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Retreat Thoughts: Series 11 

U s e and jVIisuse 
By 

TIMOTHY BROSNAHAN, S.J. 

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The Use of Created Things 
TH E first rule in the use of created things is that so far as it is permitted to us by the law of God (that is with regard to all those creatures the use of which is not neces-
sary for fulfilling the obligations of the moral law of our 
state of life) we should endeavor to render ourselves indif-
ferent. What is indifference? In general, it is a disposition 
of soul that renders us neutral or unconcerned with regard 
to persons and things. This neutral disposition of soul may 
arise, first from want of inclination, from a natural insensi-
bility or obtuseness, and as such it is no more a virtue or an 
indication of a virtue than the indifference of a wooden 
Indian to heat or cold, or the insensibility of a thick-skinned 
donkey to pain. Some men are so constituted by nature 
that creatures possessing attractions for the generality of 
men, leave them unaffected. They are color-blind with re-
gard to certain creatures; and this characteristic of theirs, 
instead of being a virtue may show an incapacity for virtue 
of a high kind; "virtue is perfected in weakness." It may 
often become a cause of vanity, self-approval, narrowness 
and uncharitable judgments of others and may be the result 
of an egotistic absorption of the pursuit of the object of one 
passion or of peculiar temperament. Christian virtue is not 
apathy nor pagan Stoicism, nor is it loss of interest; it is 
compatible with strong inclination. A saint is a man not 
of weak passions, but of strong passions conquered. 

This neutral disposition of the soul toward creatures 
may arise, secondly, from the free self-determining will by 
which in spite of sensible repugnance or sensible attraction, 
it exercises a mastery over the lower appetites and chooses 
or rejects creatures in proportion as their use conduces to 
the acquirement of its last end or impedes it. I t is will power. 
If I am asked the questions: Would you, if choice were left 
to you, rather live in this place or that? Would you rather 
have this occupation or that? Would you rather study or 
have a pleasant time?, Would you rather work or have what 
is called a soft job? Would you rather have good health or 



2 USE AND MISUSE 
bad? Would you rather associate with one person than the 
other? Would you rather be exempt from some burden-
some requirement of life or be obliged to conform to it? 
If, I say, I am asked these or similar questions, I may give 
one or two answers: I may say I should prefer one alternative 
and should dislike the other, because one is agreeable and 
gives me an opportunity of following my natural inclina-
tion while the other is disagreeable and excites a natural 
aversion. Or I m&y say: I do not know; either might be 
conducive or hurtful to salvation; I cannot foresee the out-
come of either; I have no choice, though I may have natural 
inclination. 

Now, if I habitually recur to the prinoiple implied in the 
second answer, whenever there is question of action not 
prescribed by the law of God, by my lawful superiors or by 
the duties or proprieties of my state in life, I have acquired 
that disposition of soul towards creatures which is the logical 
attitude of one who apprehends their relations to himself and 
to their Creator. I have brought home to myself as a living 
and practical conviction the truth that they are means, and 
that all there is in them of utility or attractiveness is relative 
and subordinate to the supreme end of creation, the glory 
of the Creator. But if I habitually answer in accordance 
with the principle that underlies the first apswer, I am a 
utilitarian, and I have made myself the end of creation. If 
I tell you what a person's dominant interest is, what he is 
constantly seeking for, I have told you what he considers 
the end of his creation, what he has chosen as his god. If 
we make the object of our quest throughout the day the 
comfort we get from creatures of whatever kind that com-
fort may be, whether it be comfort of the body or comfort 
of the soul, we have allowed the old pagan element that is 
in all of us to reassert itself. For paganism essentially 
consisted in this that the satisfaction of man's passions and 
desires was his highest good. I t made a creature the end 
and naturally resulted in idolatry—the adoration of crea-
tures. The pagan carried this principle to its logical con-
clusion; we attempt to serve two masters, God and self. 
"And Elias coming to all the people said: How long will you 
halt between two sides. If the Lord be God, follow Him; 
but if Baal, then follow him" (3 Kings xviii, 21). 



THE USE OF CREATED THINGS 3 
Indifference, therefore, is an habitual disposition of will 

which suspends the act of choice as long as the motives for 
choice are personal pain or pleasure, natural inclination or 
aversion. By it accordingly we are protected in our use of 
creatures and against the inordinate attraction exercised by 
these creatures. Indifference, therefore, is a self-poise or 
equilibrium of the will, by which it remains master of itself, 
and is enabled to elicit its deliberate acts independently of 
those impulses which theologians call the indeliberate move-
ments of the will. It does not consist, therefore, in being 
free from the instinctive likes and dislikes of our nature. The 
lives of the Saints and the example of Our Lord Himself, our 
supreme Model, in the garden of Gethsemani teach us that 
heroic virtue is compatible with exquisite sensitiveness of our 
physical and emotional nature; that in fact heroic virtue is 
scarcely possible to one whose nature is loggish and leaden. 
But although we cannot acquire absolute indifference of 
sense-inclination, we can acquire habitual control over our 
inclinations. Furthermore, if from past yieldings, any of 
those inclinations have acquired an intensity and strength 
beyond what is normal, we can by degrees and by repeated 
acts of self-control moderate their vehemence, and so prevent 
them from hurrying us into excess in our choosing. 

