Sin

Sin is a free refusal of the love of God. It consists in preferring one's own will to the divine will and in transgressing the law of God, which expresses that love: “Sin is the transgression of the law.” 1 John 3:4 By it, man turns away from God, who is his end and his good.

Original and personal

One same word covers two realities. Original sin is the state of privation in which every man is born, inherited from the fault of the origins. Personal sin is the act that each one commits by his own will, once the age of reason has come. All are exposed to it: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Romans 3:23

Mortal and venial

Personal sins do not all wound in the same way. Mortal sin breaks friendship with God and makes one lose sanctifying grace; venial sin wounds it without destroying it. Scripture itself distinguishes these two weights: “There is a sin that leads to death, and there is a sin that does not lead to death.” 1 John 5:16-17 Three conditions, joined together, make a mortal sin. There must first be grave matter, an act that gravely contradicts the law of God, such as the transgression of the great commandments. There must next be full awareness of this gravity, knowing that one is doing a serious evil. There must finally be full consent, willing it freely, without being constrained. Let one of these conditions be lacking, and the sin is no longer mortal: a light matter, a real ignorance, a freedom impaired by fear or passion lighten its weight. Venial sin is that whose matter is light, or whose awareness or consent remain partial: it weakens charity and disposes to evil, leaving intact friendship with God. The consequence of grave sin, however, is the death of the soul, which loses the divine life: “The wages of sin is death.” Romans 6:23

Its root

Every fault springs from the same movement: to prefer oneself to God. Pride, which places the self at the center, is the root from which the other sins come. Sin impoverishes man, cutting him off from the very source of his life.

Its forgiveness

God never ceases to offer his pardon to whoever returns to him. Christ bore the sin of the world to deliver men from it, and he entrusted to his Church the power to remit sins: “Those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven them.” John 20:23 Mortal sin is forgiven in the sacrament of penance, which gives back the lost grace; venial sin is also effaced by contrition, prayer and the Eucharist. To the one who acknowledges his fault, mercy is always promised: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us them.” 1 John 1:9