others by committing venial sins habitually, or by persevering in their ordinary failings, and taking no pains to amend their lives.
As to the first description of relapsing sinners, viz., those who banish Jesus from their hearts by grievous sin, their misfortune is so great, that it can never be too much dreaded, or sufficiently deplored. They are compared by the Holy Fathers to the Jews, because, like them, they receive Jesus Christ with feelings of joy and gratitude, but shortly after crucify him by sin; they are even likened to Judas, the most unfortunate of all men, because, like him, they no sooner communicate, than they betray their Lord and divine Guest. Alas! would it not be better that such persons never communicated, never received those graces of which they never profit. Do you most earnestly beg of God to enlighten your mind, and give you a clear idea of the dreadful risk which relapsing sinners run, and also to penetrate your heart with a sincere horror of their ingratitude. To conceive their danger, you need only reflect on those awful words of St. Paul, who says, that it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, have touted also the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and are fallen away, to be renewed again to penance ( Heb . vi. 4, and 6); that is, sincere conversion becomes extremely difficult for those who, though fully enlightened by instruction, frequently nourished with the heavenly gift of Christ’s sacred body, and also strengthened by the gifts of the Holy Ghost, nevertheless persevere in a fatal habit of repenting, confessing, communicating, and then relapsing; salvation for them must indeed be most difficult, if not impossible. Why? because the ordinary means of salvation