The necessity of doing this is first logical. The sanity 
of reason demands of us that we use things for the purpose 
to which they are by nature and the decree of their Creator 
adapted. The m^n, for instance, that makes use of sleep, 
food, drink or pleasure, for a purpose that is antagonistic to 
his great destiny in life, who employs his mind, his tongue 
or his eyes to injure or frustrate the reason of his existence 
is not less ludicrously illogical than the cook who attempts to 
make chicken soup by throwing away the bird and boiling the 
feathers, or the celebrated character who borrowed a pick-
axe to saw a barrel in order to make a hen-house for his dog. 

The necessity of acquiring this indifference is secondly 
physical. Creatures can only give what they have. If we 
seek in them our complete happiness, we shall live in per-
petual disappointment and unrest; we shall gain a passing 
pleasure followed by a profounder feeling of dissatisfaction-
we shall gradually acquire a diseased dislike for the things 
of the spirit; we shall lose the joyousness of children of God. 



4 USE AND MISUSE 
The necessity is finally moral. This indifference is neces-

sary for all men who wish to avoid mortal and venial pin and 
those faults of impulse which antecede full deliberation but 
are the consequence of culpable negligence. I t is moreover 
a conditio sine qua non of higher sanctity. 

R U L E OF P R E F E R E N C E 
The second rule for the right use of created things is, 

not only to hold our wills in a negative attitude of indiffer-
ence towards creatures precisely as creatures, but further-
more among creatures which may help us to attain our end, 
to prefer to choose those which more directly, safely and 
effectively promote God's glory and secure our salvation. 
This rule, when analyzed, seems to be nothing more than 
an application to our present subject-matter of the first and 
greatest of the commandments: "Thou shalt love the Lord, 
thy God with thy Whole heart, thy whole mind and all thy 
strength," for if the supreme and primary end of creation is 
that God should be known, loved and served, every inferior 
motive is to be subjected to this. But if, of two means of 
promoting God's glory presented to our consideration, one is 
more serviceable than the other, the only motive we could 
have in choosing the less serviceable would be the desire of 
seeking our own pleasure or comfort. We should, therefore, 
be subordinating a measure at least of God's glory to self 
and we should be loving God with' a partial heart, a partial 
mind, and with some only of our strength. 

Again, the salvation of our soul is not a conditional good, 
the predestined measure of whose blessedness is an affair of 
our free will. The amount of blessedness we are created to 
attain was decreed from eternity by our Creator. We may 
not attain that measure, but we shall only fail to do so by the 
entrance of some admixture of inordinate self-love into our 
service of God. What will it profit a man to gain a temporary 
and transient pleasure, and to lose a part of that unspeakable 
glory that "God has prepared for them that love Him" 
(1 Cor. ii, 9; Isaias lxiv, 4 ) . 

Two difficulties have been proposed against these prin-
ciples. First it has been urged that this last rule is not a.logi-
cal inference from the principles derived from the truth of 
man's destiny. Because an efficacious desire of attaining our 



THE USE OF CREATED THINGS 5 
last end is compatible with any choice of means which are 
conducive thereto. Although, therefore, some means may 
be more conducive than others, a person would act prudently 
and virtuously, if he did not use these, provided that the 
means he did use were actually conducive to his last end, 
even though less so than others. 

The answer to this difficulty is that no one pretends to 
assert that one would lose his soul, if he did not always 
choose those creatures which more effectively conduce to his 
last end. There is no question of inferring an obligation 
under formal sin, either mortal or venial. But the inference 
is absolutely logical, that in view of the supreme and un-
conditioned importance of our last end, right reason dic-
tates that we should with our whole mind and all our strength 
and with a single eye, choose and desire always among crea-
tures those that more efficaciously further that end; and that 
we cannot fail to do this, without incurring those stains of 
soul which though they are not mortal sins, nor formal venial 
sins, are nevertheless culpable imperfections which dimmish 
our merit, make our service of our Creator defective, and, 
unless constantly guarded against, become an inducement to 
deliberate venial sins and thence to mortal sin. The Council 
of Trent has defined as an article of Faith that a just man 
cannot during his life avoid all venial sins, except by a spe-
cial privilege, such as was conferred on the Blessed Virgin. 
The common opinion of theologians and Saints interprets 
this decree to refer not necessarily to those acts by which 
one deliberately chooses to offend God in matter that is 
venial, but at least to those imperfections which1 through 
want of vigilance or purity of intention sometimes accom-
pany the acts of the most perfect. We know moreover that 
some holy persons have taken vows to avoid all deliberate 
venial sins. Such a vow would be foolhardy, if it referred to 
those venial sins of which the Council of Trent speaks. 
There are, therefore, accompanying our acts, imperfections 
arising from our want of singleness and thoroughness in 
seeking our last end. We are, therefore, absolutely logical 
in inferring that we should, if we want to act with the pleni-
tude' of reason in our use of creatures, seek and desire those 
only that more directly, safely and effectively conduces to 
the glory of God and secures our salvation. 



