32. On Sins Against Hope

1. Argyrophilus clings so ruinously to riches and to the present life that he thinks neither of paradise nor of hell, but only of hoarding treasure. Hence he desires to live on earth for thousands of years, indeed perpetually, lest he be drawn away from riches.

2. Melania, afflicted by a long-lasting illness, begged health from God and from the Blessed Virgin Mary for several years. Since she did not obtain it, she resolved to pour out no more prayers to God and the Saints, saying: God does not wish to hear me.

3. Marinus, after a long life of sins, hears a preacher exhorting sinners to penitence. But he himself, considering the long series of his sins, says within himself: I am already lost; it is now useless to renounce sin.

4. Leonardus, a recidivist, was often admonished by his confessor, but with almost no amendment. The confessor insists, admonishing him again, but he says: Father, indeed I fear the future judgment on account of the multitude of my sins, and scarcely perhaps shall I obtain divine mercy; for I can no longer abstain from sins, both on account of inveterate custom and on account of my excessive frailty.

Q. 1. What are the sins opposed to hope? - 3. What as to the cases?

R. To the first, cf. I. M. 371. To the second: Argyrophilus sins gravely against the virtue of hope. The reason is that he truly places creatures before God; content to be without God, he establishes his happiness and his last end in creatures. G. 203.

Melania sins gravely against hope, if therefore she truly ceases to pray because she is persuaded that God is unwilling to furnish her his aids. But if from a certain inordinate sadness she loses heart and ceases from prayer, she sins only venially. If, finally, she ceases to ask health because she believes that God, by the secret judgment of his wisdom, does not will to restore health to her, she does not on account of this sin. G. 204.

Marinus sins gravely from desperation. This is a most grave sin, and most dangerous. The confessor ought not to desert him; but with all solicitude he ought to try to raise him up, and to stir him to hoping firmly, to sorrowing, and to proposing. If the sick man should despair of recovering bodily health, the prudent physician does not desert him, but then labors especially, so that by salutary counsels and suitable medicines he may restore him to his former health. Elbel 184; G. 203.

Leonardus does not seem to sin gravely from desperation. For he does not seem truly to distrust divine mercy, but only fears too much lest he fall into sin, as one who is well conscious of his own frailty. Wherefore the confessor ought to console and strengthen a pusillanimous man of this sort, so that he may place all his hope and confidence not in his own powers, but in the assisting grace of God, to whom nothing is impossible. G. 203; Elbel 184.