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Ave Maria!
Jesus, Mary, Joseph, we love You, save souls
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Volume two = The Penitent Christian
SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY.
On The Torment Caused By A Bad Conscience.
“Grace be to you, and peace.” I Thess. 2: 10.
Yes, peace! But there is no peace, where there is a domestic war and torture; whose business it is to torment sinners day and night, namely their bad consciences. O sinners, if you are not sunk in the lowest depths of wickedness, you must know by your own experience what a cruel tormentor a bad conscience is? And are you not foolish, then, to remain in the unhappy state of sin, or to make a deliberate choice of that state by committing sin? For if you fear neither death, nor hell, nor any other punishment, at least the uneasiness and torment of your own consciences should frighten you. And it is a torment which has not its equal on earth, as I shall now show by way of salutary warning to you, and I say:
I. A bad conscience tortures the soul most keenly, by continually upbraiding her with her sins.
II. A bad conscience tortures the soul most keenly by continually threatening her with eternal damnation on account of her sins.
I. There is no doubt that it causes most exquisite torture to be upbraided with what
one is deeply ashamed of, and tries to hide in every possible way. But the torture
is still worse when one cannot deny or excuse one’s self for that which causes his
shame, and when the accuser is a person of high authority, against whom no defense
is possible, so that the only thing to do is to hang one’s head in utter confusion.
But the worst of all is, when the up-
Imagine the state of Aman at the banquet given by Queen Esther to Assuerus. When they had eaten and drunk enough, Esther, at the king’s command, made her request: “Give me my life for which I ask, and my people, for which I request;” for I and my people are to be slain. And, what is still worse, our enemy is in such a position that, acting as he does in the king’s name, his cruelty will be ascribed to the king. Consider now, my dear brethren, what must have been the state of Aman’s mind on hearing himself accused so unexpectedly. The king, wroth at what he heard, asked: “Who is this, and of what power, that he should do these things?" The question was like a thunderbolt to Aman. But Esther answered: “It is this Aman that is our adversary and most wicked enemy.” How great must have been the confusion of Aman at hearing this answer! “Aman,” says the Scripture, “hearing this, was forthwith astonished, not being able to bear the countenance of the king and of the queen.” Full of fear and shame and hardly conscious of what he was doing, he threw himself before Esther’s couch, and would, no doubt, have rejoiced if he could have died on the spot. So intolerable is the torment caused by being upbraided with one’s own shame (Esther 7: 5, 6).
Nearly every day, O sinner, you have to bear a similar torment, after having mortally offended your God, unless, indeed, you are one of those who are sunk in the very depths of depravity, and have become callous and obdurate. If you are not gone so far as that, then you will have torture and punishment enough to bear.
You have within you, in your bad conscience, a devil that is by no means dumb; or,
to speak better, your conscience is the devil that tortures you, by continually reproaching
you with your shame in the bitterest terms; nor can you hear those reproaches without
heartfelt anguish and confusion; and yet you are compelled to listen to them against
your will. The moment you satisfy your brutal lusts, or your inordinate inclinations,
and commit a sin, the tormenting demon is, as you must acknowledge, already there,
and he calls out to you, as Pilate did to Christ, “what hast thou done?” Miserable
mortal, where are you going to? Whither have your blind desires led you? Shame upon
you! If any honorable man knew what you have done, you would be covered with confusion!
And yet the Almighty God has seen you while you were actually insulting him, and
trampling under foot his precious Blood. Is that your gratitude to him for the countless
gifts and graces he has bestowed on you? And what better are you now for what you
have done, poor wretch that you are? And what has become of your soul? It is sold
to the devil for a vile and momentary pleasure, for a worthless thing! How dare you
lift up your eyes to heaven any more? What has become of the merits of your former
good works? You have lost them all in a moment. Where are now your so oft-
And what have you to say by way of defense? You cannot deny what you are accused of; your conscience brings it clearly before you; whether you will or not, you must acknowledge your guilt. In vain do you try to cloak your wickedness, or to allege false excuses for your sin. You may deceive men by them, but not yourself, your conscience speaks out plainly and distinctly; it cannot be deceived by flattery; and therefore you must hear it in silence, and bear your shame as best you can. You think perhaps, my sin was committed in secret, no one knows anything of it but myself and my associate in guilt, and I am certain that it will never be revealed, so that I can appear before men just as good as I was before, and they will have the same good opinion of me. True it is that, when you do wrong, you do not call in witnesses; and impurity, theft, and other shameful crimes are committed in the darkness of the night, and in hidden holes and corners, and are concealed from the eyes of men by a hypocritical appearance of piety; but tell me, “If you have no other witness of your sin, have you not the testimony of your own conscience?” If no man knows of your guilt, it is known, at all events, to God and to yourself, and that is enough to cause you to be tortured by the pangs of remorse. If men, angels, demons, nay, even God himself, were to leave you in peace, you have within you a torturer whose bitter reproaches you must bear to your great confusion; and it is in that especially that the torment of a bad conscience consists, namely, that it annoys and troubles you alone and in secret.
