Robert Cardinal Sarah
At the Service of
THE TRUTH Priesthood & Ascetic Life
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Robert Cardinal Sarah
At the Service of
THE TRUTH Priesthood & Ascetic Life
All books are published thanks to the generosity of the supporters of the Catholic Truth Society
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Cover: Cardinal Sarah © Bob Roller/CNS; Procession of priests © Mazur/catholicnews.org.uk Translated by Matthew Sherry from the Original Italian Edition A Servizio della Verità published by Fede & Cultura, Via Marconi, 58c-60a – 37122 Verona, Italy, www.fedecultura.com All rights reserved. First published 2022 by The Incorporated Catholic Truth Society, 42-46 Harleyford Road London SE11 5AY Tel: 020 7640 0042. © 2022 The Incorporated Catholic Truth Society. www.ctsbooks.org ISBN 978 1 78469 745 7
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Contents
Preface..................................................................... 7 Introduction to the Spiritual Exercises.................... 13 The Current Situation of Moral and Spiritual Decadence Among the Clergy (Lack of Faith and Zeal).......................................... 17 The Priesthood not as “Work” but as a Path of Sanctification for the Priest and the Flock Entrusted to him..................................................... 45 The Dignity of the Liturgy as a Way of Sanctification for the Priest: Laziness in the Liturgy is a Spiritual Disease for the Priest............................................... 71 Human, Spiritual, and Intellectual Formation in the Seminary and in Religious Life..................... 96 Priestly Life and Ascetic Life................................. 119 Zeal for Souls: Choosing the Highest Goal of the Apostolate of the Priest............................... 144
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Preface
by Fr Vincenzo Nuara, OP Moderator of the Summorum Pontificum Priestly Friendship Society
For about three years, because of his many commitments of office and ministry, I had been “chasing” Cardinal Sarah to get him to preach a course of spiritual exercises at the annual retreat of the Summorum Pontificum Priestly Friendship Society. Thanks be to God, I finally worked it into his schedule. The texts presented in this volume are the fruit of the work Cardinal Sarah did to provide reflections for the priests at the February 2020 retreat. This was a deep and intimate experience of faith and priestly fellowship. The path outlined in these pages is the classic one of ascesis as applied to priestly life. This path is not often taken today, unfortunately; little or nothing is said about it. Could a priest live his life without personal, ongoing, and solid ascesis? For all spiritual 7
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men of the past and also for Cardinal Sarah, this is not possible. The priestly ministry has a deeply beneficial effect in the personal life and in the apostolate only for those who practise, in their state of life lived out in grace and responsibility, the corresponding ascesis. In short, it can be said that a priest who does not cultivate an authentic ascetic life of prayer and intimate union with God is living an impoverished priesthood that over time can become merely pragmatic, without any yearning for mission and for the supernatural dimension that Christ and the Church entrusted to him on the day of his ordination. We speak of supernatural mission, because the priest is who he is because he has been called by Christ in a special way for the salvation of the souls he is to sanctify through preaching and sacrament: “I did not come to call the just, but sinners to conversion”, the Lord says (Mk 2:17). He also commands his disciples: “Go preach the gospel to every creature” (Mk 16:15). The Church has received from her divine Master the instruments of sacramental grace, which in Christ’s name and by his mandate she confers in priestly ordination upon men chosen and called by God for this holy, distinctive, and unique mission on this earth. Priesthood and ascesis is the theme of these meditations. But what is asceticism? What is ascesis? It is a personal path of purification, of meditation, of penance, of prayer, of mortification, of renunciation, of intellectual and moral discipline, of ongoing selfexamination, of interior growth. In a word: it is an itinerary of life, an inward path for reaching full 8
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conformity with Christ, imitating his intimate relationship with the Father in prayer and silent recollection; and, for a priest, with Christ the good shepherd and victim of love. St Thomas Aquinas affirms that ascesis tends to perfect man’s relationship with God: this perfection matures through love (cf. Summa Theologiae, II-II. q. 24 a. 9). We could therefore say that ascesis is an act of love expressed every day in an intense life of prayer before God in loving contemplation and adoration; without this, the minister of God can risk living his priestly life as just another profession, albeit a noble one, in an exclusively human, almost philanthropic way without a contemplative and consequently apostolic longing. The gospel he preaches must be in his life, as well as on his lips with preaching, so he may not be reproached on account of his inconsistent and unsound life, as St Paul recalls (cf. 1 Co 9:27). The priest is therefore the mouth of God: os Domini, first with the evangelical witness of his life and then with his words. The cardinal continues: “The asceticism that is imposed on us consists in learning true priestly freedom in saying and doing that which allows Christ, whose unworthy representatives we are, to shine through our speech and our actions”. The emphasis in seminaries on the human dimension of ministry, advanced by a horizontalist, exclusively anthropocentric theology, has impoverished the priestly formation and spiritual life of many future priests. This approach has debased and secularised the life of many priests, who in the long run feel tired and unmotivated, sometimes burdened by urgent requests 9
