Desert Fathers' Understanding of Sin

A Benedictine monk's Catholic Times column on the Wisdom Learned from the Desert Fathers brings to our attention the Capital Sins—the ways that make the inner life sick and control the mind.

They are gluttony, lust, greed, anger, sorrow, acedia, vainglory, and pride. John Cassianus introduced these eight evil thoughts to the Western Church. Pope St. Gregory I made them “the seven deadly sins” by combining Sorrow with Acedia, to become Sloth and Vainglory, to Pride, and adding Envy. They are now listed in the Catholic Catechism as: pride, avarice, lust, envy, gluttony, anger, and sloth. They are considered "capital" sins because they engender other sins and vices. Their wise teachings, derived from experience, will help us, living in the modern era, purify and govern our hearts.

Pride— is the root and summit of all evils. The evil spirit of pride leads the soul to the most profound corruption. It prevents the soul from recognizing God's help and makes it believe it is the cause of its good deeds. It makes others who do not acknowledge this aspect look foolish and arrogant. It is an attitude of thinking of oneself as the best, ignoring others, and rejecting God's help.

“A proud monk does not need other evil spirits, for he is an evil spirit and his own enemy.”  That is why the Desert Fathers called pride the chief of all vices. The cure for pride is remembering the mercy and help that one has received from God, remembering the examples of the saints, and never forgetting that one owes everything to Christ. Pride is a sin committed by the fallen angel Lucifer and the first human being, and is destroyed through humility.

Avarice (greed)—is the attachment of the mind to worldly goods and material things. “Greed brings to mind long old age and inability to work, future hunger and disease, the pain of want, and the shame of receiving necessities from others”. In a word, greed comes from anxiety and worry about the uncertainty of the future.

Jesus said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself” (Matthew 6:33-34). It is a lack of trust in these words. “Avarice (Greed)  is a root of evil. It causes hatred, theft, envy, discord, hostility, anger, revenge, cruelty, and murder.” 

In reality, all the evils around us stem from greed. People compete fiercely to have more, exploit each other, and even go to war. The cure for greed is poverty. Poverty is entrusting everything to God’s providence and escaping from worldly worries. This is the essence of evangelical poverty. Only those who have tasted heavenly things will not be obsessed with earthly things.

Lust— is closely connected to gluttony, according to Climacus, who said a soul that succumbs to gluttony is given over to lust. Cassianus’s following words clearly show how difficult the fight against lust is. “The second fight is against the spirit of lust. It lasts a long time, is more persistent than all the others, and few people achieve complete victory. It is a terrible fight … It does not end until all the other vices have been overcome.”  “He who extinguishes the fire of the flesh with spiritual fire and drives out fleshly love with divine love is pure.” 

The fight against Lust begins with the control of the sexual desires of the flesh and ends with their transformation. In this way, chastity aims not at the suppression of flesh and natural desires, but at their transformation, transforming human love into divine love. Whether married or single, we will all live sexually transformed lives in heaven, for there we will all be like angels.

Envy— is, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, "sorrow at another’s good." It is a feeling of sadness or resentment because someone else possesses something we desire.

Gluttony— The Desert Fathers considered the stomach the cause of all human ruin and said that those who conquer the stomach make significant progress on the path to purity. Gluttony is dangerous precisely because it serves the lusts. Overcoming gluttony is not easy; overcoming other passions depends on overcoming gluttony. Evagrius’s prescription may sound unrealistic and useless in our present reality.

The Desert Fathers saw Anger as a terrible passion that drives away the Spirit of God from our souls. 

The columnist thinks one of the serious problems in our society today is anger control disorder. Many people are impatient, easily get angry, and are consumed by anger. The Desert Fathers saw anger as a terrible passion that drives away the Spirit of God from our souls. When anger enters our souls, it distorts our vision, clouds our thoughts, confuses our minds, and renders us helpless against the attacks of Satan. Evagrius says, “Anger is the most violent passion… It is the one that, above all, takes away our spirit in prayer by recalling the face of the one who has made us sad”. He advises that no evil can transform the spirit into an evil spirit as much as anger, and that those possessed by anger should say the Jesus Prayer” frequently. 