Nay, the fact that you dare not make known your trouble to others, rather increases, than lessens it. Every one who is afflicted seeks consolation from his friends and acquaintances, and relates to them in detail all that he has to suffer, and he is able to bear his trials far more courageously when he is aware that others sympathize with him. The bitterest trial of all is the secret of which one dares not complain, and which he must bear alone and unsupported. Thus it often happens that a man appears outwardly with a smiling countenance, while in the depths of his heart he is consumed with anguish. And so it is in reality with the sinner who is tortured by a bad conscience. Shame prevents him from making known his sufferings to any one. That others have a good opinion of him, instead of lessening, rather increases his torment; for his conscience continually cries out to him: See, men look upon you as good and pious, and you are in reality a slave of the devil! What must God think of you?
And how are you to get rid of those importunate upbraidings? Will you run away from them? But whither can you go? No matter where you are, or what you do, you have your conscience, that is your tormenting demon, always with you. Nor can you induce it to be still; for conscience is, so to speak, without shame; it cannot be persuaded by flattery, or bribed by gifts; it is insensible to kind, as well as to harsh words, and it persists in doing the office entrusted to it by God, namely, exhorting and tormenting the sinner. It is a thorn in his side, which causes acute pain, that no ointment, or medicine can allay until the thorn is pulled out. In vain do you keep away from sermons, lest you should hear some allusion to your secret vices; and it generally is the case that they who have a bad conscience are very negligent in hearing the word of God, especially when they have reason to suspect that the truth will be told them; but I say, it is no use for you to try to save yourself in that way, for at home, in your own room, you have a preacher who tells you the truth about your sins better than any one else, and that preacher is your own conscience, which reproaches you with your wickedness all the more bitterly because you try to avoid hearing what it has to say. When the bell rings for the sermon, your conscience says to you, Unhappy man that you are! You have gone so far now, that you dare not hear the word of God, which used to strengthen and comfort you in the divine service. In fact, do what you will, you cannot avoid the pangs of remorse, and at last you will be obliged, if you wish to get any rest at all, to make known your shame and your sin.
How many plans the sinner resorts to, in order to free himself from the heavy and loathsome burden of his own conscience! But all to no purpose. He goes into company in order to divert his mind from its troubles; he tries to steal away the time, as it were, from his cares and to conceal his anguish from the eyes of men by all kinds of amusements, feasting, and dancing; but in vain midst of his pleasures his smiling countenance, his outward gayety, are only a cloak to hide the trouble and uneasiness that are gnawing at his heart, which is groaning and sighing under a heavy burden. Sometimes the sinner thinks that he will silence the voice of conscience, and get rid of his trouble by putting off his confession for months and years, or, what is still worse, by concealing in confession the shameful sin that causes him remorse but he only makes matters worse; for the burden becomes heavier on account of the additional guilt of sacrilege. He then tries another plan, and imagines that outward acts of devotion, or long prayers, or almsgiving will quiet his uneasy conscience; but here too he is mistaken, and his remorse is only increased, for he is continually reminded that his prayers and devotions are not sincere, since he has not honestly made his peace with God. No matter what efforts he may make otherwise to find peace, he will at last be forced to disclose his own shame, to make known his sins in confession, and penitently and humbly to beg pardon for it. If he refuses to do that, he will never be freed from his torments.
How painful it must be for a soul to be thus perpetually tortured! According to the
wise man, “It is better to dwell in a wilderness, than with a quarrelsome and passionate
woman;” and I can easily imagine that such is the case; but is it not a still more
unbearable torment to have to dwell with a bad conscience, that is always reproaching
you? O sinner! are you not really mad and out of your senses to expose yourself to
such lasting and intolerable torture, and to forfeit the grace and friendship of
God for the sake of some momentary pleasure, or trifling gain, or short-
II. While a prisoner is being tried and his case still under examination, he is full of anxiety as to how it will end ; but if the judge passes sentence of death on him, his fear and terror know no bounds, as all those who have to prepare such prisoners for death know by experience. No matter how resigned they may have been before to the will of God, so that one might think that there would not be the least trouble in preparing them for death, when the fatal sentence is announced to them, they change at once, and give way to extreme anguish and despair. They brood over their fate, and neither know what they are saying themselves, nor understand what is said to them, and if their terror allows them to sleep, they dream of nothing but the sword, the wheel, or the gallows that is to deprive them of life.
See, O sinner, how it is with you, when you have within you the tormenting demon
of a bad conscience. It not only reproaches you with your shame, but also reminds
you that sentence of death, and of eternal death, too, has been passed on you. You
are lost! it says; you have deserved death! As long as you are in this state, you
are doomed to destruction! Sentence is passed on you already; away to hell, to eternal
fire! When you hear the roar of the thunder and see the flash of the lightning, you
are filled with anguish by the voice of conscience, which cries out to you, take
care, an angry God is about to take vengeance on you! A thunder-
If you happen to hear of an accident, for instance, that poor man who was in perfect
health when he went to bed last night, was found dead this morning; or, another man
died in a quarter of an hour from a fit of apoplexy; or, that woman fell down and
broke her neck; all these things are apt to fill you with mortal terror. Ah, your
conscience says to you, you deserve that fate better than that man or that woman!