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from the hierarchy, by inconsistent and unattainable pastoral plans, and by the demands of the faithful and of parish life with its intense and unsustainable rhythms. The crisis experienced by many priests is based on this functionalist view of the Catholic priesthood rather than on the reality of ecclesiastical celibacy, a claim that some promote with the complicity of the secularist mass media. Ascesis helps give the priest a realistic and concrete view of his abilities and his moral and spiritual strengths, and at the same time helps him, accompanied by a good spiritual father, to make decisions beneficial and essential for his own path of sanctification and for that of the souls entrusted to him in the ministry. The priest must realise that since it is not necessary or even possible for him to do everything, his duty is rather to choose the “better part…” (cf. Lk 10:41-42) and bring this to the attention of the faithful and, also, to his own attention: “We must leave behind many of our past habits in order to make room for our Christological representation above all else”, the cardinal continues. Cardinal Sarah has stated that he had nothing new to say in these meditations. I think rather that, like the good scribe of the parable, he was able to draw from the Holy Gospel and from the venerable Tradition of the Church old things and new things useful for living our priestly life today, so beset on every side. On behalf of all, I would like to thank him for the beautiful and profound meditations and for the time he has given us, together with his edifying and simple presence: this will be a memory that we will carry 10
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forever in our souls. I am sure that reading these pages will do a great deal of good for priests and will sustain them in the battle of daily and loving fidelity to Christ and his Mystical Bride. But it will also be nourishing for lay readers, in the ongoing discovery of the beauty of the priesthood that Our Lord has left to his Church for our edification and salvation. Rome, Ash Wednesday, 17th February 2021
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Introduction to the Spiritual Exercises
Dearest brother priests, With this brief introduction, we begin our journey through the Spiritual Exercises. The Exercises represent a very important moment in the life of a priest. The priest is a minister of Christ, that is, a servant of Christ. Servants can be good or bad, as our Master recalls in the famous Gospel parable (cf. Mt 24:45-51; Lk 12:35-55). Of course, it is true that a bad servant is still a servant. In this sense we do not lose the service, the ministry, meaning that we would not lose the priesthood if unfortunately we should occasionally fall into mortal sin, or worse, live permanently outside the grace of God. All the same we would remain priests. Bad ministers, but still ministers. However, we know very well that this objective nature of the ministry received must not represent an excuse. It is true that even if the priest is in mortal sin, the acts he performs in his ministry are valid if the elements necessary for validity are respected. But no priest should quiet his conscience on this account, 13
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saying, “Even if I live badly, I am still serving the Lord.” It is true that the sacraments he celebrates are valid and confer grace on the faithful. But he will have to give an account of his stewardship to the just Judge. And those who have received much will have to answer to a more severe judgement. We have received much, very much indeed. According to some authors – excluding the graces reserved exclusively for one person, for example the privileges of Mary Most Holy – the vocation to the priesthood is the greatest grace that God can give a human being. Whether this opinion is correct or not, we are confident in saying that the vocation to the priesthood is, at the very least, one of the greatest graces that God can grant to a man. Already this evening, then, let us prepare to examine ourselves during these Spiritual Exercises. We will have to ask ourselves many times during these days: “How do I live my priesthood? How do I respond to this extraordinary grace that the Lord, in total gratuitousness and really without any merit of mine, has granted me?” Let us think about it, brothers. Let us think about how high this divine election is. Let us remember that the Lord has thought of each of us from all eternity. From eternity he decided, in his infallible decree, that we were to be sacramentally identified with Jesus Christ, conformed to him through sacred priestly ordination. From eternity God the Father wanted us to be, in a certain sense, not just alter Christus, but even ipse Christus, Christ himself on earth. But are we aware of this gift? And how do we respond to it?