6 USE AND MISUSE 
A second difficulty is urged against the principle of in-

difference. It is said that if we are to be indifferent to every 
creature, we must suppress every desire. If we must sup-
press every desire, we may not exercise the virtue of hope nor 
pray for any favor short of salvation. The answer of course 
is that there are men whose desires have been inordinate and 
ill-regulated and have led them into sin, and who conse-
quently must be thoroughly convinced that the objects of the 
desires are creatures whose use is good when subordinated 
to their last end, and evil when not so subordinated. To 
get such a man in the proper dispositions, creatures are pro-
posed to his considerations precisely as they are means. 
When this truth is profoundly apprehended, he is in a con-
dition to desire things in the light of his last end. This doc-
trine, therefore, if rightly understood, justifies us in desiring 
and praying for those things which are useful to ourselves 
or others, as often as we prudently judge that they help us 
or others to attain salvation or some condition of existence 
that is conducive to salvation. Furthermore, we may ask 
these favors of God, without adding the condition "if they 
are salutary," whenever we have prudential, though not 
absolute, certainty that by obtaining them we may serve our 
Creator more faithfully. The scope of this rule, therefore, is 
the reformation of inordinate desires and its application is 
valid so long as we are in the purgative way; so long 
namely, as we are in the habit of allowing ourselves to be 
impelled to action by unregulated love of creatures merely 
for the attractions they possess. I t is a calm thesis of rea-
son, not" exaggerated, nor appealing to mere emotion. 

No man of reason can deny assent of mind. No man 
of character can refuse conformity of will. Whoever acts 
according to it is a saint. A saint, therefore, is a man 
guided by reason, but by real reason, not by the sophistry 
of passion that masquerades as reason. Be reasonable, and 
you will fulfil the end of your creation and save your soul. 



Three Misuses 
W H A T I S S I N ? 

WE cannot easily put a definition of it in human words, but we may know it by its consequences. Even 
though we may not apprehend its intrinsic vileness and 
hideousness in itself, we may know it in the effects it pro-
duces. When we see God face to face, we shall know what 
it is to offend Him, to abandon Him for a creature. But we 
may by the light of God's grace get such an inferential 
knowledge of sin as is suited to our state of probation and 
faith. If sin expelled angels from Heaven, destroyed Para-
dise, made earth a valley of tears, created Hell and crucified 
the Son of God, it is an evil transcending our human compre-
hension, but not our recognition. We shall, therefore, con-
sider the effects produced by the misuse of created objects, 
i. e., by sin, in the Angels, in our first parents and in an indi-
vidual soul. 

P R I S O N AND E X I L E 
Let me first picture my soul in my body (a) as in a 

prison or workhouse; (b) the whole in this valley as in 
exile; (c) among brute animals. 

Philosophically speaking, it is, of course, untenable to 
consider our body as a prison or a workhouse, because our 
body is a part of our human nature and the dwelling of the 
soul in it is natural, whereas a prison is not natural to him 
who is detained in it, nor an essential part of him whom it 
confines. The soul occupies its present tenement of clay by 
an exigency and a necessity of its nature, because only by 
being first united to the body may it merit beatitude. Asceti-
cally, however, it is true, because the concrete body to which 
our soul is united—not the abstract body of which philoso-
phers speak, but this individual body of ours—has since the 
Fall, through its sensitive appetites, its gross cravings, its re-
bellions against reason, become a prison to the soul, detain-
ing it in the lower pleasures of-sense, depriving it of the lib-
erty which it would have had in the state of Paradise, and 
which it shall have again in a glorified body, of seeking its 
highest and only true good. Hence St. Paul could cry out: 
"Who shall deliver me from this body of death" (Rom. 

7 



8 USE AND MISUSE 
vii, 24) and David could pray, "Bring my soul out of prison, 
that I may praise T h y name" (Ps. cxli, 8). 

We are in the first place exiles from the Paradise, whence 
our first parents were expelled on account of original sin; 
and though the sin is wholly washed out by Baptism, yet on 
account of that original fault, our present habitation here 
was not in the original design of God destined for us and is, 
in regard to our first destined place of dwelling, truly an 
exile. Again, when we are in the state of grace, we are 
de jure citizens of heaven and consequently de facto exiles 
therefrom; and when in sin, de jure and de facto exiles from 
our native land. This is true of the whole man, body and 
soul, for since the resurrection of Christ, both are destined 
for a supernatural and eternal happiness. Hence in many 
places of Scripture man is said to be a wayfarer. St. Paul 
says, "We have not here a lasting city, but we seek one that 
is to come" (Heb. xiii, 14). Hence we say in the Salve 
Regina, " T o thee do we cry, exiled children of Eve." 

Our stay in this vale of tears is not only an exile, but 
a dangerous one. These brute animals are our adversaries, 
the devils, who go about like roaring lions, seeking whom 
they may devour; men who have made themselves apostles 
of evil, who in various parts of Scripture are compared to 
wolves, leopards, asps, basilisks, bears and dogs; our own 
souls when under the dominion of passion, for "man when he 
was in honor did not understand; he is compared to sense-
less beasts and is become like to them" (Ps. xlviii, 13). 