The Fathers saw anger as the greatest obstacle to prayer and the greatest enemy of the contemplative because it distracts our minds and prevents pure prayer. The remedy for anger is meekness. The path to meekness is to first not respond angrily to those angry at us, to not think harshly about them, and to not pay attention to those who attack us. Evagrius says that practice is a process of moving from anger to meekness.

Sadness, Acedia (Melancholy), Sloth come from not getting what one desires, and are sometimes accompanied by anger.” Sadness comes from a lack of desire, from unfulfilled longing. A monk who has retired to the desert could become obsessed with thoughts of his home, parents, and former life, and could fall into sadness due to the lack of such things. Those who are in the world fall into sorrow when they lose a parent or a loved one, or when their intentions do not go their way. This is a natural sadness that can lead us to frustration and despair. The cure for sadness is to turn away from worldly pleasures.

Evagrius says, “A person who abstains from all worldly pleasures is an inaccessible watchtower for the evil spirit of sadness… 

Acedia means spiritual negligence, sloth, and lethargy. It is a vice found among celibate monks, and it is a state in which the covenant with God is broken due to our negligence. Climacus, in particular, describes the symptoms of this vice very vividly. “Acedia is a paralysis of the soul. It weakens the mind and neglects ascetic practices. It praises worldly wealth, slanders God’s mercy and love for man, neglects the recitation of psalms, and makes one weak in prayer.”  Acedia is also called the “noontime evil spirit” (Psalm 91:6) because it attacks monks more strongly around noon.

A monk caught up in this vice falls into idleness and laziness, and is tempted to run away from his cell (the arena: the arena of spiritual struggle) and return to the world, surrounded by all sorts of distractions. As a remedy for this vice, Evagrius suggests manual labor and the memory of death, Climacus suggests perseverance and communal living, and Cassianus suggests zeal for work.

The laurel of victory that one obtains after overcoming evil habits through the battle against them is purity of heart and equanimity (apatheia) that is not shaken by any temptation. Only in such a pure and peaceful heart can one converse with God.  The Acronym PALE GAS is often used to remember the 7 Capital Sins.

Meditation on White Smoke

In the Catholic Peace Weekly newspaper, a science teacher offers a meditation on fire in his Faith and Science Column, with an interesting conclusion we can apply to our lives.

In Greek mythology, Prometheus stole fire from Zeus and gave it to humans. Humans who used fire developed civilization and advanced culture, elevating humanity to a different level of existence.

So, when did humans first start using fire? Scholars estimate that humans first used fire that was ignited naturally by lightning or volcanoes during the Paleolithic Age, when Homo erectus lived about 1.4 million years ago. Fire was crucial in helping primitive humans, ruled by nature, overcome nature and gain an advantage over other animals. 

Fire played a significant role in not only the way of life but also the advancement of civilization, such as by dispelling the darkness of night, increasing human activity time, and reducing the physical energy required for digestion by cooking meals.

In “Sapiens,” Yuval Harari said, “Humans could control their infinite potential by taming fire.” The Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, which was achieved by humans domesticating fire, was a representative event in which the steam engine used the combustion reaction of coal. Combustion is a chemical reaction in which a substance rapidly combines with oxygen, producing light and heat. The traditional fuels humans used to obtain light and heat were organic substances such as wood or straw. 

Modern fuels such as petroleum, natural gas (LNG), and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) are composed of carbon and hydrogen. When sufficient oxygen is supplied during the combustion process, complete combustion occurs, and the elements in the fuel produce carbon dioxide and water (water vapor), generating nearly transparent or white smoke. However, when the amount of oxygen is insufficient or the temperature is low during combustion, incomplete combustion occurs, generating carbon monoxide, and the carbon in the fuel is released into the air in the form of fine particles, generating soot and black smoke.

Since smoke is visible from a distance, it was used to convey messages before the development of wired and wireless communication. When a major national incident occurred, such as an enemy invasion, a signal was sent to a distant place using smoke or light. 

Just as people in the past paid attention to the smoke rising from beacon towers, people all over the world paid attention to the color of the smoke coming out of the chimney of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican right after the conclave. It is known that in the past, when a pope was elected, white smoke was created by completely burning ballot papers in a stove, and when a pope was not elected, black smoke was created by incomplete combustion of damp straw. Since the election of Pope Benedict XVI in 2005, chemicals have been used to make the smoke color clearer.