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During these days, God willing, we will carry out some reflections on our priestly life. Much if not indeed all I have to say you have already heard. During the years of our seminary studies and then later during the years of our ministry we read many books, attended many lectures…somehow it seems we have already heard it all. Perhaps that is so. Perhaps we already know everything and this course of Spiritual Exercises will not say anything new that we do not already know or have read or heard about from other sources. But let us ask ourselves if, in addition to knowing it, we have also meditated on what we have read and heard. Let us ask ourselves if to mere knowledge we have added contemplation. Let us ask ourselves if the spiritual food has remained – if the metaphor is permitted – in the stomach, or if we have digested and assimilated it, making it our own. Contemplation is to mere knowledge as digestion and metabolism are to merely ingesting food. Today there are so many sources, so many resources. With the internet we can feed constantly on news and information. We consume knowledge, data, all the time. But then, do we reflect on what we have read? Our body, when we give it ordinary food, digests and metabolises it. Metabolism causes that food, which was a reality different from me, to be transformed into me. Our mind should also metabolise what we hear and read. That is, it should take what is fitting from the things we have learned and heard over again, and make it part of our life. So let us approach these Spiritual Exercises with the desire to meditate and contemplate 15
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on the things we already know, so that we may truly know them and therefore also live them. Let us place ourselves under the mantle of Our Lady. Let us ask her for her protection and her blessing. Let us ask her to support these priest sons of hers during these days, so that the food of the Word of God and of sound doctrine may nourish our souls and sustain us in the ceaseless conversion to God of which we are ever in need.
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The Current Situation of Moral and Spiritual Decadence Among the Clergy (Lack of Faith and Zeal)
PART I
St John Chrysostom, in his famous treatise on the priesthood, says that – because of the very high dignity they have received – priests must in their moral lives shine brighter than the sun. Given the importance of this teaching, which we will recall a number of times over the coming days, let us consult his exact words: “The soul of the priest must be purer than the sun’s rays, so that the Holy Spirit may never abandon him and he may say: ‘It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me’” (St John Chrysostom, On the Priesthood, VI, 1,504; VI, 2,8-9). How beautiful it is to contemplate this truth! The priest is Christ’s representative on earth. He is not just an “alter Christus”, but even “ipse Christus”. Now, one of the aspects of the mystery of Jesus Christ is precisely that of his extraordinary holiness. We all know and believe 17
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that the Mother of Jesus is the Immaculate. That Mary is immaculate means that she was protected, in view of the future merits of her Son, from any contagion of sin. She is sine macula. Our Lady is therefore venerated with this wonderful title, which expresses a dogma of the faith: the Immaculate Conception. This Marian truth, however, is not always considered in terms of its Christological root. Mary was kept immaculate because she was to give birth to the most pure Son. We can say that Mary is the Immaculate Woman (Immacolata) because she was to be the Mother of the true Immaculate Man (Immaculato), Christ the Lord. In Christ is the origin of the most perfect holiness. It is he who is the Immaculate Man, and therefore Our Lady is also the Immaculate Woman. We priests have been made representatives of the Immaculate Man. We know very well that we are not like him, but our vocation implies that, in some way, we should reproduce his spotlessness. This is why Chrysostom said that the priest must shine brighter than the earthly sun: he must in fact shine with the rays of the supernatural sun, Jesus Christ. Let us think of the Marian image of Revelation: the Woman clothed with the sun (Rv 12). But that’s just it, she is clothed, arrayed with the sun. Mary is not the sun. She is the moon, which reflects the light of the true sun, the orientale lumen that is Jesus. The priest is called to let shine upon him the sun that is Christ. The priest is not the sun: no! Christ is. But the priest must be mantled in holiness. In him holiness acts as a mantle-mirror. If he is mantled in this mirror, he will better reflect the 18
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rays of the Christological sun. Let us now meditate on this image of the mirror. We know that St Paul uses it to describe our journey of faith here below. In the first letter to the Corinthians, the apostle says that now we walk by faith and not yet by sight. The Latin version says that we contemplate God and the transcendent realities per speculum et in aenigmate. “Now we see in a confused way, as in a mirror; but then we will see face to face. Now I know in an imperfect way, but then I will know perfectly, as I too am known” (1 Co 13:12). This is usually translated: “We see as though through a mirror and in a confused way”. At first glance, these words seem wrong. When we look in the mirror, we do not see in a confused way at all, but very clearly. Why does St Paul say that looking into a mirror he sees himself in a confused way? In all probability, because St Paul did not have the kind of mirrors we have today. In ancient times the mirror was certainly a very useful tool and one that, all in all, fulfilled its function. However, ancient mirrors were much less functional than current ones. They were surfaces, usually of metal, which were made as even and smooth as possible so as to reflect images. But although the images were visible, they were less clear than those of natural eyesight. The object could be seen, yes, but not very well: it was blurred and the reflected image was opaque. St Paul applies this to faith and says that we see God, we know God already by faith during this life, but not directly (in fact, the mirror gives us an indirect view of an object) and not