T H E S I N OF T H E A N G E L S 

I t is only from Faith that we know the fearful history 
of the fallen angels. Christ tells us, " I saw Satan like light-
ning falling from Heaven" (Luke x, 18), and St. Peter 
(2 Pet. ii, 4) tells us that, "God spared not the angels that 
sinned, but delivered them, drawn down by infernal ropes 
to the lower hell, unto torments." From other sources, from 
the Fathers and theologians of the Church, we know that 
their Creator had bestowed on them gifts both of nature of 
a transcendent kind and of grace beyond our conception, 
(i) They were pure spirits, without any admixture of mat-
ter; (ii) they were immortal, incapable of any corruption; 



THREE MISUSES 9 
(iii) they possessed intellects of the highest created power; 
(iv) they possessed free wills, which nothing could coerce; 
(v) they were wise with the plentitude of all natural knowl-
edge; (vi) they were powerful above all inferior creatures, 
so that nothing created could resist or impede them; 
(vii) each of them possessed so fully the perfections of his 
nature that no two of the same kind could exist; (viii) they 
could pass from one point of space to the remotest distance 
in the twinkling of an eye without effort; (ix) they could 
communicate their thoughts to their fellow Angels simply by 
willing it; (x) in number there were myriads and myriads of 
them. Even after the Fall, Daniel saw thousands of thou-
sands ministering to the Ancient of days, and ten thousand 
times a hundred thousand standing before Him (Dan. vii, 10; 
Apoc. v, 11). They were in a word fitted by nature to 
know, love, and serve God in the highest degree. 

Added to these natural gifts, St. Thomas and other 
theologians hold that at the moment of their creation, they 
were placed in a state of natural beatitude, made citizens 
of a paradise of delights, and that on them were bestowed 
supernatural graces rendering them capable of meriting and 
possessing supernatural beatitude, the beatific vision of God 
face to face. St. Thomas holds that each of them received 
graces greater or less according to their natural perfections, 
and that those of greater natural gifts were destined to give 
greater glory to God and enjoy an ampler beatitude. 

What was required of them? They were placed at the 
moment of their creation in a state of probation, in a para-
dise of natural delights, but without the beatific vision of 
God, and they were required to elicit an act of charity, to 
love their Creator above all things. St. Thomas tells us 
that immediately on eliciting the first act of charity, they 
were to be transferred to Heaven and supernatural beatitude, 
and accordingly confirmed in sanctity. We have, therefore, 
three instants. In the first they were created and sancti-
fied. In the second, contemplating their own created ex-
cellence and the works of creation and grace, they by one 
act loved their Creator above all things, or yielding to pride 
and ignoring their Creator they loved themselves above Him. 
In the next instant, those that were found faithful were 
transferred to unending supernatural bliss, and the faithless 



10 USE AND MISUSE 
were cast out of the state of natural beatitude into an ever-
lasting Hell. The sin of the rebel Angels, therefore, con-
sisted in this, that dazzled by their own beauty, they yielded 
to an inordinate love of their own excellence, sought their 
own glory as the end of their creation and so attempted to 
make themselves gods. Of one of them, who was amongst the 
highest, Isaias has this passage: "And thou hast said in 
thy heart: I will ascend into Heaven; I will exalt my throne 
above the stars of God; I will be like the most High" (Isaias 
xiv, 13). And of Lucifer, the strongest spirit that fought 
in Heaven and the fairest that lost it, Ezechiel says: 

Thou wast the seal of resemblance, full of wisdom and perfect in 
beauty. Thou wast in the pleasures of the paradise of God, every 
precious stone was thy covering. . . . Thou wast a cherub stretched 
out and protecting, and I set thee in the holy mountain of God. Thou 
hast walked in the midst of the stbnes of fire. Thou wast perfect in 
thy ways from the day of creation, until iniquity was found in thee. 
. . . Thou hast sinned, and I cast thee out from the mountain of God. 
. . . O covering cherub, out of the midst of the stones of fire. And thy 
heart was lifted up with thy beauty; thou hast lost thy wisdom in 
thy beauty" (Ezech. xxviii, 12-17). 

Let us parallel our story with that of the fallen Angels. 
We were baptized into grace, receiving the seal of God's 
resemblance; gifted with faculties of nature and grace fit-
ting us to give great glory to God and to enjoy as a reward 
a high grade of supernatural beatitude; every precious stone 
was our covering, every virtue was offered to us to invest 
our souls therewith, sanctifying grace and the virtues that 
should accompany it. We have been set in the holy moun-
tain of God to be beacons and a protection to others. We 
have walked in the midst of the stones of fires, the home of 
God's burning love, having Him sacramentally dwelling on 
the same street in which we walk and live and work. Yet 
we have forsaken God and sought self and sinned not once 
only, but many times; and for our many sins we have not 
been cast out from the mountain of God, nor out of the midst 
of the stones of fire. Set our pride and selfishness against 
that of those bright, resplendent spirits who in the second 
moment of their existence for one sin lost everything; hap-
piness, wisdom, beauty; lost themselves irredeemably. Oh, 
who could not weep for them! But let us bow our head in 
shame and confusion and weep for ourselves. 



THREE MISUSES 11 

T H E S I N OF O U R F I R S T P A R E N T S 
Adam and Eve, our first parents, were created in Para-

dise, raised at the moment of their creation to the super-
natural state with the consequent right to the Beatific Vision. 
Besides the gifts of pure nature, they were endowed with 
certain preternatural gifts. In the first place, the inferior 
appetites were subject to reason; they could not experience 
those rebellions of the flesh which they have left to us, their 
disinherited children as a fell inheritance; nor that confu-
sion and darkness of the understanding which is the conse-
quence of personal and ancestral passion; nor that weakness 
of the will that blinds deliberation in the presence of violent 
or alluring temptation. In the second place, their bodies 
were free from disease or a tendency thereto, perfect in 
strength, lighter and less of a burden to the soul, than the 
body of a sprightly child. In the third place, they were 
exempt from death and the pathetic decay of strength and 
intellectual powers that precede death, and the loathsome 
corruption that follows it. As soon as they had finished the 
conditions of their probation and were satisfied with their 
earthly existence, they were to be transferred body and soul, 
without passing through the dark and terrifying portals of 
death, to the supernatural beatitude of heaven. 

