We ought to be very serious about rooting out sin from our lives. We’ve already discussed the spiritual disciplines of reviewing your day and examining your conscience for the Sacrament of Reconciliation. These disciplines are important because sin kills or injures our ability to love God and neighbor; and loving God and neighbor is the greatest, most important commandment that the Lord gives us (see Mk 12:28-34). Divine love is the whole point of it all, and so we need to make a meaningful effort to fight all the enemies of divine love (see Col 3:5-10).[1]
But at the same time, we shouldn’t focus so intensely on our faults that we let the knowledge of our sinfulness weigh us down and depress us. The more we are aware of our misery, the more we need to be lifted up by knowledge of God’s goodness and love for us. We need to balance a healthy disgust for sin with a healthy regard for our Christian dignity. We are called to abide in God’s love (see Jn 15:9-10). The process of rooting out sin should take place in the context of this growing knowledge of God’s love for us and patience with us.
By way of an analogy, imagine that you walk into a darkened room. You don’t know what’s in there. You can’t see where you are going and you stub your toe on something. Then you turn on a small lamp, and you can see that the furniture is in disarray and things are quite a mess. So the first thing you do is move the furniture into place. You then flip a light switch, the room is brightened even more. A bare bulb in the ceiling sheds a dim light evenly over the whole room. Now you notice that there are newspapers and magazines and piles of dirty clothes everywhere. There are empty beer cans and half-open bags of chips spilled on the floor. So, you sort the trash, send the dirty clothes to the laundry room, and dispose of the spilled chips. Things are starting to look reasonably tidy now. And now you get to the windows and open the shades. This lets in even more light, and you find that the windows are really dirty. You wash the windows until they sparkle. Satisfied, you turn around and you look at the room. Now, with open, clean windows, you see everything in the room clearly. You can see that there is a thick layer of dust everywhere, and crumbs from the chips are scattered all over the floor. You find a vacuum cleaner and a dust rag, and go to it.
The point of this story is this. The closer you grow to God, the more light comes into your life. The more light, the better you can see your sins, and the more willing you are, and able, to deal with them. Deal with the big stuff first—the mortal sins: shoplifting, manipulative lying, pornography, blasphemous use of the Lord’s Name, skipping Sunday Mass, fornication, bearing false witness against someone, hateful namecalling, etc. When you’ve removed these habits of grave sin, you’ve begun to really take your soul out of darkness. Once the mortal sins are conquered, you’ll have light to see what needs to be done next—conquering the more serious and deliberate venial sins, like rudeness, vulgar language, gossip, failing to pray, driving way over the speed limit, and so on. Again, more light is ushered in. The more light there is, the better you can see, and the more sensitive you become to even minor venial sins—the sharp tone of voice, being unnecessarily late, excessive talking, irritability with the customer service rep who isn’t able to solve your problem, uncharitable thoughts about a coworker, etc.
While this analogy shows the general progression of the spiritual life, many of us only move forward in this journey with fits and starts. We make progress only to fall again and lose that progress. In such situations, the saints tell us to treat depression and discouragement as temptations of the devil and rooted in pride. The Lord permits us to fall into sin in order to uncover the deeper sin of self-reliance. When we fall, we should immediately repent and return to God without all the hand-wringing. We should not be so surprised that we’ve fallen. We need to stop trusting in our own abilities, and instead trust in God’s mercy.
What keeps us moving forward? Before anything else, it is our love of God in response to His love. Saint Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans that it is the kindness of God that leads us to repentance (Rm 2:4). In God’s kindness, He is patient with us, as He sheds His light in our minds, allowing us time to gradually understand our real situation before Him and the greatness to which He calls us. When we realize this, we want to be better servants of Him, out of love. Repentance is very important, but it shouldn’t be a soul-scraping activity. It should be a growing self-awareness of those aspects of your life that are not completely in line with God’s will—and a growing ability, with His help, to root them out.
[1] For more on sin, see Catechism of the Catholic Church, sec. 1846-1876.