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even clearly (since ancient mirrors did not render a perfect image). Let us apply these observations to our being priests, called to reflect the sun which is Christ. We have been made a mirror of the holiness of Christ. But our mirror, what condition is it in? Is it smooth, clean, well-polished, so as to give the best possible reflection of the light? Or is it dirty, chipped, dented, so that it hardly reflects a glimmer? Priestly life has never been easy. But perhaps today it is even less so. The temptations and opportunities to fall into sin are truly many; one could say more so than in the past. And we say “more so than in the past” not because all previous eras were better than ours, but because today there are means and habits, at least in the Western world, that facilitate sin, when they do not positively approve of, promote, and recommend it. Without claiming to make a complete list, let us try to mention some of these elements that today, more than in the past, put the moral integrity of the priest at risk: 1. The education he received. Today’s younger priests have often grown up in families where their parents almost always loved them, but often did not also educate them. In present-day families, for many reasons, there is a great educational void. Children are often left to themselves, when they are not left in bad company, either because both parents work or because, when they come back home, they don’t have it in them or don’t want to sacrifice the last 20
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hours of the day to being with their children and educating them. That is why young people today get their education (or rather miseducation) from school (too often a venue for ideology), television and the internet, as well as from their peers, who however are in the same situation. From the educational point of view, parents are absent. One of the main causes of this is that today the importance of sacrifice is not understood. Love is thought to be a feeling. A parent may believe he loves his children simply because he feels love for them. But in many cases, it is not understood that loving children means sacrificing one’s own time and energy in order to be a consistent presence for them, to correct and even punish them if necessary, so that they may grow up well. Moreover, even in Catholic families there is often not enough religious education, or none at all. The parish or ecclesial association that the children may attend has an important role, but it cannot replace the essential religious education that is received in the family. And we must add that today even the parish or Catholic associations often do not carry out their educational and formative task well. So this is the first reason. Many of today’s priests did not receive a solid human, affective, and religious education in the family. In particular, they were not raised in the faith from an early age and, above all, they were not educated in the value of renunciation and sacrifice. In large sectors of the younger clergy 21
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(let’s say aged fifty and under), it is not unusual to see a reluctance to make sacrifices. This reverberates throughout many aspects of the ministry, but also in the field of resisting temptations and seeking the means to strengthen oneself against them, especially the great means of penance. 2. From this follows a second aspect: organisation, the structuring of one’s days, the rule of life. Several years ago, a bishop confided that he was rather disturbed about the typical daily schedule of a number of his younger priests. What this bishop was saying seemed hard to believe. Some of his young priests (even if they were parish priests or assistant parish priests, with serious responsibilities) got up no earlier than ten or eleven in the morning. Their church, of course, was closed in the morning. Once the bishop found himself passing through a small village in his diocese and, seeing the church closed when it was almost noon, he asked an old woman on the street the reason for this. And the old woman replied, “The priest is sleeping.” And this was not an extraordinary event, but an everyday one. The people of that village knew that in the morning, every morning, the church was closed, that it was not possible to enter to pray, because the priest was sleeping. The bishop then described the rest of the day for such priests: breakfast or lunch around noon; in the early afternoon watching television or posting comments and images on Facebook and other social networks; then phone calls with fellow priests or 22
