Welcome to the first Sunday of Lent and the first issue in our Lenten reflection series. The purpose of Lent is to set aside an intense, focused period of time to foster repentance from sin and conversion of heart (metanoia), as reflected in external acts of penance. During the 40 days of Lent, sinners encounter God’s merciful judgment, choose life over death through their conversion, and experience spiritual resurrection in preparation for Easter joy. To help us facilitate repentance and conversion, the topic for this year’s Lenten series is the Seven Deadly Sins according to St. Thomas Aquinas and how to conquer them, with references to The Seven Deadly Sins: A Thomistic Guide to Vanquishing Vice and Sin, by Kevin Vost, Psy.D.

According to the current Catechism of the Catholic Church, the seven deadly sins are: pride, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony, and sloth, but this has not always been the case. Scripture itself includes several particular serious sins besides the current seven, including deceit, licentiousness, slander, lying, drunkenness, idolatry, and many more. However, nowhere in Scripture are we given a specific list of “seven deadly sins.” The first attempt to narrow sins into broad categories is largely credited to Evagrius of Pontus in the late 4^th century. He lived a monastic life and found that, even in solitude, fallen human nature remained subject to temptation. Evagrius created a list of eight generally evil logismoi, or thoughts, that would tempt him and his fellow monks into various sins. There were eight in total: gluttony, fornication, avarice, distress, anger, depression, vanity, and pride. From there, great philosophers and saints continued to play with this list over the centuries, with the number and names of the sins changing slightly between them, adding nuance.

We now come to St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). Here, I will note that St. Thomas’s list of seven deadly vices – as he preferred to call them – has one difference from those in the Catechism. In the place of pride, he has vainglory, which I will explain in a moment. For this reflection series, I will use St. Thomas’ list rather than the modern list in the Catechism.

Now, St. Thomas preferred the term vice to sin when speaking about the broad categories of thoughts and qualities that lead us to sin. The reason is due to a vice’s relationship to its corresponding virtue. A virtue is a habit that leads us to our ultimate good, which is God. A vice, then, St. Thomas says, is a quality that directs a soul toward evil and quotes St. Augustine saying, “Whatever is lacking for a thing’s natural perfection may be called a vice” (ST, I-II, Q. 71, art. 1.). So, if a virtue is a habit that makes a person good and leads to good acts, then a vice is a bad or evil habit that leads to sin. Now, according to St. Thomas, a sin is worse than a vice, because you can exercise your will to choose not to act on the vice – habit – to which you are inclined. If you repeatedly choose not to act on your vice, your inclination toward that vice can fade. Then, you can replace your bad habits with virtuous ones and work on perfecting yourself so that you can use your will to choose good acts. So, for St. Thomas, the distinction between vice and sin was an important one.

Earlier, I noted that St. Thomas did not include pride in his list of capital vices and instead replaced it with vainglory. The reason for this is that he considers pride the deadliest vice of all and places it above the seven deadly vices as the beginning and root of all sin, either directly or indirectly. All sin involves turning to a lesser good, or temporal pleasure, instead of turning toward a higher good or God. Sometimes this is done willfully, with full knowledge that it is an affront to God, and sometimes it is done out of ignorance or weakness. However, in all sin, we are choosing our own will over God’s, which is pride. Then, that pride channels our temptation to one of the other seven deadly vices. Vost illustrates this with an example of how our culture promotes the deadly vice of lust, which may then lead to the sin of abortion. Perhaps young and frightened women facing an unexpected pregnancy do not realize the gravity of their choice of abortion in their ignorance and weakness, but those in the industry who promote and encourage abortion for financial gain, those who impose power and ultimately play God, are being willfully led to serious sin by their pride.

The remedy to pride is charity. According to St. Thomas, just as pride is the root of all vices, charity is the root of all moral virtue. In fact, he calls charity the mother of all the virtues since “every virtue depends on it in a way” (ST, II-II, Q. 23, art. 4). In other words, you cannot have true justice, prudence, or any other virtue without charity as its origin. Jesus commanded us to love God and to love our neighbor with all our hearts. If God is the highest good, and charity is an act of the will, then our hearts ought to always be seeking to act in charity. St. Thomas compares the love, or charity, in our hearts to the heat of a furnace (ST, II-II, Q. 27, art. 7). The hotter charity burns in your heart, the less you think about yourself and the more you think about God and others. As a consequence, pride and the other seven vices are burned away.

As we move through the seven deadly vices in the coming weeks, look for elements of the following keys to combatting each of them:

 

1. Examination of conscience - Recognizing the vice in your life.
2. Embracing the sacraments - Noting which sacraments best combat the vice.
3. Watching the steps of our movements toward sin – Recognizing how you respond to the temptation.
4. Practicing prayer – How to direct your prayer life to combat the vice.
5. Cultivating virtue – Recognizing which virtues to practice.
6. Immersion in the world of the spirit – Either recognizing what worldly things you need to detach from, or what spiritual things you need to attach to.
7. Imitation of Christ – Looking to Jesus as an example to combat the vice

As you settle into Lent, take some time for conversation with God and reflection, preferably in the adoration chapel. Think about how you can be intentional about facilitating a conversion of heart, or metanoia, regarding one or more of the vices that tempt you to sin. Consider how that vice is rooted in pride and resolve to find opportunities to grow in charity toward God and toward your neighbor so that you can start to root out the vices in your life.

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