Just as we produce white smoke right after the Conclave, we must light the hearth of our conscience in our daily lives and completely burn all our hypocrisy, impiety, negligence, distrust, and hatred toward others to produce white smoke. We must ask God to prevent our wrong thoughts and actions from being incompletely burned within us and producing black smoke. 

What do you Want to do?

In the Sunday Talk Column of the Catholic Times, a documentary filmmaker asks, "What do you want to do?"

She writes in words and videos. When asked what she does, she says, “I look into things for a long time and ask questions.” It’s not a very clear answer, but the truth. She asks questions; it's her job. She has met many important people and understood others through questions and the world in which they live.

While working as a medical documentary filmmaker for 17 years, she's met countless patients. Many suffered from serious illnesses. They were at the crossroads of life and death. 

She asked them, “If you could come out of the operating room alive, if you could live again, what would you want to do?” The question was always the same, and surprisingly, no matter who they were, their answers were always similar.

“If I could live again, even for just a few years, I would travel with my family and spend time with them.”

Their wish was to live and travel with their family. So why travel? It’s not because they suddenly want to see strange things, famous buildings, or beautiful scenery. There is only one reason people think of traveling when on the edge of life’s cliff. They want to create memories that will be remembered. 

The condition is ‘together’ with loved ones or family. They want to travel with their loved ones. What is travel? It is a time that frees one from work and daily life. 

The following are the responses, the desire to say to a wife, husband, daughter, or son, "I love you." If it was simple, why couldn't they say that easy phrase? Many people felt regret. It might be because of the conditions attached to their love. However, love is unconditional. It means that I will unconditionally support, cherish, and welcome you no matter what.

Those who face the biggest challenges in life learn painfully. We also learn through those who have learned painfully. We are all like unwanted orphans in this world; confessing "love" to those we have lived closest to is the highest tribute to life.

I ask people questions as a means of work and learning, and listen to their answers. Armed with those responses, I pose questions back to the world. So today, what do you want to do during your limited time on this earth?

Need For Joy in Life

"Rejoice in the Lord always. I repeat, rejoice” (Phil 4:4). In the “Preciousness of Faith" column of the Catholic Peace Weekly, a seminary professor offers readers an understanding of true joy.

Happiness and joy are different in that happiness is related to the external situation one is experiencing, while joy is more closely related to an internal state. “Happiness” can be described as an emotion, while “joy” is more directly associated with a state of one’s being. A gift of the Holy Spirit. Even when facing death, Jesus said: I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete (John 15:11).

What if there is no joy in faith? Pope Francis, who recently passed away, says in his first document, Evangelii Gaudium: “The joy of the Gospel fills the heart and life of all who encounter Jesus.” The essence of Christianity is joy. We cannot proclaim the Gospel without joy. Without joy, there is no reason or meaning in faith. So, how much joy do we experience in faith?

The Bible is full of those who experienced this joy. The Magi were extremely happy when they saw the star again. Those who experienced great joy at the birth of Jesus were the shepherds on the road and Simeon and Anna. Jesus invites everyone to the joy of living as children of God through the Beatitudes. “Rejoice and be glad, “Your reward is great in heaven.” (Matthew 5:12)

Jesus’ parables often feature scenes of joy. Joy comes when one discovers the kingdom of God, the most precious thing in life, and it is also the joy of God, who welcomes repentant sinners. In the parable of the prodigal son, when the younger son returns, the father rejoices and prepares a great feast. That joy is so great that the younger son’s ingratitude is no longer a problem. The older son is not able to accept the joy of reconciliation.

But wasn’t the joy of the disciples the greatest when the Lord, who had died, was resurrected? “The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.” (John 20:20) The Lord had conquered death and was with them; death had lost its power and the Lord himself had become their hope— it was the driving force that made them spread the gospel of the Lord to all parts of the world without sparing their lives.