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get-togethers in person. In both cases, the reason for the conversation is simply to gossip about everything and everyone. The bishop said that such priests can spend more than two hours a day posting videos and texts on social media, many of them ridiculous or meaningless, as well as gossiping with fellow priests. Then, around five or six in the evening, the moment finally comes to open the church to celebrate Mass. After Mass has been celebrated and a few other errands run, the evening ends around eight and the long night begins: outings with friends (some priests even go to nightclubs), going to the cinema or watching television and playing on the computer at home...all without a care in the world until two in the morning. We repeat: listening to this story, at first one is tempted not to believe it. We know many priests, even among the very young, who do not live like this at all. But after consulting other bishops the reality of the story was confirmed. Again, not all priests are like this, on the contrary! By the grace of God there are many priests, both old and young, who are very dedicated to their ministry and who sacrifice themselves for it. The Lord bless them! But it is unfortunately true that other priests idle their time away: the time that is so precious for serving Christ and the Church and that, once wasted, cannot be recovered, since it is impossible to go back. “The years of our life are seventy, eighty for those who are strong, [...] they pass quickly and we fly away. [...] 23
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Teach us to number our days and we will acquire a wise heart”(Ps 90:10, 12). It is known that the saints did not like to waste time. St Alphonsus Maria de Liguori apparently made a vow never to waste time. We can say that wasting time is truly a sin. It corresponds to the attitude of that man in the parable who, instead of working to multiply the talent he received, went to bury it. That saying is true which says, “idleness is the father of vices”. If so many priests are living in sin, this often depends in part on their totally disorganised and truly mistaken daily schedule. We remember that the great David sinned with Bathsheba because at that time he was relaxed, he was living badly, without a good rule of life. While the troops were fighting, while others were giving their lives for Israel, David slept until late afternoon, and after waking up he sauntered out onto the terrace of his house. There the devil found him and easily prevailed over him because, through that way of life, David had dug the pit under his feet; he had stood alone on the edge of the precipice (2 S 12:1-15). What then are we to think of the behaviour of those idle priests who, while some of their brethren are giving their lives generously for the cause of the Church, spend their days in dissipation? God forbid that we be among them! 3. A third danger is the aforementioned disorderly use of the internet. There may be no need to point out that we have nothing against the internet itself, 24
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because if used well it is indeed a great resource, including for the Church. But its misuse is harmful. Various websites, blogs and social media platforms are contributing heavily to the current cultural disaster. And we are not referring only to sites of an evidently sinful or ideological character. In a sense those are less dangerous, because there the sin or error is evident, so anyone who wants to avoid sin will also avoid looking at those pages. The true danger of the internet lies elsewhere, in its potential to destroy our brain. In what sense do we make such a serious statement? We say it in the sense that if we allow the internet to replace reflection, our conscience, and our responsibility to discern in the light of Revelation, then we become like automatons in the hands of others. In and of itself, every learning process requires a form of passivity. There is a teacher or a text that teaches, and there is a pupil who learns. The first movement towards knowledge is primarily passive: allowing reality to enter us so that our intellect can reformulate it in terms of truth. Truth is in fact material reality as comprehended by the mind in an immaterial way. This is the first step in knowledge according to the sound epistemology of philosophical realism: the passive reception of sense impressions and their conceptual elaboration. Then comes the second step. After conceptual understanding, which is obtained through abstraction, the mind can and must perform another operation: judgement. That is, 25
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the mind must judge the thing it has comprehended by comparing it with other things. The mind can and must say, “This thing is such and not otherwise, this is true or false”, and so on. Here, in the faculty of judgement, the active component of our intellect is displayed on a higher level of conceptual formulation. Let us take up again the metaphor of nutrition that we used before. In eating there is first of all passivity: we receive within us the food that is given to us by someone who has prepared it. But then the body moves into action to metabolise it (or, if the food is rotten, to reject it). In the age of the internet, we have at our disposal an enormous amount of data and ideas, that is, food for the mind. The point is that the more we read the less we digest. In schools of any level, from elementary to university, instruction always tries to cover both aspects: giving content to students on the one hand, but also getting the students to rework the knowledge received through seminars, written exercises, and preparation for exams. The internet, however, does not require any of this. It gives and, apparently, gives without asking for anything in return. Many today are under the illusion that they know everything, just because they always carry a mobile phone and at any moment can use it to look up information of any kind. But true knowledge is that which is digested, not that which we use and then discard from the mind immediately, as soon as we turn off the computer or phone screen. 26