Who knows what may happen to you this very day? If you chance, even against your
will, to be present at a sermon which treats of death or hell, or the judgment of
God, you are terror-
Yes, says St. Crysostom, he who is plagued by a bad conscience often imagines that even lifeless creatures, the stones, the wall, and the shadows on it are so many voices that pronounce sentence on him; he is like a poor prisoner who, when he hears the least noise at his cell door, imagines that he is to be led forth at once to execution, although the noise may be merely the howling of the wind. The Holy Scripture gives us a striking proof of this in the wicked King Bahassar. Baltassar was seated at table surrounded by the nobles of his kingdom, when, in the midst of his revelry, he suddenly grew pale: and he cried out in dread, so that all who heard him were alarmed. And what was the matter? What had frightened him? “There appeared fingers, as it were of the hand of a man, writing over against the candlestick upon the surface of the wall of the king’s palace; and the king beheld the joints of the hand that wrote.” And what did it write? Three little words, that the king did not even understand. What reason had he then for giving way to such excessive terror? It was not the hand, that frightened him, but his bad conscience, which made him suspect, what was really the case, that the hand was writing on the wall the sentence of death which his conscience had already pronounced on him.
There are countless examples of the same kind: Theodoric, king of Italy, nearly fainted
with fright when he saw a fish brought to table, thinking it was the head of Symmachus,
whom he had caused to be put to death, that was coming open-
Perhaps you may think that, because David had, before he sinned, a good and tender conscience, it is no wonder that he felt the sting of remorse so keenly afterwards? Ask, then, another, who was sunk in the very depths of depravity ; Luther, I mean, who cast all honor and shame to the winds, who feared neither God nor man, who bid defiance to spiritual and temporal authority, to princes and potentates; and you will find that even he could not escape the tortures of remorse. Every day he indulged to excess in the pleasures of the table, hoping thereby to silence the reproaches of his conscience, but in vain. Hear his own words on this subject, as they are given by Ulenberg, his biographer: “Because I sometimes appear cheerful, people think I lead a happy life; but God sees what kind of a life I lead.” He confessed to his friend Pomeranus that it was impossible to describe the mental anguish he suffered. You may read of people whose hair turned suddenly gray through remorse of conscience. Such was the case with Louis the Severe, whose hair turned gray in a single night through remorse at a murder he was guilty of; so that although he was quite a young man, he looked next morning as if he were seventy years old. You will find examples of people who, to get rid of the tortures of remorse, made away with themselves by hanging themselves to a bed post, or piercing their hearts with a dagger, or cutting their throats, or drowning themselves, etc. Thus they preferred to go straight to hell, rather than bear any longer the torment of a bad conscience. So true is it that “amongst all the tribulations that can afflict the human soul, there is none greater than a bad conscience.”
Sinners, to you I address my conclusion in the words of St. Paul to the Romans, “what fruit therefore had you then in those things, of which you are now ashamed?” Tell me, pray, what advantage have you gained by incurring the guilt of sin in the sight of God? What remains to you now of the past and momentary pleasure in which you sought your gratification? What have you gained by concealing that abominable sin in confession? You know now by your own experience, although you may not show it outwardly, what the result of your sin is, and it is nothing else but secret shame, anguish, and remorse of conscience, a hell upon earth. Are you not cruel towards yourselves in thus burdening your minds with such intolerable anguish? Are you not foolish in deferring repentance, when you can at once free yourselves from the miserable state in which you are? But perhaps you think I am exaggerating; perhaps you do not feel this torture so keenly? I know that not every sinner suffers from remorse in the same degree; there are some who suffer more, and others, less; according as their consciences are tender, or hardened; in the same way, too, there are some vices that cause more shame than others; and finally, time lessens remorse to a certain extent; yet there is hardly any one who does not feel it in some degree or other. But if there is any one who, after having committed grievous sin, feels no uneasiness, nor remorse, then, alas! I need say no more to him, for he is evidently hardened in wickedness and abandoned by God and that is the greatest punishment, next to eternal damnation, that can be inflicted on sin. But if you still feel your consciences uneasy, oh, then thank God, and drive away the tormenting demon at once by sincere repentance and amendment! Do not think the worse of preachers or confessors if they reprove your vices sharply and try to deter you from sin by describing the malice of it. They mean well with you, and their object is either to save you from falling into sin and from thus incurring the tortures of remorse, or to free you from the state of sin, if you are already in it. If there was no other punishment for sin but an uneasy conscience, you should try to avoid all sin. If there was no other reward for a virtuous life, but the peace of mind that a good conscience brings, that alone should be enough to induce you to try to do the holy will of God in all things. Pious Christians! let this be your conclusion: do not allow yourselves to be deceived by the false and merely apparent happiness of sinners; serve your God faithfully, and enjoy in the possession of the highest good that peace which surpasses all worldly joys, and is a foretaste of the eternal joys of heaven. Amen.
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