Union with God by Charity

The essence of Christian perfection consists in union with God by charity. While
charity, by conforming our wills to God’s, unites us to him, grave sin, which
directly opposes his will, produces the opposite effect. In other words, charity
is the force uniting man to God, and sin the force drawing him away. Serious sin
is therefore the greatest enemy of the spiritual life, since it not only injures
it, but destroys it in its constituent elements: charity and grace. This
destruction, this spiritual death, is the inevitable result of sin, the act by
which man voluntarily detaches himself from God, the one source of life, charity
and grace. As the branch cannot live if it is separated from the trunk, neither
can the soul live if separated from God.
 
God, the cause of every
being, is always present in the soul of the sinner in the same way in which he
is present in all creatures; yet he is not there as a Father, as a Guest, as the
Trinity which offers itself to the soul to be known and loved. Hence, the
sinner, though created to be the temple of the Blessed Trinity, has voluntarily
made himself incapable of dwelling with the three divine Persons and has barred
his own road to union with God. He has, so to speak, obliged God to break all
ties of friendship with him because he has preferred the temporal, fleeting good
of a miserable creature - a selfish satisfaction, an earthly pleasure - instead
of the sovereign good. This is the malice of sin which rejects the divine gift
and betrays its Creator, Father, and Friend. ‘Oh, why can we not realise that
sin is a pitched battle fought against God with all our senses and the faculties
of the soul; the stronger the soul is, the more ways it invents to betray its
King.’ (Saint Teresa of Jesus.)
 
Divine Intimacy Fr Gabriel OCD