However, that joy was filled with suffering and death. Jesus said, “You will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice. “You will be sad, but your sadness will be turned into joy” (John 16:20). Jesus said that the disciples would see him again and rejoice and that no one would be able to take that joy away from them. This joy comes after trials and suffering. 

Whenever he shares the experience of resurrection with believers, he confirms that we cannot experience the true joy of resurrection unless we die to ourselves and become low and humble. The suffering and trials we face come in the form of worries and pain, but when we endure them in faith, we discover hope that soars higher and realize that the death that accompanies suffering and trials was necessary. We also learn that true joy comes when we entrust our lives to the Lord's will, not our will or desires.

Joy also comes from doing the Lord’s work. Even in the Lord’s work, there are moments of difficulty and pain. However, when we entrust ourselves to the Lord and persevere to the end, the work of our hands is given as gifts. Joy comes from recognizing that everything is a gift from the Lord. 

Let's ask ourselves. What kind of joy are we pursuing today?

The Power of Love

The Preciousness of Faith column of the Peace Weekly revisits the power of love in our lives.

Love⋯. Isn’t it one of the most beautiful words in our language? Just as we cannot live without water or air, but usually do not realize their value, is this not true of love?

The columnist recently attended a religious service in a convent. A nun said, in private, “Father, I have become secularized; it's  not easy for me to focus on the service.” Perhaps the nun’s confession is easy to understand. The distractions of our daily lives and worldly concerns take our attention away from some of the more essential things in life.

An interesting scene in the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus is when they recalled their burning hearts on their walk with Jesus. “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road and  explained the Scriptures to us?” (Luke 24:32)

What kind of experience was it? It must have been an experience of love that Jesus conveyed in the words He spoke and the intimacy they felt in his presence.   

The Lord with whom they were talking was the Jesus they knew before his passion and death; they were experiencing that love again, which washed away all the despair and sorrow that had overcome them, seeing the horrible death that Jesus endured. The love they experienced gave them courage and strength to stand up again with hope to face the future. The flame of love began to bloom again in their hearts that had turned to ashes.

While studying abroad, he attended a Triduum liturgy at a monastery where he experienced a feeling of love in a liturgical setting. The love of the Lord, who gave His entire being as a gift without any conditions or reserve, permeated the Triduum liturgy. He reflected on how he had sometimes closed his heart to love in different ways and allowed himself to lose focus.

We all came into this world with love, and it was thanks to love that we were able to live until now. That love was the love of our parents, who gave without selfishness or greed, simply because they loved us. That love and friendship raised us and strengthened our relationship with family and friends.

We experience many important things in life and live with big plans, but in the end, we realize that love is the most important thing in our lives. The problem is that we realize the nobility of that love only when we experience a significant crisis or trial, and our own dull hearts regret why we have lived so insensitively to that love.

God conveys His ardent love to us through countless human loves. In particular, He leads us to open our eyes to His love through the entire life of the Church.

The Gospel of John ends with a conversation about ‘love’ between Jesus and the Apostle Peter. “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” (John 21:16) The Lord also asks us a question. “Do you love me?”

How much have we lived with our eyes open to the love of the Lord and the love of the precious people around us? Haven't we lived with such dull and rigid hearts that we have forgotten the most important love in life? How about asking the Lord to open our eyes to love?

Let us remember that love is an act of the will—a decision, a choice. 

Life Is Good

A Catholic Graduate School of Life Science professor's 'View from the Ark' column in the Catholic Times offers thoughts on the quality of life issues in Korean society.

Recently, she encountered the expression ‘quality of life’. However, whenever she hears the term, she wonders what it means and what criteria are used to judge it. This is because the concept of ‘quality of life’ functions to justify material abundance, consumerism, and hedonism, and sometimes as a tool to explain the spread of euthanasia or eugenics.

The government has published the ‘National Quality of Life Report’ every year for 20 years. The issues for the past 5 years have been as follows: “Despite achieving industrialization and democratization, Korean society is not satisfied with people’s lives, nor does it have a high level of happiness, and is facing various social problems. The vitality of society is weakening due to the low birth rate, rapid aging, high suicide rate, and the gap between the rich and the poor. Accordingly, a policy response and social attention are needed to improve the quality of life from the existing economic growth-centered policy.”