Such was the liberality of God to our first parents. They 
were in the visible world to be what the Angels were in the 
invisible world, the lords of creation and ministers of the 
Creator, His priests offering the sacrifice of service, and His 
prophets interpreting and declaring the glory of His works. 
All nature was subject to them; all the fruits of nature 
were for their use. But their condition was a state of pro-
bation; they were to be subjected to one test. "And the 
Lord God took man and put him into the paradise of pleasure 
. . . and He commanded him, saying: Of every tree of para-
dise thou shalt eat: but of the tree of knowledge of good and 
evil, thou shalt not eat" (Gen. ii, 15-17). They were to 
give obedience in a little thing in order to acknowledge con-
stantly their subjection to God; they were to practice a small 
degree of poverty—one small thing they could not use as 
their own; they were to practice a modicum of continence— 
they might not suffer their love of pleasure to carry them 



12 USE AND MISUSE 
to the forbidden fruit. The obligation of submitting their 
wills to the will of their Superior and Creator, of restraining 
their desire of possession, of controlling their appetite for 
pleasure was imposed. They failed in their test; they knew 
good and evil; and as their reason rebelled against God, so 
their lower appetites rose in rebellion and their bodies became 
a source of shame to them; they fled from Paradise, ex-
pelled by the flaming sword of knowledge and shame; they 
lost the gifts of original justice, and they transmitted that 
loss to their descendants as a dowry of sin awaiting the soul 
at its first entrance to the body. One sin they committed 
and the face of nature was changed for them and for us. 

The drama of Eden has been enacted in the souls of each 
of us, not once, but often. In youth vested with the bap-
tismal veil of purity and possessing qualities of mind and 
body that were intimations of a lost paradise, we yielded to 
the fascination of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, 
became conscious for the first time of personal guilt and our 
eyes were open t o our shame. Through a mercy of God 
we did not see the whole hideousness of our fall, for the 
sight of ourselves as we were would have been intolerable. 
Our guilt became more terrifying, if like Adam and Eve our 
sin became a source of sin to others, a prolific seed of evil 
reproducing itself we know not how indefinitely. But, 
through God's mercy, light enough was given to us to re-
pent. Nay more, we were given the grace to "put on the new 
man, Who according to God is created in justice." Yet how 
often we have been faithless again to these high and en-
nobling obligations! The conscience of each will tell as we 
unfold the dishonorable record. 

I N D I V I D U A L S I N 
Go down in imagination to the gates of hell; recall that 

sin of your past life that looms above others in malice and 
haunting ugliness, and contemplate a damned soul suffering 
the everlasting pains of the bottomless pit for having once 
committed that sin. The question has arisen why we, who 
think so benignly of God, should hold as certain that many 
men have in fact been damned for one mortal sin. I t is 
theologically certain that by one mortal sin we merit the 
eternal loss of our souls, that the advent of death finding 



THREE MISUSES 13 

us in the state of grace is what the Council of Trent calls 
the magnum donum perseverantix, the great gift of final 
grace, a special gift distinct from and surpassing any other 
gifts of grace given through life. Therefore, though we 
know the love and mercy of God, we know also the awful 
character and effect of one mortal sin, and, contemplating 
the history of the multitudinous generations of men who 
have sinned, we cannot hesitate to declare what all sound 
theology makes a n t e c e d e n t l y probable, that among the 
numbers of the human race who died in sin, there were many 
who on the commission of one mortal sin met "the shadow 
feared by man," who were undeserving of the great gift of 
final grace, or who, if it were offered, refused it in an excess 
of maddening anger, an orgy of intoxicating lust or in the 
pride of blinding ambition or the greed of stupefying ava-
rice. Or we may look at it in another light. We consider 
the case of one who committed many sins and successively 
received the grace of repentance and pardon, but who on the 
commission of one more sin, after he had for the last time 
been forgiven, died, having by that last sin filled the measure 
of his iniquity. He, who has "ordered all things in measure 
and number and weight" (Wis. xi, 21), has decided how 
often a sinner shall offend Him (Ps. vii, 12, 13). 

Compare that one sin and its consequences with our 
many sins. Acknowledge that we have merited eternal 
damnation in a lower pit than that lost soul; that perfect 
justice would have been meted out to us, if on the com-
mission of our first mortal sin we had passed from God's 
sunlight into the outer darkness of hell. If a damned soul 
were snatched from Hell, if, through some miracle of Divine 
omnipotence, it were possible to restore to it again that 
light of intellect which is now utterly obscured, and the at-
tractive power of its will towards good which is now wholly 
palsied, if God could give again to that soul the capacity 
of knowing the true and loving the good, and would allow it 
a chance for penance and repentance, what would be its 
gratitude for such mercy, its loving wonder at such a bounty 
and its love for such a God! Yet if we have ever com-
mitted a mortal sin and deserved hell and escaped through 
God's providence and grace, we are in the condition of such 
a soul. 