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Here then is the danger: that the internet may destroy our brain, meaning our critical capacity, the capacity to reason, evaluate, and judge the things we read and see. We thus become puppets in someone else’s hands. We follow sensations instead of right reason. Recently the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), as part of its programme called PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), conducted a survey on the study capacity of present-day students. The results are truly worrying. Without dwelling on the many aspects of this research, we note a fact that is truly frightening: a high percentage of present-day adolescents do not have the ability truly to understand what they read. We know very well that Western countries have very high literacy rates: practically everyone can read and write. Everyone can read, but a good percentage of young people are unable to understand what they read. Teenagers are used to reading short texts, for example a tweet or a text message, but if the composition is any longer than that, they lose focus and cannot follow it any more. In spite this, the universities continue to churn out graduates. But with the average preparation of these graduates, some of whom fail to understand what they read in their university textbooks, what level will it be at? The concern is great: these are the ranks that in a few years will be producing architects, lawyers, engineers, army officers, diplomats, politicians... what will happen then, considering that already 27
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today the social panorama is full of figures that are hardly dazzling in terms of the depth of their specific preparation for their roles? A priest should live differently. In this age of internet passivity, in this time when people no longer think for themselves, he should avoid the systematic killing of the brain that is perpetrated in this way. Above all, the priest should be a person who thinks, who develops a critical judgement on reality, since he must guide others to recover the reason that today is clouded. And yet we see that a certain number of priests today, with respect to the internet, behave like everyone else. These ministers of Christ spend a lot of time at the keyboard or with the phone in their hands, posting images and texts that are superficial or ridiculous when they are not downright erroneous in terms of Christian doctrine or scandalous in content. This latter observation leads us to a fourth aspect. 4. The poor theological and doctrinal preparation of many priests also exposes them more easily to sin. It is true that solid preparation is not enough to avoid sin. We have seen that there have also been cases of doctrinally well-rounded priests who were not, however, morally sound. Good doctrine alone, therefore, is not enough to preserve one from sin. But it is true that sound doctrine, combined with other things, is necessary and greatly helps a priest to avoid occasions of sin. We will come back to 28
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this at another time. For now, we would just like to emphasise that every priest has the duty to read and study and, if possible, to read and study good books, books that help him. This too is helpful in leading a life in which we shine like the sun, reflecting the rays of Christ. We have mentioned just four areas of contemporary life in which priests today may find themselves more exposed to sin. There are others of course, but it seemed appropriate to point these out first. We could perhaps summarise what has been said so far with one word: prudence. To avoid sin one must be prudent. Prudence is the virtue of using good means to reach a good end. Our good end is that of being worthy and holy priests of Jesus. Therefore we must constantly ask ourselves: what means must I use in view of this end? Naturally, just as the end is good, so also must the means be, because in our doctrine the use of bad means is not allowed, not even to attain a good end. The end does not justify the means. Let us try to use good means to reach a good end. When we go to confession, we have the good habit of reciting the Act of Contrition. In it we say to God: “I firmly resolve, with the help of your grace, to sin no more and to avoid the near occasions of sin”. The good end is “to sin no more”. This, of course, is possible only with the grace of God and therefore in the same prayer we say: “I firmly resolve, with the help of your grace”. In fact, without such help it would be impossible not to sin. However, in addition to grace, 29
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human co-operation is needed. So, what are we to do on our part? What means should we use? The prayer says: “I firmly resolve...to avoid the near occasions of sin.” We know very well how today many no longer understand the exact meaning of these words. And this is not their fault, but rather ours, because we no longer teach so many beautiful and right things that were taught to us. That is why many today think that the near occasion of sin means a future occasion. In fact, this is one of the meanings of the word “near”, which can indicate something that comes later. But it is clear that this is not the meaning of the formula we are commenting on here. If this were so, the Act of Contrition would be saying something obvious and even ridiculous: I propose to avoid the occasions of sin that will occur in the future...of course! After all, how could one avoid the occasions that have already occurred in the past? “Near occasions” cannot mean future occasions, but occasions bordering on sin, occasions that lead me to sin, as David’s sloth put him in the near occasion of sin and he in fact sinned. The priest, then, must be prudent: he must use good means to keep from getting close to sin. Because sin is like a chained dog: it is scary even from far away, but it bites you only if you come within striking distance. So let us keep prudently away from its striking distance!
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