In this report, the government defines quality of life as “a concept that encompasses the elements that make life worthwhile, consisting of living conditions and the subjective perception and evaluation of these by the people.” At the same time, it explains that it is “a relative concept that changes depending on the level of economic and social development of a society and the values ​​and norms of its members.” Ultimately, this means that what society  recognizes as a “desirable state” significantly impacts the “quality of life.”

This can also explain why the advertising slogan “Get rich!” gained such a great response in the 2000s. Our society’s perception of economic wealth as very important reflects this. Accordingly, economic efficiency, usefulness, and the individual’s status are key factors in determining the quality of life. 

Decreased productivity due to deteriorating health, reduced social contribution, unemployment, and other factors is interpreted as a decline in quality of life. This is also related to our society's high suicide rate. A quality of life based on social external conditions and an individual’s subjective and arbitrary values ​​carries the risk of making people disregard or give up on life.

However, the government’s understanding of the quality of life has not changed much. To truly improve the quality of life, we must first consider how the concept of ‘quality of life’ is applied. Our society uses this concept in various ways, but ‘quality of life’ increasingly leads to the ranking of human lives. Our society secretly regards bedridden patients, people with disabilities, and the elderly as burdens or as ‘unproductive lives’.

This implicitly acknowledges the existence of inequality among human lives and justifies such inequality through the legislation of physician-assisted suicide, thereby abandoning our society’s social obligation to protect lives. Of course, medical suicide or euthanasia will superficially emphasize that it is an individual’s autonomous choice and is an expression of dignity. However, this claim greatly minimizes and distorts the meaning of human life.

Pope John Paul II warns that when surrounded by the quality of life thinking, “the deeper dimensions of existence, such as the spiritual and religious dimensions of human interaction, are neglected” (Encyclical Evangelium Vitae, 23). Life in the sense of ‘quality of life’ is based on sanctity and dignity.  Therefore, we must remember that we can discuss the quality of life only when we recognize the inherent value of human life itself and base it on respect for life and the right to life.

"Go and sin no more"

In the Catholic Peace Weekly Philosophical Chat column, a Jesuit professor provides some background on the Virtue of Justice.

Justice is like a double-edged sword. What is just to one person may be unjust to another. Unlike love, which is unconditional and absolute,  justice always comes with a condition of ‘for what.’

Sometimes, it is necessary to understand that justice may not heal the heart's wounds but hurt. The word "justice" often promotes sharp conflicts and confrontations, leaving scars. 

Justice has various meanings. Lawyers advocate legal justice, politicians advocate political justice, religious people advocate divine justice, and civic activists advocate distributive justice. However, the ancient Latin maxim concerning ‘rights’, ‘to each his own!’ (Suum cuique!), has long been used with justice.

The word justice is derived from the Greek, which means ‘rightness’. In Greek mythology, Dike was the goddess of justice and fair judgments, who governed the right relationships between things. 

Plato argued that the purpose of a state is to realize justice, defined justice as the state of rightness achieved by humans through the balance and harmony of the virtues of wisdom, courage, and moderation. 

Aristotle defined it as a moral character that does good and beneficial things to others, especially in personal relationships. 

For St. Thomas Aquinas, Justice is a virtue that involves the constant and firm will to give each person, including God and neighbor, what they are due. It's about establishing relationships with others and is foundational to a just society and life. This suggests that those who create, enforce, and judge laws concerning justice must have a high moral conscience and responsibility.

This is precisely why Aristotle emphasized ‘fairness’ in relation to justice. Rather than realizing universal justice, ethical awareness and morality should be considered first. The essential issue of justice is not good and evil but right and wrong. 

The question of ‘what is truly fair?’ is not easy to answer. In the Bible, is Jesus Christ's forgiving of an adulteress fair and just? Or is the act of the Jews who tried to stone an adulteress fair and just? The Old Testament defines the relationship between God and man as a contractual relationship of rights and obligations and describes the fair performance of this as justice.

However, the more important message is God's justice, who always forgives those who repent, even though they have not repented. God’s justice is fundamentally based on forgiveness and love because this kind of justice can heal and save people. We need to always recall the words of Christ, who performed the miracle of healing: "Go and sin no more."