My Own Misuses 
M Y S I N S 

I CONSIDER the sins of my life not with the arid and 
1 statistical precision as to number and species of one 
whose purpose is to make an exact enumeration; but with 
the shame and sorrow of one who seeks to produce a con-
trite and humbled heart. Like King Ezechias on his bed of 
sickness I shall say to the Lord: " I will recount to thee all 
my years in the bitterness of my soul" (Isaias xxxviii, I S ) . 
Divide our lives, therefore, into periods. Each of us will 
find that his life falls into certain chapters of large out-
lines and characteristic features. There are certain breaks 
in our lives, certain boundary lines that begin with infideli-
ties or sin and end with special marks of God's providence 
over us, and some great favor of His love to us. Astrono-
mers tell us that the sun warms us more as the earth recedes 
from it. In our case, God's love for us seemed to become 
more intense as we attempted to withdraw from Him. Divid-
ing our lives into periods, consider first the years of child-
hood from the dawn of the use of reason to the day of our 
First Communion; secondly, the period elapsing from the 
first reception of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament to the 
day when through the loving vocation of God, we settled 
our state of life; lastly, our lives subsequent to that great 
turning point. Recall the infidelities proper to each of these 
periods; the sins of childhood by which the veil of baptism 
was stained, "So tiny a tot, so. great a sinner" (St. Augus-
tine). How the shades of the prison-house began gradually 
to close on us with the growing use of reason! Then recall 
the sins of youth after we were made soldiers of Christ 
through the Sacrament of Confirmation and after our union 
with Him through reception of His Body and Blood, our dis-
loyalties as soldiers, our treacheries as friends of Christ; 
the insincerities, levities, want of seriousness, of earnestness 

14 



MY OWN MISUSES IS 
and of generosity of one who was preparing for maturer 
years, our whole perfection during that period consisting in 
the avoidance of the ordinary sins of young persons, but 
without any real apprehension of the imperious nobility of 
our vocation as Christians. As we recall our sins and im-
perfections, we cry out in the lament of David over Saul and 
Jonathan: 

Consider, O Israel, for them that are dead, wounded on thy high 
places. The illustrious of Israel are slain upon thy mountains. How 
are the valiant fallen? Tell it not in Geth, publish it not in the streets 
of Ascalon, lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice. . . . Ye moun-
tains of Gelboe, let neither dew nor rain come upon you, for there 
was cast away the shield of the valiant, the shield of Saul, as though 
he had not been anointed with oil (2 Kings i, 18,19). 

Make no attempt to number the sins and follies of these 
periods. Confess rather like David that "my iniquities are 
multiplied above the hairs of my head." "Evils without 
number have surrounded me" (Ps. xxix, 13). Say to God 
in his words: " M y soul is filled with evils, and my life hath 
drawn nigh to Hell" (Ps. Ixxxvii, 5). "Unless the Lord had 
been my helper, my soul indeed would have almost dwelt 
in Hell" (Ps. xciii, 17). What is my life but a record of 
unreason and ingratitude, like an unclean worm I have slimed 
my path through life. My life has been one of foolishness 
and waste passed for the most part between sin and repent-
ance, yielding now to the allurements of the world, con-
quered by God's grace and called back like wandering sheep 
to His pasture, only to transgress the bounds again a t the 
sight of some attractive poisonous weed of sin. In the plain 
but expressive words of Scripture: "As a dog that returneth 
to his vomit, as the sow that was washed to its wallowing in 
the mire; so is a fool that repeats his folly" (Prov. xxvi, 11). 

I N D I G N I T Y OF S I N 

Every sin has two aspects; it is first an indignity to our 
rational nature, a degradation of our reason, and this char-
acter it would always have even though it were not pro-
hibited by the law of God, even though we were morally 
free to commit it if we pleased; and secondly, it is a viola-



16 USE AND MISUSE 
tion of the mandate of the Supreme legislator of the Uni-
verse. First, there is the inherent unreasonableness and de-
formity of our sins, apart from any command of God prohib-
iting them. An action outraging our rational nature would 
be repulsive to intellect and will, even though God had not 
by a decree of His wisdom forbidden it; and after its com-
mission, we would still experience that sense of spiritual and 
intellectual disgust, that feeling of self-offence that is in 
every rational being, even in children, the inevitable conse-
quence of an indignity to reason, and is sometimes so intense 
and painful as even to manifest itself in physical effects. 

Every sin is of its nature a triumph of some lower ele-
ment of our nature over that element by which we are men; 
some animal instinct usually has for the time claimed 
supremacy and usurped the place of reason. Hence various 
animals are by the common consent of mankind taken as 
types of various passions. The peacock of pride, the hog 
of gluttony and selfishness, the he-goat of sensuality, the 
tiger of cruelty and so of other passions. By sin, therefore, 
we become like to animals. "Man when he was in honor 
did not understand; he is compared to the senseless beasts, 
and is become like t o them" (Ps. xlviii, 13). But when the 
passion that excited to sin is satisfied, the commission of sin 
is followed by a reaction of the soul. Reason naturally and 
instinctively reasserts itself. Probably at no time is the re-
pulsiveness or degrading character of sin more clearly seen 
and felt than immediately after its commission. The re-
action of the soul seems to excite reason to the fulness of 
its powers, and we experience a vague and painful sense of 
shame and humiliation. An oppression and unrest takes 
hold of us that is more intolerable at times than physical 
pain. A consciousness of discomfort and dishonor in the soul 
weighs us down; and often, when the habit of sin is gross and 
enslaving, sickens the sinner, driving him not infrequently 
to self-horror and suicide. When sin has been consummated 
when passion has been sated, all the bewitching attraction 
or maddening impulse which incited to evil have passed 
away, and only the naked fact remains. All the glamour has 
been dispelled, all the reality remains, stripped of every-
thing but its actual hideousness; and this must always be 
as long as man is a reasonable being. 



