a better course. Wrestle with yourself in your heart of hearts, lest even for a moment’s space you give consent to any kind of vanity, whether in heart, or tongue, or, worst of all, in act. Let there be a daily, or rather an unceasing, struggle in your heart, lest you keep any kind of covenant with your faults. Ever and unremittingly examine yourself severely; peer into your secret depths; and, whatever you find wrong in yourself, by a vigorous reproof smite it, lay it low, bruise it, crush it, fling it from yourself and annihilate it.

Spare not yourself, flatter not yourself; but in the light of the morning—that is to say, in the view of the last judgement, which, like the morning beam, is breaking on the night of this present life—slay all the sinners of the land—that is to say, the sins and delinquencies of your earthly life—and so destroy out of the city of God which you should be building to Him in yourself and in all those that work iniquity—that is, all diabolical suggestions, all delights hateful to God, all deadly consents, all contrary acts. From all of them you must, as the city of God, be thoroughly cleansed, that thus your Creator may find, possess, and keep in you an abode pleasing to Himself.

Be not of those whose obstinacy even God seems to bewail when He says, ‘There is none that considers in his heart, and says, What have I done?’¹ If they are to be cast away who have refused to blush, and to accuse themselves for the sins they have committed, can you neglect to arraign, to judge, and with strict discipline chastise yourself? Review, then, in careful thought the innumerable blessings wherewith your Creator has ennobled you, no merits of your own intervening, and call to mind your own unnumbered evils, your sole response—O, how wicked and how undeserved! for all those His benefits; and cry out in the pangs of a great grief, ‘What have I done? Provoked my God, challenged my Creator’s anger, repaid Him innumerable ills for untold goods. What have I done?’ And speaking thus, rend, rend your heart, pour forth sighs, weep showers of tears.

For if you weep not here, when will you weep?

And if the averted Face of God does not excite you to contrition—a Face averted from your sins—at least let the intolerable pains of hell, which those sins have provoked, break your hard heart.

Return then, sinful soul, return into yourself. Draw your foot out of hell; so you may escape from the evils due to you, and recover the lost goods of which you are so justly bereft; for if you return with pleasure to your own evils, then all the goods given to you by Him are lost and thrown away.

It behooves you, therefore, ever to keep a strict eye upon those sins, and chiefly those of which your conscience does the more bitterly accuse you, so that He may turn away His eye of anger from them.

For if you turn aside from your sins, with a due intention of amending your life, He turns aside His glance of retribution.

But if you neglect and forget them, He remembers.

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La Transgression du Commandement, Henri-Camille Danger

This is a meditation² from St. Anselm of Canterbury, who was a monk, abbot, philosopher, theologian, and Archbishop of Canterbury, born around 1033 A.D.

I want to draw attention to three things in this meditation:

First, is the admonition to never make a covenant with any of your sins:

Wrestle with yourself in your heart of hearts, lest even for a moment’s space you give consent to any kind of vanity, whether in heart, or tongue, or, worst of all, in act. Let there be a daily, or rather an unceasing, struggle in your heart, lest you keep any kind of covenant with your faults.

Following the commission of a sin, there is a temptation to make a covenant with it. To make a deal with it in your heart. That is the path to hell. Hate your sins, and forsake them, and there is mercy. Love them, cherish them, inwardly make a covenant with them, and there is a danger that sin grows from a moment of weakness to a damnable millstone, drowning you.

Second, is St. Anselm’s allegorical use of the command to slay the sinners in the land:

Slay all the sinners of the land—that is to say, the sins and delinquencies of your earthly life—and so destroy out of the city of God which you should be building to Him in yourself and in all those that work iniquity—that is, all diabolical suggestions, all delights hateful to God, all deadly consents, all contrary acts. From all of them you must, as the city of God, be thoroughly cleansed, that thus your Creator may find, possess, and keep in you an abode pleasing to Himself.

Draw encouragement from the conquest of Canaan and the imprecatory Psalms. While they truly have the literal sense of warfare, slaying, etc. in their historical moment, they find a new fulfillment in the new covenant under the Law of Christ, where we apply the same mentality to the Christian's spiritual war.

In Christ’s Kingdom, not only are civil powers to cleanse the evildoer from the land, but individual Christians, as the Church, the true Israel, are to rout the armies of hell in their own lives, and hack "all diabolical suggestions, all delights hateful to God, all deadly consents, all contrary acts" to pieces before the Lord in the city of their person, and in the persons that the Holy Spirit conquers by the gospel.

Lastly, look at the closing of St. Anselm’s meditation section, where we are again presented with the message of the Kingdom of Heaven:

For if you turn aside from your sins…He turns aside His glance of retribution.

The world promises a relief from guilt down many paths. They are broad and easy. But Christianity shows us one way: and that Way has said, "It is narrow and hard.”³

We do a disservice to people (and to ourselves) if we suggest a shortcut that is not repentance. While there may be sedatives or temporary fixes to your conscience (or worse, permanent fixes that will silence it forever), apart from Christ you have “no resource for proving yourself innocent when a crowd of evils done by you surrounds you like a countless army.”

If you bring your sin, exposing it to Almighty God and imploring His mercy, He will turn away His Holy Face from those sins, and forget them, as the angel of death passed by the faithful houses in the land of Egypt.

But if you bury those sins in the once-fertile field of your conscience, under years of impenitence and pride, under false hopes and lies, and try to forget them there…

God will remember.⁴

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Lord Jesus,

Create in us a perfect hatred for sin in ourselves. Awaken our hearts.⁵ Cause us to remember your benefits, Your kindnesses, Your goodness, and to grieve over those things that separate us from You.

As we bow before You, our Lord and our God, cause Your Holy and Life-giving Spirit to form in us deep, complete contrition, from which we can rise cleansed by Your Blood from all the eternal consequences of sin.

Let us hear and follow Your words of eternal life that are echoing to the ends of the earth:

“Repent and believe the gospel.”⁶

Lord, have mercy.

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1. Isaiah. 57:1

2. St. Anselm, The First Meditation: Of the Dignity and the Woe of Man’s Estate. I have slightly paraphrased the 1872 English translation from the Latin published by Burns and Oates.

3. Matthew 7:14

4. A recurring theme on Power & Glory. See Remissionem Peccatorum.

5. See Our Accursed Sleep.

6. Mark 1:15