Dominica III in Quadragesima - Spring Cleaning our Souls
PRESENTATION: Cleansing our souls in Lent
1865 Sin creates a proclivity to sin; it engenders vice by repetition of the same acts. This results in perverse inclinations which cloud conscience and corrupt the concrete judgment of good and evil.
EXPLANATION: Without penance we are easy targets
24 When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through places without water, seeking rest: and not finding, he saith: I will return into my house whence I came out.
25 And when he is come, he findeth it swept and garnished.
26 Then he goeth and taketh with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself: and entering in they dwell there. And the last state of that man becomes worse than the first.
By the confessions which you have made your souls are healed, but not as yet saved; for, if you return to sin, you shall be again condemned to hell, and the injury caused by the relapse shall be far greater than that which you sustained from your former sins.
Every sin, though pardoned, always leaves a wound on the soul. When to this wound a new one is added, the soul becomes so weak that, without a special and extraordinary grace from God, it is impossible for her to conquer temptations.
IMPLICATION: Keeping our Lenten resolve
Let him often sharpen his sword renewing his first purpose which he undertook; now meditating on the Passion of the Lord: now on the combats and bloody wounds of the martyrs: now on the flames of the eternal fire, now on the great horror of the demons: now on the unbearable stench of the pitch and sulphur, now on the lamentable crying of the damned: now on the despair of all salvation. These things, if they come to the mind, shake off sloth: repress the concupiscence of the flesh; consume the rust of vices, reprove negligence: and mightily enkindle to spiritual progress, and the fervour of devotion.