MY OWN MISUSES IS 

W H A T AM I ? 
But sin is more than a degradation of our rational nature; 

it is an action prohibited by God, the supreme Legislator. 
What is the meanness and insignificance of the creature that 
turns against its Creator by violating His laws? Consider 
first the vileness of the sinner's body, for the sake of which 
he has so often forsaken his Creator. Between the com-
mand of infinite wisdom, justice and holiness and the de-
mands of his body, he has chosen to condemn the former and 
respect the latter. Now the vileness of the human body 
is a subject of which the decent conventions of life forbid 
us to speak, which natural delicacy dismisses from our 
thoughts; but which in the presence of sin, especially sins 
of sensuality, sins by which the body is pampered, should be 
a matter of meditation. Wjhat is our body? I t is a mass of 
corruption, which retains a semblance of cleanliness only 
through the informing power of the spiritual soul. When 
the soul leaves it, its native foulness appears. I t is preserved 
in health by processes that are disgusting. I t requires un-
ceasing care to prevent it from becoming an offence to our-
selves and to those who dwell with us. And this revolting 
thing becomes our god as often as we make its pleasures the 
end of our actions. Of such St. Paul says: "Many walk . . . 
that are enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruc-
tion, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is their shame" 
(Philip, iii, 8). "Why is earth and ashes proud?" asks the 
son of Sirach (Eccli. x, 9). 

Consider secondly, the insignificance of the sinner's soul 
that rises in revolt against its Creator. " M y substance is 
as nothing before Thee," says the Psalmist to God (Ps. 
xxxviii, 6), "and indeed all things are vanity, every man liv-
ing." From nothing the soul camie and out of nothing is it 
kept by the preserving hand of the God whom it offends, 
and while it is offending. "Without Me you can do noth-
ing," says Our Lord (John xv, S), not even the action that is 
sinful. Born in sin, by baptismal water and the merits of 
Christ it was raised to friendship with God, and by personal 
sins it reverted again to a state that was more disgraceful and 
worse than that of its origin. My puny intellect that can-
not grasp, let alone solve, some of the commonest problems 



18 USE AND MISUSE 
of existence, that after years of study can only confess that 
beneath the surface all is darkness, dares in the pride of its 
impotence to exalt itself against the omniscient intellect of 
the Creator. M y will that cannot exercise power enough 
to restrain passions, that is often a slave in the kingdom 
that it should rule, that is at times so weak, even when the 
reason sees the light, as to be a wonder and a cause of 
affright even to myself, rises in rebellion against the omnipo-
tent will of Him, whose fiat called me, and all things that 
are, out of nothing, and sustains them in the hollow of His 
hand. A will which we know from faith and from reflection, 
if we have ever seriously reflected on it, is so weak, so sub-
ject to the movements of passion, that if it were not for the 
preventing grace of God would be capable of falling into 
the most heinous sins ever committed, asserts itself and its 
independence against the supreme Will of the Universe. 

Lastly, consider myself as an individual in comparison 
with other men; with the great intellects that have fixed the 
grooves of human thought; with the powerful rulers that 
have controlled men as though they were pawns on a chess-
board; with the men whose existence has been a benediction 
to countless multitudes of the weak, the suffering, the igno-
rant and the erring. Go through the categories of human 
activities in the Church, in human society, in the religious 
orders and ask yourselves which of them would have suf-
fered, if you had not existed. Compare the tiny beings called 
men that move like ants over one of the smallest orbs that 
wanders through the infinite depths of stellar space, with the 
pure spirits that in myriads minister around the throne of 
God. If the earth with its great enterprises, its mighty 
governments; its vast accumulations of wealth and learning 
were suddenly to vanish like a summer cloudlet from the 
sky, were to fall back into primeval nothingness, would there 
be a noticeable void even in the material universe, and would 
the spiritual universe feel the shock? But in the presence of 
the only self-existent and necessary Being, whose infinite 
attributes the highest human intelligence can think of only 
under analogies and similitudes, all created things, from the 
lowest form of primal matter to the highest spiritual essence 
m the ranks of the Seraphim, are as shadows whose exist-
ence cannot increase the fountain of Being, and whose non-



MY OWN MISUSES IS 

existence or annihilation would leave the Infinite Reality in 
unchanged and unchangeable fulness of self-beatitude. (See 
Wisdom xi, 23; Isaias xl, IS). And yet, I, a speck of dust 
in the illimitable and glorious world of creation, rebel against 
this Being! 

W H O I S G O D ? 

But what is the majesty of Him against whom the sin-
ner rebels? He has infinite attributes but the three attributes 
of goodness, wisdom and omnipotence contrast most strongly 
with our malice, folly and imbecility. Consider first, the in-
finite goodness of God, so immeasurable, that if another in-
finite love were possible, it would all be due to Him, so over-
powering, that it would be absolutely and metaphysically im-
possible to see it as it, and not be rapt by it into an uncon-
trollable ecstasy of adoring love—a loveableness which the 
seraphim and cherubim, the most perfect created intelli-
gences, find the fulness of their being in worshipping, and 
praising as the "Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of Hosts." 
"And the four living creatures had each of them six wings; 
and round about and within they are full of eyes. And they 
rest not day and night saying, Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God 
Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come" (Apoc. 
iv, 8). And I a sinner have despised and rejected the infinite 
goodness for the sake of some created and remote semblance 
of it! Driven by a thirst for happiness I have abandoned a 
fountain of living water,—for the sake of a mirage in a barren 
desert! Not only that, but I have loved sin in that thrice 
holy Presence, and have done evil and committed iniquity 
before those eyes t h a t are too pure to behold evil and that 
cannot look on iniquity (See Hab. i, 13). 

Consider secondly, the infinite wisdom of God, by which 
He knows all things created or to be created, all things that 
under any possible conditions could become creatures, and 
by which He knows Himself; incomprehensible in His judg-
ments and unsearchable in His ways; who only has immor-
tality, and inhabiteth light inaccessible; whom no man hath 
seen or can see (Rom. xi, 33; 1 Tim. vi, 16). He knows the 
secrets of human hearts; "the works of all flesh are before 
Him and there is nothing hid from His eyes. He seeth from 



20 USE AND MISUSE 
eternity to eternity and there is nothing wonderful before 
Him" (Eccli. xxxix, 24). "His eyes are upon the ways of 
man and He considereth all their steps. There is no darkness 
. . . where they may be hid Who work iniquity" (Job xxxiv, 
21). Contrast the ignorance of a sinner, who practically, if 
not in formal thought, thinks that the eyes of God are not 
upon him when he sins, who in effect says in his heart the 
words of him whom Ecclesiasticus reprehends: " I shall be 
hidden from God . . . in such a multitude I shall not be 
known; for what is my soul in such an immense creation" 
(Ecclus. xvi, 16, 17). "Whom do I fear? The most High 
will not remember my sins . . . and he [the sinner] knoweth 
not," says the preacher, "that the eyes of the Lord are far 
brighter than the sun, beholding round about all the ways of 
men, and the bottom of the deep, and looking into the hearts 
of men, into the most hidden places" (Ecclus. xxiii, 26, 27). 

Lastly, consider the omnipotence of God, whose power is 
without limit in fact and without measure in thought. Only 
by the concurrence of that power is it possible to put the 
physical act by which I sinned. Without that power, I 
could not desire the object of sin, nor could that object 
attract my will, nor could I execute my desire through the 
faculties and organs that I call mine. Without the concur-
rence of that omnipotence, my hands or feet could not move, 
nor my eyes see nor my mind know. Yet in my native im-
potence as a sinner I oppose myself to the will of the om-
nipotent God, and use that omnipotence in the procuring of 
sin as though it were the service of the most contemptible 
slave or of the lowest creature not meriting attention beyond 
what is required for using it. Judas sold Christ for thirty 
pieces of silver, and I have sold God's omnipotence to ap-
pease the insistence of some passion. Esau sold his tem-
poral birthright for a dish of savory beans, and I have sold 
my right to life etérnal for the gratification of a desire. 



Catholic Evidence 
Can A n g l i c a n i s m U n i t e w i t h 

R o m e ? — W . H . McClellan, S.J. 
—5c. 

W h y I A m a Catholic—J. H . 
F a s y , S.J.—Sc. 

W h a t Catholics D o N o t Believe 
— T . J . M c G r a t h , S.J.—Sc. 

T h e N e w M o r a l i t y a n d t h e N a -
t i o n a l L i f e — J o n e s I . C o r r i g a n , 
S.J.—5c. 

C h r i s t a n d M a n k i n d — M . J . S c o t t , 
S.J.—5c. 

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F . P . L e B u f f e , S.J.—Sc. 

W h a t T h e n M u s t I Believe? 
1. God, t h e C o s m o s , M a n — 
W . I . L o n e r g a n , S.J.—5c. 

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S.J. 

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ANT?—Sc. 
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ASSET?—Sc. 
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D o M i r a c l e s H a p p e n ? H W . I . 
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S t u m b l i n g B l o c k s t o Catholicism 
— W . I . L o n e r g a n , S.J. 

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e r g a n , S.J;—25c. 
T h e L i t u r g i c a l M o v e m e n t in 

A m e r i c a — G . E l l a r d , S.J.—Sc. 

C o m p l e t e Sets, $2.00 : : 10 S e t s o r m o r e , $1.80 each 
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T H E A M E R I C A P R E S S 461 E i g h t h A v e n u e , N e w Y o r k , N . Y. 



What Are YOU Doing? 
T h e world is h u n g r y f o r t r u t h , very h u n g r y . 
Men's souls have been so starved t h a t they c r y 
out now f o r food. 
W h a t are you going to feed them? 
Learn the t r u t h and tell it. 
Read Catholic periodicals and pass them on. 
Pamphlets are short, and hence entice to read-
ing. T h e America Press has m a n y w o r t h while 
pamphlets. 

T h e n there is the weekly 
AMERICA 
T h e bi-weekly 

CATHOLIC MIND 
T h e quarterly 

THOUGHT 
Be a harbinger of the "Gospel"—the "Good-

news" t h a t men are longing t o hear. 
I W W e shall g l a d l y send s a m p l e copies f o r i n s p e c t i o n 

T h e A m e r i c a P r e s s , 461 E i g h t h A v e n u e , N e w Y o r k , N. Y.